Saturday, July 6, 2013

UnAmerican Sports

This is my favorite time of year and NBC Sports (formerly Versus) is my favorite cable channel.  Wimbledon. Tour de France. and coming in August English Premier League Football.  Just awesome, particularly as the Tour enters the Pyrenees for insane climbs at the end of 200 kilometer rides.  Thrilling to watch Nairo Quintana the young Columbia take the first big climb of the tour summiting at 6500 feet altitude, a mere three thousand feet below the altitude of the town in the Andes where he grew up.  Then even more amazing watching Chris Froome (the favorite) and Richie Porte (the second best rider on Froome's team) overtake Quintana and finish one/two on the second climb at the end of the stage to also go one two on the leader board for the overall tour.  This is the only sport that makes me tired just watching it.

And to complete my un-American Fourth of July celebration, I am taking the family to seeing an international exhibition featuring Lionel Messi, plus some indefinite number of international stars play an exhibition match in Soldier Field with various ex-college folks to round out the teams.


2 comments:

  1. Add to this the clear superiority of the winter olympics and one comes to the realization that while baseball may be a great past-time, true sport is something quite different!

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  2. I am a fairly obsessive watcher of the TDF. It was gratifying to see Sky explode yesterday after their incredible effort on Saturday. Don't get me wrong, I've got nothing against Froome and his team. It's just gratifying to see that normal human beings take more than 15 hours to recover from a superhuman effort.

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