Tag Archives: olympics

ALDLAND Podcast

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Few things call for a special emergency ALDLAND Podcast, but the US playing Canada in hockey is one of them. Join your two favorite cohosts and a special guest as we run down why the United States of America is the best country ever and why Canada comes up short. For real though, we love Canada and our Canadian readers/listeners. Just not today. Or tomorrow. And you have to give us Neil Young and Rush if we win. Sorry.

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ALDLAND Podcast

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The ALDLAND Podcast is switching up topics this week, as we get to extensive Olympic coverage, ranging from breakout stars to favorite sports to an unfortunate lack of trash talk between Olympians. The Champions League is also in action and your two favorite cohosts are here to break down the early results and upcoming matchups.

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ALDLAND Podcast

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What an exciting time in sports! The Super Bowl has just concluded and the Olympics are kicking into gear. And that’s not even including tonight’s lead story, which is the most exciting sports thing to happen since ever. And it’s not all just sports tonight. There is also extensive discussion of Sochi bathroom hypotheticals. So plug those headphones in and press play.

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Socializing endurance athletics

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The Wall Street Journal has a sports section, something that came along with, or at least greatly expanded following, News Corp.’s takeover of the paper in 2007. It’s sort of what you might expect: a mixed-bag of quality in writing and presentation with more emphasis on tennis and sailing than other sports pages. It features writing from some really smart, talented people like Jason Gay and, formerly, David Roth (of Classical fame and now in an expanded role at SB Nation), and we try to feature those smart articles on this site. Because the paper doesn’t have to uphold a reputation as a source for sports– the move to expand sports coverage appears to be aimed at increasing website clicks– its “sports writers” might be more likely to come to their sports articles with varying backgrounds and varying levels of commitment to the sports world. Once in a while, it even feels like the WSJ’s editorial board drops in on the sports section, and that’s the feeling I had when I read last week’s article about running.

A “generational battle is raging in endurance athletics,” the article announces. “Old-timers are suggesting that performance-related apathy [exists] among young amateur athletes,” which “helps explain why America hasn’t won an Olympic marathon medal since 2004,” among other things.

There are numbers that support the conclusion that “kids these days [are] just not very fast.” At this year’s Chicago Triathlon, for example, older runners, as a group, did better than younger runners. Younger American runners are not surpassing older ones in world competition.  Continue reading →

The dark side of Olympic opportunity

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As a kid, watching the Olympics was an extremely happy event. To go from cheering for the dismal and dully colored home teams to watching this bright spectacle, along with a very successful team to call my own, was a lot of fun, and a lot of the competitors are kids too, which makes it pretty neat. They were competing in some sports and events we didn’t get to watch regularly, and there was a fun simplicity that flowed from the amateurism and unity of the whole thing.

The Olympics, as an event, really aren’t that simple, though. Munich happened. Boycotts of one kind and another happened. Protests were staged. Athletes were deemed unclassifiable. And that’s all before we get to the sports-related controversies of the familiar and unfamiliar variety. Most of these complicating events and issues are sociopolitical matters having little to do with sport as such, yet they still play out in meaningful ways at the Games.

This summer in London was no exception, of course. I’d like to highlight two items, one of which has not been the subject of substantial media coverage, and one of which has.  Keep reading…

ALDLAND Podcast

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Hello ALDLANDers!  Lots to talk about today, including Felix Hernandez’s historic performance for the Seattle Mariners, which saw him notch the 23rd* perfect game in major league history.  Also on the table are discussion of pitching phenom Stephen Strasburg, and the antics in the Red Sox clubhouse, not to mention our recap of the Olympics.  So join AD and me for a half hour of discussion and good times.

*You know why this asterisk is here.

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Download the ALDLAND podcast at our Podcasts Page or stream it right here:

ALDLAND Podcast

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Greetings, loyal listeners.  Today, blog founder AD joins me to discuss the big sports topic of the last two weeks . . . the Olympics.  Listen as we discuss everything from soccer, to track and field, to how much better the US is than China.  That’s right China, we’re better than you.  And ALDLAND is better than the Chinese equivalent of ALDLAND.

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Download the ALDLAND podcast at our Podcasts Page or stream it right here:

London Olympics organisers hit dead note with opening ceremony plans

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The cheeky Guardian reports:

The London 2012 opening ceremony is going to be called Isles of Wonder, but there can be no wonderment more wonderful than the fact that Olympics organisers wanted Keith Moon to perform.

Moon has been dead for 34 years.

The drummer for the Who died in 1978 after ingesting 32 tablets of clomethiazole, a sedative he had taken for alcohol withdrawal symptoms.

The band’s manager, Bill Curbishley, told the Sunday Times he had been approached to see if Moon “would be available” to play with the surviving members this summer.

“I emailed back saying Keith now resides in Golders Green crematorium, having lived up to the Who’s anthemic line ‘I hope I die before I get old’,” came the excellent reply.

“If they have a round table, some glasses and candles, we might contact him.”

For its part, the staff of the Guardian is just really looking forward to seeing Jesse Owens compete.

They also could’ve gone with a “Pictures of Lily” reference (“[]he’s been dead since 19[78]”), but it wouldn’t have rhymed and seriously, how did the London Olympic Committee miss this one? Moon isn’t just the one-time drummer of a classic rock band. One could be forgiven for not knowing the life status of the drummer from Mot the Hoople. I’d even give you Faces or the one-armed guy from Def Leppard. But Moon is the famously dead drummer of one of the biggest British rock bands ever. I mean, there he is atop British Drummergod Mount Olympus alongside John Bonham (Led Zeppelin), Charlie Watts (Rolling Stones), and Ginger Baker (Cream, Blind Faith, Ginger Baker’s Air Force). This would be like the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Committee inviting Duane Allman to perform or the 2096 Alanta Olympic Committee inviting Jerry Garcia.

Speaking of Atlanta and dead musicians, though, now that someone finally put CNN’s hologram technology to value-adding entertainment use, maybe Moon can make it after all.

Previewing the 2013 NCAA Men’s Final Four

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They say that the first Super Bowl preview show begins shortly after the prior Super Bowl finishes, and with the crowning of Kentucky as the 2012 national champs late last night, today is the perfect time to post the first preview of the 2013 Final Four. There’s already much to discuss, and we can be sure that the 2013 Final Four will look much different from the one we saw over the last few days.

For one thing, most of the top players from the 2012 tournament– including Kentucky’s Anthony Davis and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Kansas’ Thomas Robinson, Ohio State’s Jared Sullinger, Michigan State’s Draymond Green, and Vanderbilt’s Jeffrey Taylor– will be gone to the NBA.

Another reason the 2013 Final Four will look different is that it will be played in Eastern Europe.

In one of the great moments of stealth marketing, the NCAA subtly announced during last night’s championship game that next year’s Final Four would take place in Alanta, Lithuania, a town of 464.

This is a sensible choice for basketball and non-basketball reasons, and it’s a great way to expand the NCAA’s brand abroad.

Lithuania has a strong, proud, and hip basketball tradition most notably marked by its 1992 Olympic team, known as “The Other Dream Team.” Led by Arvydas Sabonis, the Lithuanian squad represented their burgeoning democracy and their sponsors– Grateful Dead Productions– well, taking home the Bronze Medal by defeating Russia, their former overlords, in the Barcelona games.

After surviving a Napoleonic invasion and two World Wars, Alanta has displayed a ruggedness that deservedly caught the eye of the NCAA and shows that it is more than capable of hosting next year’s Final Four.