shannonsays.com

At least Serena's bum is here

January in Melbourne means it's time for the tennis.  And as usual the players have been arriving in Melbourne over the last week to much fanfare and speculation over their fitness.  I am not sure if Serena Williams' over sized backside arrived on the same plane as Serena, but it is most definitely here!.  In fact her full behind has dominated both the front and the back of the local papers during the week, with the former number 1's sporting prowess taking a back seat to heated debate about the proportions of her lycra-clad bum...

The balloon like rear end made the front page of Sydney's Daily Telegraph: "Serena is back – and she's bigger, if not better, than ever." And the Herald Sun wheeled out leading sports medico Dr Peter Larkins, who used a piece of paper across the waist to split the photo of her body in two. "If you look at the upper half, gee she looks in good shape," Larkins said. "If you put a sheet of paper over the top half and look at the bottom, you'd think that person couldn't be an athlete."

Given the number of top players that are not missing from the 2006 Aus Open (eg Rafael Nadal, defending champion Marat Safin, and the perennial favourite Andre Agassi) coupled with those that are hobbling about under injury clouds (Maria Sharapova, Kim Clisjters and Roger Federer) I guess we should be happy that Serena and her rear end are actually here and ready to play some tennis.

It's the same every year, a number of players pull out because of some sort of injury.  I don't know how this is allowed to happen- this is a Grand Slam event after all.  It would seem to be a case of too much tennis, too many tournaments.  The folks that put tennis calendar does not appear to place much importance on making sure that it's top players get to the starting line for its signature events.

So you end up having Grand Slams, in particular next week's Open, that remind us that tennis's overlong calendar of events is putting too much strain on its biggest draw cards.  It's not the players fault- they'll enter as many events as they can to maximise their earnings potential. 

The tennis authorities need to scale back the number of events they schedule each year.  Surely we as fans would we rather watch the very best less often?

Dakar Rally: The Worl'd Most Dangerous Sporting Event?

Being the motorsport junkie that I am, the annual Dakar Rally is an annual high-octane oasis at this time of year when not much else is happening.  And the nightly coverage on SBS is excellent.

I was excited last week to hear that Aussie rider Andy Caldecott had won a stage of this grueling event. I was shocked and saddened to hear about his death four days later.   Death is undoubtedly a high price to pay for racing across the dusty tracks of the African desert, but the Dakar Rally is a dangerous event.   As The Age reported , it has taken 23 lives in the last 28 years.

But is it the most dangerous sporting event in the world.  Well according some analysis by crikey.com's sporting writer Thomas Hunter the short answer is "yes":

"There is no other single sporting event that can be relied upon to kill contestants with the same regularity as the Dakar Rally. But when you look at a list of the world's most deadly sports, driving at high speed across rocks and dust barely even rates a mention.

50 years ago, track-based motorsport would have gone close to winning the title of the world's most dangerous sport, in part because it also endangered the crowd. In the 1955 Le Mans 24 hour event, a car left the track killing around 80 spectators. But with every horrific crash, safety measures were improved to the point where you could say motorsport today is relatively safe, with apologies to Ayrton Senna.

Sailing takes lives each year, but not all of those who die are competing in a single race. Freak weather killed six people in the 1998 Sydney to Hobart, but that was tragedy on an unimaginable scale for the event. In the 54 year history of the event prior to 1998, only two other deaths had been recorded.

BASE jumping, heli-skiing, diving, mountaineering, big wave surfing and bull riding also contribute to the annual tally of deaths in sport, but none of them donate lives as generously as boxing, a sport that may be the world's premier Very Deadly Sport. According to the Journal of Combative Sport, world boxing recorded approximately 58 deaths from January 2004 to May 2005 alone.

A mortality rate that high certainly gives the anti-boxing movement a leg-up. Similarly, there are those who argue the human cost of the Dakar Rally should prohibit the running of that event as well."

While organisers are already talking about how next year's Rally will have the strictest safety measures yet, those changes won't be enough to change the already horrific legacy of the event.  And it remains to be seen just how you can make such an event "safe", particularly for motorcyclists

The Melbourne Demons: No more bad luck

It is nearing the end of the season for the teams in the Australian Football League, and despite looking shaky a few weeks ago, my mob- the Melbourne Demons- look like they just might scrape into the finals series following two come from behind victories.

I was at the MCG watching last nights game, and it was bloody exciting.  A really remarkable and stirring victory for the men in red and blue.  Just goes to show what you can do if you never give up and stick to a plan.

After round 12 (the halfway point of the year) we had won 9 games and lost only three, and were sitting comfortably in second place on the ladder.  We then managed to lose the next 7 games in a row, and tumbled down the ladder to 11th.

How does that happen?  How does a team that is capable of winning 9 out of 12 games then lose 7 in a row?  Of course the media commentators, supporters and other loungeroom experts (like me) offer up plenty of opinions and reasons, but who really knows.  According to Freakonmics author Steven Levitt, it might be nothing more than bad luck:

"It seems like, when a team loses several games in a row, it is so extreme that it can't reasonably be the result of randomness. Clearly coaches, sports writers and most fans believe that to be true. How often have you heard of a coach holding a closed-door meeting to try to turn a team around? But if you look at it statistically, you expect big losing streaks to occur, simply by randomness, about as often as they do."

He uses the example of the Kansas City Royals, and in typical Levitt fashion explores what the chances are of a Major League team having a long loosing streak, and even links it to his Ipod Shuffle (really!).  He concludes that a big losing streak will occur once every decade or so:

"So, one doesn't need to resort to explanations like "lack of concentration," being "snakebit," or "demoralized" to explain why teams lose so many games in a row, just that they are a bad team getting some bad luck."

I won't say that Melbourne is a bad team, but maybe we were just having some bad luck!  Hopefully we are due for some good luck.

The Ashes: Why England can't win

"There are some forces in the universe so immutable that it takes something extraordinary to change them. Chief among these is the one that impels Australian captains not to lose the Ashes, something that had begun to look increasingly likely until Ricky Ponting arguably played the captain's innings of the 21st century at Old Trafford to save his team from defeat."

That was Derek Pringle response to the dramatic draw in the Third Ashes' Test.

He has a point.  It seems that Australia simply cannot lose the Ashes, and the Third Test draw in Old Trafford just goes to prove it.  The exciting match might have ended in a draw, but it was clearly a victory for the embattled Aussies and was a soul-destroying loss for England.  They threw absolutely everything at us, right up until the very last ball of the match, but couldn't knock us off.

Sure they got a skin of-their-teeth victory in Birmingham, but the scorecard did them no justice.  They comprehensively belted the Aussies in all areas of the game in that match, and still only scrapped through.  Think of that match as the minor aberration that proves the law- "England cannot win Ashes series."

One Great Game; Three Lousy Runs

What a riveting end to the second Ashes Test!  I'll admit now that I couldn't bear to watch it or even listen to it....But to lose by three lousy runs.  Argghhh. 

As much as it hurts me to say it, here goes;   over the course of the three and a half days that the game lasted, the Poms deserved to win it.  More so than Australia.

But the only down side to the game was that, as is too often the case in cricket, the umpiring had a fair bit to do with the way the game panned out.  Don't get me wrong, I think the Pom's still would have won. But umpire Billy Bowden had an absolute shocker of a game, and his denial of one of the plummest LBW decisions you'd ever see when Michael Kasprowicz had just come to the wicket and Australia was still about 50 short of the target was almost laughable.  In other words, England had actually won, but the umpire badly blundered. And even the final, winning wicket of Michael Kasprowicz has some conjecture over it.  Did it flick the glove or not?

But I suppose we can debate those type of things, and argue all kinds of other reasons why Australia lost (which is fascinating; why don't we look for reasons why England won?) but that is all part of the great uncertainty of Test cricket. 

But enough bouquets for England.  They would do well to remember  that it probably wouldn't have happened if Glenn McGrath hadn't turned his ankle minutes before play was due to start on the first day....

(And Ashley Giles is still crap)

The Ultimate Test: The Ashes

The much anticipated First Ashes Test is almost upon us.  It is panning out to be a genuine contest, a rarity in recent Ashes Tests.

The beauty of this Ashes campaign is the level of confidence displayed by the poms.  They're a cocky lot this current team, unlike the timid and divided mobs that they have hobbled together to face the Aussies in the past four series'.  Michael Vaughn, Andrew Flintoff, Steve Harmison, Marcus Trescothick et al fancy themselves against Ricky Pontings World Champions. Afterall, they did beat the might of Bangadesh in a two game series....

We'll see.  But surely, pound for pound, player for player, the Aussie line up looks the better of the two?

It's interesting how the Ashes stir up the Australian "colonial inferiority complex" against England.  We always feel like the underdog against the Mother Country.  That's why beating England (at anything) is a big deal.  And beat England is something we do with almost boring regularity.  We have continually thrashed England at cricket since 1989, but we don't pity them or will them on towards putting up a contest.  A perfect Ashes series is Australia 5-0, every game won inside four days.  Contest, bah!  Let's see Warne bowl six "Gatting Balls" every over.

So here's hoping that the Aussies will win, and prick the balloon of this British buoyancy.

The Weekend That Was

What a wierd weekend of sport....

The only thing that seemed normal in this mornings papers was that Shane Warne is involved in another sex scandal.  But that's pretty boring compared to other events.

First of all the world champion Australian cricket team lost a one-day match to Asian minnows, Bangadesh (scorecard).   It was the greatest upset since, well... I can't think of a bigger upset.  And then to lose the very next day to bloody England.... arrgh.  Fleet Street will be in a real lather now.

Then I heard that a New Zealander had won the US Open.  Up until Until Michael Campbell's win, New Zealand's top earner at golf's major championships carried Tiger Woods's bag for a living.  Can we Australian's take that as one for "Oceania"?

But the biggest farce was the US Formula One Grand Prix. 

In what might well be the darkest day in the history of the sport, just six drivers competed in a race that saw Michael Schumacher greeted on the winner's podium by the jeers and boos from the few fans who hadn't already left in disgust.

It all went pear shaped after one of the two officially supplied brand of tyres – Michelin – proved to be unsafe. When officials ruled out a compromise solution involving a new chicane to slow entry speed at the high banked final turn, 14 drivers refused to take part in the race. Those on the rival Bridgestone tyres didn't have the same problem so a six-car grid finally agreed to race.

Urgent meetings throughout the weekend failed to reach compromise and there are several villains here, including a tyre manufacturer that's renowned for pushing the envelope and the “win at all costs” team, Ferrari. Nine teams are believed to have voted not to race without the chicane, but Ferrari insisted the regulations should not be bent to fix what it argued was essentially a technological defect.

Ultimately when FIA and F1 officials sided with Ferrari and all 14 Michelin “shod” cars withdrew, it left a race that was a complete farce. It's also one that is sure to see tens of thousands of racing fans demanding refunds and all kinds of legal challenges. The more than 200,000 fans who attended, many of whom flew long distances to see the race, booed and threw objects on to the track.

In absolute PR terms this is an unmitigated disaster. It seems no-one is more to blame than the Ferrari team which saw it could gain an advantage by sticking to the letter of the law, rather than looking at what its intransigence would mean for the sport in the longer term.

There was no shortage of condemnation from those in F1 including team bosses and the drivers. "I feel terrible. I have a sick feeling in my stomach," David Coulthard said. "I am embarrassed to be a part of this. The reality is that mature adults were not able to come to a resolution that would have allowed us to put on the show that everybody wants to see in Formula One. It is a very sad day for this sport. I am so, so sorry for what we've done."

But Michael Schumacher fooled no-one when he saw fit to observe: "Bit of a strange Grand Prix. Not the right way to win my first one this year."

It's Only One Win- Can Someone Tell The English Press

OK, so Australia's Ashes tour got off to a bad start with the 100 run loss to England in the inaugural Twenty20 match. But has the British press been so starved of memorable cricket wins in recent years that it needs go absolutely bananas over what is in reality little more than a bit of hit and giggle?

Obviously so.

"England rout old enemy to ignite Ashes summer" was the headline on Simon Barnes's report in the usually circumspect Times: "Let us make Test matches a thing of the past," he wrote. "Let us consign the one-day international to the landfill site of history and let us embrace Twenty20 as the best — no, the only form of the game. Never mind beauty and let subtlety go hang, for last night England wiped the floor with Australia in a cricket match."

"First Blood to England" crowed the Daily Mail. And "Thrashes" was the crowing headline in The Sun, where Mike Walters wrote that "seven wickets fell for eight runs in 19 minutes of madness in the Rose Bowl sunset yesterday – and they weren't English. Jon Lewis, the medium-pacer who sounds like a department store, sent Australia crashing to a sensational 100-run defeat in the Twenty20 Ashes appetiser."

It was left to spinner Shane Warne, a bloke not usually noted for his commonsense, to pour some cold water on the hysteria. In a piece in The Times under the headline "Enjoy the moment, England" Warne wrote:

Sorry, but I spent yesterday morning thinking that I'd missed something. Had England won the Ashes? That's the way it seemed with all the headlines in the papers and the gibes I was getting from cricket fans. I've hardly been able to stop at a traffic light without somebody winding down a window and shouting: “79 all out.”

Well, I have a message for all you England supporters. Enjoy it while you can. You've been waiting a long time to give Australia the kind of beating we copped in the Twenty20 international match on Monday night. England batted well, bowled well and fielded well, so fair play. A deserved victory. But Australia will be disappointed. And we'll be back.

Major Drugs Scandal

News of a major Australian sports drug scandal:

A country cricket team claims players from a rival side fed it drug-laced cupcakes to get an edge in a make-or-break game.

The Nerrena cricket club in Gippsland was playing a vital away game when host team Inverloch served up an afternoon tea of green-speckled cupcakes.

"I thought `gee this is pretty good, they usually feed us crap’,” Nerrena’s Tim Clark said. He ate five cupcakes.

Returning to the field following tea, Nerrena’s game went to pieces. One player took almost 20 minutes to put on his pads. Others broke out in hysterical laughter and fled the field during play to drink water.

Mr Clark was still light-headed after the match as he tried to put a kit bike together for that night’s club fundraiser.

"After a small lie-down, I tried to follow the instructions but I was all over the shop. I was putting the handlebars where the seat was meant to be."

When he eventually completed the bike, he was four hours late for the club function.

Puts a whole new spin on "playing on grass"

Grand Prix Notes

I had a great time at the Formula One GP.  Despite Australia's new "hero" Mark Webber describing the race as boring; I thought the race was awesome, and was on the edge of my seat during the whole 57 laps.  The strategies, skill and race craft of some of the teams and drivers like Rubens Barrichello, (who stormed home to finish second) and Spanish young gun, Fernando Alonso (third) was superb.  I am sure most of the huge crowd gathered at Albert Park agreed.  (Granted many of them were well lubricated courtesy of the GP's sponsor).

So it was a shame to watch the whole Paul Stoddart/FIA bunfight unfold,  casting a cloud over Melbourne's marvellous event  that was caused by Stoddarts decision to use our local laws and courts to bypass the rules of the sport.

In the end, he did what he had known for months he was supposed to do – worked overnight to make his cars conform.  Why he didn't do it before the cars were loaded on the Melbourne bound plane, is anyone's guess.  Silly dill.

But I reakon that the response by motor racing's international governing body, the FIA, was a bit on the excessive side.  It made silly threats to strip Australia of its two world title events – the F1 Grand Prix and Rally Australia in Perth.   But the FIA's quarrel is with Paul Stoddart, not Melbourne...

Not that it si really surprising, the arrogant clowns at the FIA and Formula One (Bernie Eccelstone) like to ignore lots of local laws in the places that they visit with their F1 Circus.  But to resort to strong-arm tactics aswell as ignoring that fact that in Australia anyone, no matter how misguided, has the right to go to court to redress a situation that they consider is wrong or unjust, shows them at their pompous best.

Maybe they should stick to going only to places where there are no laws.  Or bans on tobacco advertsing.  Or Occupational Health and Safety Regulations.  Or noise restrictions.

But then I wouldn't have as much fun!