The question of the day would appear to be: Is cheerleading a sport? This is such a difficult question that a federal judge had to brought in to resolve it. Yes, fellers, I did say Cheerleading. You know, that all-American thing that has never quite made it across the pond except for the odd American football game in Edinburgh or London: pom-pom girls, baton twirlers, touch-line and half-time entertainment, admittedly very energetic and colourful – synchronized swimming for non-swimmers, and they can shout and don’t have to wear those nose clips. In summer they probably do beach volleyball.
The question demanded some research. The search engine threw up an interesting title:
“UK Dance Team Finishes Fifth in National Pom Category.”
That can’t be relevant surely? It must be Australian sarcasm. No, the site address is http://www.ukathletics.com. On the same page is:
“UK Cheerleading Claims Unprecedented 18th National Championship”
Can it be that ...? No. UK turns out to be the University of Kentucky. [1] The Pom category or Pom-Pom category is indeed within “competitive cheerleading”. It seems quite organized in US colleges. They do things like the pyramid double-flip dismounts. That sounds more dangerous than beach volleyball.
The New York Times usually gives a serious analysis. I turn to ‘Letter from America’.[2] “... here in the United States of litigation, there’s a serious case under way on the matter, involving a Connecticut university, a federal district court, two lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union and the contradictory opinions of various experts — with laws governing gender equality in collegiate athletics at issue.” Serious stuff indeed.
It appears a small college, to save money, wanted to replace its women’s volleyball team with a cheerleading team. “But who will the cheerleaders cheer for, I hear you ask, if there is no volleyball team?” No, cheerleading is a competitive sport in its own right. “But do they have cheerleaders to cheer for them during competitions, or are they all too busy competing. Or perhaps the ex-volleyball players turn themselves into cheerleaders?” It poses so many questions. Let’s read on.
Ah, no, it is the volley-ball team and coach, or some of them, who seem to be taking the college to court under sexual discrimination legislation. So they have a men’s volleyball team then? Err, no. Hmm?
So what does the judge say? Well, it will have to be a summary - the ruling is 95 pages long. Basically, he is sitting on the fence. The law of 1972, in trying to gain equal treatment for women’s participation in sport and equal subsidies, left the judge in a quandary, since volleyball is a recognised sport in colleges, but cheerleading isn’t, yet. The Times says he granted a temporary injunction preventing the university from dismantling its women’s volleyball program, but also suggested that competitive cheerleading, although not presently an official nationally recognized college sport, has “all the necessary characteristics of a potentially valid competitive sport.” Potentially. Next stop the London Olympics? [3]
Another judge has made the news for having to make another unusual judgement. We have all heard the term fashion police, and we have all seen in Noo Yoik the fashion, common from my own observations among young men from certain ethnic groups, two of whom shared our bus the other night. They were code-switching between English and Spanish, while consuming pizza and diet coke – a curious combination, you might think, high cal and low cal, so not a choice made on dietary grounds, purely on taste, not entirely irrelevant as you will see. One of them was wearing his shorts down below his knees, nothing unusual in that, except they started only a few inches above his crotch, thus he was sitting not on his shorts, but on his underpants – boxers – we noticed. Well, in April of last year, some policeman in the Bronx took it upon himself to become literally the fashion police and clean up this town. He gave a guy, not our guy presumably, another guy, a Hispanic from his name, a ticket for disorderly conduct.
A year later the case comes to court and the New York Post headline sums up the decision succinctly enough: “Saggy pants are butt-ugly but legal: judge”. The basis of this judgement was the American Constitution itself. Now, I have Googled the Constitution adding words such as ‘pants’, ‘shorts’, even ‘trousers’, but found nothing specific, but anyway the judge reckons “the Constitution still leaves some opportunity for people to be foolish if they so desire. ... While most of us may consider it distasteful, and indeed foolish, to wear one’s pants so low as to expose the underwear ... people can dress as they please, wear anything, so long as they do not offend public order and decency”. So that thin and fluid line between bad taste and indecency is obviously lower than the policeman’s description of his offender as wearing “his pants down below his buttocks exposing underwear [and] potentially showing private parts.” ‘Potentially’ – there’s that word again. I reckon the Legal Aid defence lawyer probably didn’t let this pass without comment.
A mere one-off you might think, but apparently not. Other people have been expressing their distaste, from comedian Bill Cosby to President Obama, says the Post. There have been attempts to legislate on it. In a mid-term election year the issue is apparently a vote winner – or a vote loser. A Brooklyn Senator has even been putting up posters urging young men to “Stop the Sag” (See his Youtube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cj7v_Ntih2k ) I was surprised, even shocked to find – and I have to point out – that his video contains historical images portraying ethnic and religious minorities in distasteful and offensive lights. The Senator – who is himself African-American – appears to be equating the wearing of saggy pants to these stereotypical racist images. You might think the video either bad judgment or bad taste. I don’t think it is a spoof. There is something I have not yet understood about American political culture.
I mentioned Cosby. I would have thought he should know better than to draw attention to a fashion in clothing by criticising it. I say that having watched last night an exceedingly funny compilation of clips of Cosby at his best, managing even, in a chat show, to make Jack Benny fall off his chair with uncontrollable laughter. Or was it that Benny did not like being so seriously upstaged? Anyway, it was a recording of the 2009 presentation to Cosby of the Mark Twain prize for humor (humour). [4] Among the guests was his friend Len Chandler, the protest-songwriter and prominent activist in the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s and later. Chandler is the creator of the delightful and simple song “Beans in my ears”, which he performed in its original version. It later became a chart hit for the white mainstream group The Serendipity Singers. Watch Chandler’s 1964 performance with Pete Seeger on Youtube here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE9cepZuTkA. [5] .
I say a simple song, but deceptively so. It is in fact very clever. The message is apparently in the last verse: “I think that all grown-ups have beans in their ears”. The generation-gap metaphor should not be too difficult to unpick, and is from the same era and arguably from the same stand-point as Bob Dylan’s “The times they are a-changin’”. There is another message though, in the first half of the song: The first lines of each verse follow each other thus:
My mommy said not to put beans in my ears
Now why would I want to put beans in my ears
You can't hear the teacher with beans in your ears
Maybe it’s fun to have beans in your ears.
Hey, Charley, let’s go and put beans in our ears ...
It is an old cliché, but carries a lot of truth. If you tell the younger generation not to do something, they are all the more likely to do it. And the irony is they might never have thought about doing it if you hadn’t warned them off it in the first place. Understood on a wider level the song has a message for repressive authority and attitudes in general. But irony, I have noticed, does not travel well.
Note
1. http://www.ukathletics.com/genrel/011710aaa.html
2. Richard Bernstein ‘Sport or Not? A Question for the Courts’, NY Times, 14 July 2010.
3. Another piece worth reading is by Gregg Easterbrook of the ESPN network, the biggest sports TV network in the US. It has pics of cheerleaders performing. He argues the 1972 civil rights legislation is out of date in its application to sport in colleges and concludes that courts have no business sticking their noses into deciding what is and isn't sport. A federal court ruling that favors volleyball over cheerleading is just plain wrong, 27 July 2010 http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/commentary/news/story?page=easterbrook/100727.
4. See Cosby and Mark Twain prize
5. For more on Len Chandler see HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Len_Chandler
The Serendipity Singers’ version has amended lyrics and is thus less subversive. Ironically, Chandler’s song was banned in some places s when doctors protested that many children were actually putting beans in their ears! It was also covered by Lonnie Donegan in Britain.
Showing posts with label sport. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sport. Show all posts
Thursday, 29 July 2010
Friday, 23 July 2010
10. The Lance Armstrong Channel
There are TV channels for everything when you subscribe to Time Warner cable, including what appears to be the Lance Armstrong Channel. Even in World Cup years July is pretty thin on sport over here. OK, there’s Nathan’s hotdog eating contest, but that is only one day, and, well, yes, there’s the homerun slugfest, part of baseball’s All Stars weekend, but in the last few years there has been growing American interest in the Tour. “The Tour” is of course world professional cycling’s premier event. Its main drawback in terms of interest in the US of A is that it is always held in France. The main reason it has raised its profile ever since 1999, is that an American has won it “most every year” since then. Lance Armstrong has become indeed the “winningest” rider in the history of the Tour, despite, so you will hear over here, Frenchy French attempts to get him banned for alleged drug use. After seven wins he retired, came back again, without winning, and is now riding as leader of the Radio Shack team, who may win the Team Prize. And if there is anything Americans love more than an American winner it is an American winningest winner ... on a comeback ... against foreigners wanting to knock him off his perch, or, in this case, his bike.
“Soccer” is not suited to American television, which thrives on commercial breaks every ten minutes or less thus allowing viewers to recharge their coffee cups, pizza plates and their concentration. It does not have timeouts, breaks in play, but pretty much constant action, unless it is a match like the World Cup Final , which is far too important for players to try to win in case, by doing so, they lose. But that’s an issue for another day. Cycle racing on roads on the other hand takes a long time, nearly as long as cricket, proper cricket anyway, maybe five, six hours a day over three weeks. For the average viewer even if there doesn’t seem to be much happening for long parts of the race, there is beautiful countryside to admire, mountains, rivers, national parks, chateaux, pretty villages and the vestiges of a thousand or two years of History for cameras to linger lovingly over, as the pack winds its way through France, sometimes even popping over the frontier to Belgium, Italy, Spain, even Ireland. If you don’t have a passport, as most Americans don’t, what better way to see Europe than on a 46-inch HD plasma screen TV? Other than going to Las Vegas, of course. So I’m told.
For English viewers it is a pleasure to see the main commentators on the Lance Armstrong channel are the incomparable Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen (former pro cyclists). Liggett does his best with the French names, but one thing jars: his awful, Anglified pronunciation of the key technical term my-or jhorn, when he might as well just say the leader's yellow jersey, sorry Phil [1]. Paul Sherwen usually opts for translation, but ‘escapade’ is not quite the same as ‘échappée’, more usually called ‘escape’ by British cycling fans. Perhaps Paul was trying to be witty, but irony, I find, does not work over here. Paul's Spanish, by the way, is pretty fluent.
I ought to make it clear the Versus channel is not actually called the Lance Armstrong channel – it just seems like it. All the commentators today seem ostentatiously to be wearing Lance Armstrong yellow rubber wristbands for his Nike-sponsored cancer foundation [2]. Versus shows lots of commercial breaks for Jeeps and Cadillacs, Burger King, Freecreditscore.com, followed by David I. Pankin Debt Lawyer (for whom the best way out of debt is via bankruptcy), Geico Insurance (the most entertaining [3]) and loads of adverts featuring Lance, including him biking through mountain scenery in Nike sports gear, and another promoting his team’s sponsor Radio Shack, even promoting beer, Ultra lite. Lance also gets many mentions from the commentators (“The old man of the Tour is still in the bunch of elite riders.”). He often gives a live interview immediately he gets off the bike at the stage finish.
The commentators make a big thing about coverage being commercial free for the last half-hour of the stage. We learn it is commercial free thanks to Nissan Shift, the official car of Lance Armstrong and team Radio Shack. Lest we forget, a Nissan badge is shown permanently in top left hand corner of the screen during the commercial free period, so we are all grateful to ... which car company was it again? oh yes, Nissan, for this commercial free time. I mean what kind of a creative mind had the idea of the commercial sponsoring of a commercial free period on TV. Instead of having a 30-second advert you have 30 minute advert. Just brilliant!
Let us not forget either that every cyclist’s bum (or ‘ass’ for our American friends) is plastered with ads for their team sponsor, and cyclists' bums are often focused on by the cameramen riding behind or beside them on the back of motorbikes, so they don’t act as wind shields. If what I have just described makes you think that the rest of the cyclist’s tightly lycra-clad body is free of ads, then think again. Think thighs, shoulders, chest, back, helmet, gloves, shoes and bike frame as targets for every conceivable angle of shot producer and cameramen can muster. Nor do they ignore the roadside signs for companies such as Brandt (who gives a daily prize for the most combative rider) or Digital, or the blow-up Vittel signs spanning the road telling riders and viewers how many kilometres (kilometers?) to go (1 km = five-eighths of a mile, for our American readers).
As I watch today, the fate of this year’s Tour can be decided: the two leading riders in the overall standings are only 8 seconds apart after 17 days of racing, and today’s stage will end with a nine percent climb ten miles (eighteen kilometres for our European readers) up a Pyrenean mountain. The young Luxemburger Andy Schleck is going head to head with the leader, last year’s winner from Spain Alberto Contador. Such is the digitisation of the Tour we are shown the heart rate of different riders - 156 bpm - and the wattage they produce - 500 watts for 8 kilometres, etc. I am sure that was sponsored by some wireless phone company but I had lost concentration in the commercial free period. They should wire themselves up to fog lights today, they going up the Tourmalet through low cloud.
“Remember today's commercial free period is brought to you by Nissan, the official car of the Tour de France.” Phil manages to announce this dead-pan every time. What a pro!
But Phil’s voice suddenly finds another octave: “And there goes Schleck with Contador sitting on his wheel” [a bit unfair that, you might feel], “which puts pressure on Armstrong who drops off the back.” Ouch! More and more Basque flags are waving the closer Contador gets to the Spanish frontier. Contador attacks having been towed up the mountain by Schleck. Schleck catches him and gives him a grim, black stare - if looks could kill! “Contador wants the stage win, yellow jerseys are supposed to win stages and he hasn't got one yet this year”, yells Phil, or was it Paul? All the spectators seem to be running beside and behind the two leaders, in the fog, threatening to knock them off. Individually each spectator usually manages about ten yards, or nine metres (meters), but the impression is of a whole crowd in pursuit, with occasionally ones in fancy dress or even naked. The commentators have been promising us sun at the top, but the fog or cloud just gets thicker. “They start the sprint side by side and ... Schleck gets it”. He punches the air with a rather powder-puff gesture. He wins the stage, but still lies second overall. “They have dug so deep into their souls [or did he mean ‘soles’] to get this victory today” – the founder of the Tour, Henri Desgrange, did after all describe road racing as depending on both Head and Legs. Nissan, Festina and Vittel adverts are prominent on the screen at the finish. “And here comes Armstrong four minutes ten seconds behind.” We see a little man in a dark blue suit and tie shaking Contador’s hand.
The commercial free period (thanks, Nissan) comes to an end and we go to ... a commercial break.
Then, interviews with a Canadian called Ryder (yes, really his first name) Hesjedal (yes, his accent proves he is really Canadian) who finished a very creditable fourth today – watch out for him next year, then with American Chris Horner, of Radio-Shack, who seems out of breath (well, wouldn't you be?). Then the podium, and Contador again pulls on the my-or jhorn, I think it must be Basque for yellow jersey. Schleck still remains eight seconds behind overall. Can he catch them up in the Bordeaux time-trial through the vineyards? Can Phil and Paul stay sober? Can we stay sober?
You have been reading a commercial-free text, sponsored by my wife, who wishes to remain anonymous.
Notes
1. Phil Liggett had some very kind words about our book on the Tour de France: http://www.frenchlinks.co.uk/tour/TDF.html.
2. Lance Armstrong, in partnership with Nike, developed the yellow LIVESTRONG wristband as a message of support for cancer-sufferers. He recovered from testicular cancer in the 1990s. See http://www.livestrong.org/ and http://www.livestrong.com/.
3. See the current sports-related Geico ad with baseball-pitching great Randy Johnson on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yenuvSUKugc.
See David I. Pankin details at http://www.lawpank.com/CM/Custom/Attorneys.asp.
Coda
Team Radio Shack did win the team prize. The final day's coverage - Lance's last ever day in the Tour apparently - concentrated on Livestrong, including the team's foiled attempt to wear new black jerseys promoting Livestrong. They managed to wear them on the podium for the presentation of the prize, if not in the race itself.
“Soccer” is not suited to American television, which thrives on commercial breaks every ten minutes or less thus allowing viewers to recharge their coffee cups, pizza plates and their concentration. It does not have timeouts, breaks in play, but pretty much constant action, unless it is a match like the World Cup Final , which is far too important for players to try to win in case, by doing so, they lose. But that’s an issue for another day. Cycle racing on roads on the other hand takes a long time, nearly as long as cricket, proper cricket anyway, maybe five, six hours a day over three weeks. For the average viewer even if there doesn’t seem to be much happening for long parts of the race, there is beautiful countryside to admire, mountains, rivers, national parks, chateaux, pretty villages and the vestiges of a thousand or two years of History for cameras to linger lovingly over, as the pack winds its way through France, sometimes even popping over the frontier to Belgium, Italy, Spain, even Ireland. If you don’t have a passport, as most Americans don’t, what better way to see Europe than on a 46-inch HD plasma screen TV? Other than going to Las Vegas, of course. So I’m told.
For English viewers it is a pleasure to see the main commentators on the Lance Armstrong channel are the incomparable Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen (former pro cyclists). Liggett does his best with the French names, but one thing jars: his awful, Anglified pronunciation of the key technical term my-or jhorn, when he might as well just say the leader's yellow jersey, sorry Phil [1]. Paul Sherwen usually opts for translation, but ‘escapade’ is not quite the same as ‘échappée’, more usually called ‘escape’ by British cycling fans. Perhaps Paul was trying to be witty, but irony, I find, does not work over here. Paul's Spanish, by the way, is pretty fluent.
I ought to make it clear the Versus channel is not actually called the Lance Armstrong channel – it just seems like it. All the commentators today seem ostentatiously to be wearing Lance Armstrong yellow rubber wristbands for his Nike-sponsored cancer foundation [2]. Versus shows lots of commercial breaks for Jeeps and Cadillacs, Burger King, Freecreditscore.com, followed by David I. Pankin Debt Lawyer (for whom the best way out of debt is via bankruptcy), Geico Insurance (the most entertaining [3]) and loads of adverts featuring Lance, including him biking through mountain scenery in Nike sports gear, and another promoting his team’s sponsor Radio Shack, even promoting beer, Ultra lite. Lance also gets many mentions from the commentators (“The old man of the Tour is still in the bunch of elite riders.”). He often gives a live interview immediately he gets off the bike at the stage finish.
The commentators make a big thing about coverage being commercial free for the last half-hour of the stage. We learn it is commercial free thanks to Nissan Shift, the official car of Lance Armstrong and team Radio Shack. Lest we forget, a Nissan badge is shown permanently in top left hand corner of the screen during the commercial free period, so we are all grateful to ... which car company was it again? oh yes, Nissan, for this commercial free time. I mean what kind of a creative mind had the idea of the commercial sponsoring of a commercial free period on TV. Instead of having a 30-second advert you have 30 minute advert. Just brilliant!
Let us not forget either that every cyclist’s bum (or ‘ass’ for our American friends) is plastered with ads for their team sponsor, and cyclists' bums are often focused on by the cameramen riding behind or beside them on the back of motorbikes, so they don’t act as wind shields. If what I have just described makes you think that the rest of the cyclist’s tightly lycra-clad body is free of ads, then think again. Think thighs, shoulders, chest, back, helmet, gloves, shoes and bike frame as targets for every conceivable angle of shot producer and cameramen can muster. Nor do they ignore the roadside signs for companies such as Brandt (who gives a daily prize for the most combative rider) or Digital, or the blow-up Vittel signs spanning the road telling riders and viewers how many kilometres (kilometers?) to go (1 km = five-eighths of a mile, for our American readers).
As I watch today, the fate of this year’s Tour can be decided: the two leading riders in the overall standings are only 8 seconds apart after 17 days of racing, and today’s stage will end with a nine percent climb ten miles (eighteen kilometres for our European readers) up a Pyrenean mountain. The young Luxemburger Andy Schleck is going head to head with the leader, last year’s winner from Spain Alberto Contador. Such is the digitisation of the Tour we are shown the heart rate of different riders - 156 bpm - and the wattage they produce - 500 watts for 8 kilometres, etc. I am sure that was sponsored by some wireless phone company but I had lost concentration in the commercial free period. They should wire themselves up to fog lights today, they going up the Tourmalet through low cloud.
“Remember today's commercial free period is brought to you by Nissan, the official car of the Tour de France.” Phil manages to announce this dead-pan every time. What a pro!
But Phil’s voice suddenly finds another octave: “And there goes Schleck with Contador sitting on his wheel” [a bit unfair that, you might feel], “which puts pressure on Armstrong who drops off the back.” Ouch! More and more Basque flags are waving the closer Contador gets to the Spanish frontier. Contador attacks having been towed up the mountain by Schleck. Schleck catches him and gives him a grim, black stare - if looks could kill! “Contador wants the stage win, yellow jerseys are supposed to win stages and he hasn't got one yet this year”, yells Phil, or was it Paul? All the spectators seem to be running beside and behind the two leaders, in the fog, threatening to knock them off. Individually each spectator usually manages about ten yards, or nine metres (meters), but the impression is of a whole crowd in pursuit, with occasionally ones in fancy dress or even naked. The commentators have been promising us sun at the top, but the fog or cloud just gets thicker. “They start the sprint side by side and ... Schleck gets it”. He punches the air with a rather powder-puff gesture. He wins the stage, but still lies second overall. “They have dug so deep into their souls [or did he mean ‘soles’] to get this victory today” – the founder of the Tour, Henri Desgrange, did after all describe road racing as depending on both Head and Legs. Nissan, Festina and Vittel adverts are prominent on the screen at the finish. “And here comes Armstrong four minutes ten seconds behind.” We see a little man in a dark blue suit and tie shaking Contador’s hand.
The commercial free period (thanks, Nissan) comes to an end and we go to ... a commercial break.
Then, interviews with a Canadian called Ryder (yes, really his first name) Hesjedal (yes, his accent proves he is really Canadian) who finished a very creditable fourth today – watch out for him next year, then with American Chris Horner, of Radio-Shack, who seems out of breath (well, wouldn't you be?). Then the podium, and Contador again pulls on the my-or jhorn, I think it must be Basque for yellow jersey. Schleck still remains eight seconds behind overall. Can he catch them up in the Bordeaux time-trial through the vineyards? Can Phil and Paul stay sober? Can we stay sober?
You have been reading a commercial-free text, sponsored by my wife, who wishes to remain anonymous.
Notes
1. Phil Liggett had some very kind words about our book on the Tour de France: http://www.frenchlinks.co.uk/tour/TDF.html.
2. Lance Armstrong, in partnership with Nike, developed the yellow LIVESTRONG wristband as a message of support for cancer-sufferers. He recovered from testicular cancer in the 1990s. See http://www.livestrong.org/ and http://www.livestrong.com/.
3. See the current sports-related Geico ad with baseball-pitching great Randy Johnson on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yenuvSUKugc.
See David I. Pankin details at http://www.lawpank.com/CM/Custom/Attorneys.asp.
Coda
Team Radio Shack did win the team prize. The final day's coverage - Lance's last ever day in the Tour apparently - concentrated on Livestrong, including the team's foiled attempt to wear new black jerseys promoting Livestrong. They managed to wear them on the podium for the presentation of the prize, if not in the race itself.
Monday, 26 February 2007
6. Great American Events
There is a huge amount of sport on American TV. The most popular of American sports are ones that Americans excel at because they are not played much anywhere else in the developed world – baseball and football (American version). Other TV sports, NASCAR (stockcar racing), hockey (meaning ice-hockey), basketball, golf, tennis, boxing and track and field (athletics) have their followings, but are definitely not in the same league as baseball in summer and football (American) in winter. Soccer gets some coverage, for example by Farks! (Fox Soccer Channel) because of the growing numbers of Hispanics in big cities like New York.
Cricket has not caught on over here as far as I can see, whereas the Tour de France got a lot of live coverage on Outdoor Life Channel. This small channel also broadcasts hunting programmes where you can see grown men in camouflage showing young men in camouflage how to stalk and shoot elk, with pictures of the hunters posing beside the still warm corpse congratulating each other. One advert in this programme was for a brand of bullet, I noticed.
Not all “minor” sports warrant as much TV coverage as the Tour de France, but some unusual ones are worth mentioning. College lacrosse, drag racing (not what some may imagine), professional poker and the national arm wrestling championships. I’ll not mention beach volley ball as unusual or monor, since it is after all an Olympic sport.
One minority sport that most Brits will be unaware of, but where you would think we should excel is Competitive Eating. August saw the US Open of Competitive Eating in Las Vegas. Highlights were covered on Saturday TV. Like any other self-respecting sport it is rigorously regulated – by the International Federation of Competitive Eating. “Pro-eating”, I discover, is a mixed sport, where men and women compete on equal terms. Two women were among the 16 “eaters” (as we aficionados refer to them) attempting to get though to the quarter-finals. This round involved eating pasta, easy enough you may think. A significant rule in this round was that “utensils were mandated”, so no use of the fingers. One commentator said of a competitor; “My mom would nail him for eating badly but the rules of etiquette don’t apply in competitive sport”. The eater was using a fork rather than his fingers nonetheless, but you could see what he meant.
I cannot say how popular the elite version of the sport is, but looking around me I reckon it has a strong grass roots base. The regular eater however has to put down his pizza and applaud the game’s stars.
There is the Richard and Carlene Lefevre husband and wife team. The name is pronounced Le Fever by the way. Carlene is reckoned to be one of the "most elegant eaters" on the circuit. I read that she frequently can be seen reapplying her lipstick immediately following a contest, using the side of a knife as a mirror. She has given her name to one interesting move. By popping up and down as she eats, she settles the food down in her stomach, releasing any air pockets. This move is known as "The Carlene Pop”.
38 year old Ed “Cookie” Jarvis is seen by some as a fading star, but holds more titles than anyone in the world, including the World Ice Cream Eating Championship. The former IFOCE Rookie of the Year did last year manage a corned beef and cabbage win, but he faltered at Coney Island in the 27th Nathan's Famous hot dogs and buns contest. From the nickname I guess he excels in sweet rather than savoury.
Eric “Badlands" Booker a 420 lb African American has been on a run lately, so to speak, with victories in cannoli, of which I plead ignorance, cheesecake and pumpkin pie. He has also released a rap album entitled "Hungry and Focused”. He is regarded by many now as the top American. His significant victories include a pea contest in which he put away nine and a quarter pounds of peas in 10 minutes. Reports don’t say whether it was fresh, processed or mushy peas – but if mushy I guess not chipshop flavour, 'though there is a chip shop in manhattn called A Salt and Battery, honest . Badlands is a conductor on the New York City Subway. "Conductor" may mean he is a driver, but I can't be sure.
The Americans are, however, no longer top of the tree. The favourite for the US Open was the winner of the competition that brought the sport to my attention, the Coney Island hot dog contest, Takeru Kobayashi. The 27 year-old, nine and a half stone Japanese now dominates pro-eating as Tiger Woods dominates golf. The trouble is he is not American. He obliterated the competition in Coney Island by consuming forty-nine hot dogs in 12 minutes. Superbly fit, he is also one of the most cerebral of the elite competitors. He did, after all, once eat 17.7 lbs of cow brains in 15 minutes.
In Las Vegas the fans were asking can anyone beat Kobayashi. Well, America’s new great white hope is a woman, the diminutive Sonya Thomas. Slender of stature and, from her speech, of Hispanic extraction, she has been excelling recently, second only to Kobayashi in Coney Island (which does not appear to be an island in itself by the way). She was IFOCE 2003 Rookie of the Year and was rarely beaten in competition in 2004, except, we learn, for one highly controversial loss to Dale Boone in a baked bean eating contest in which the beans were said to be far too hot. She prefers the Long Course version of baked bean eating (an outdoor sport, I hope), and her record for Pulled Pork is 23 pulled pork sandwiches in 10 minutes. She is single by way, chaps.
Turning to the most recent competition, the Alka-Seltzer US Open of Competitive Eating, to give it its full name, sponsorship oblige, the unit of measure in Round Two was 20 oz platefuls of cooked spaghetti (al dente) in a marinara sauce. Contestants go head-to-head, or should it be mouth-to-mouth, in knock-out contests to progress to the next round. Carlene Lefevre (Le fever, remember) was eliminated in Round 2, despite a few Carlene pops between plates. Like most competitors she used the single-fork-fill technique. Interviewed, she illustrated the demanding nature of the sport: “If you don’t feel lousy at the end, you haven’t done your best.”
The statistical equivalent of speed of the ball in cricket and baseball or strokes per minute in rowing, the Chew Track statistics on jaw movement did not seem to be in operation during the competition. However, the specialist commentators made up for this by pointing out when certain competitors were eating more quickly than they could sustain. One technical innovation is a headband holding in place a micro video camera that protrudes from the contestant’s forehead giving the TV audience the eater’s view of the plate. Adapted probably from Formula 1, the device is called the Chew-View Cam. It's true.
Sixty-year-old Rich Lefevre (good, you did remember), whose forte is the longer contests favoured in Japan rather than the 15 minute rounds or less as in the US Open, nonetheless broke the world record by scoffing 9 lbs of spaghetti marinara in the allotted time. Asked what had been his strategy, he offered this insight: “Eat as much as I could as fast as I could and when I got tired slow down a bit.”
Sonya “the Black Widow” Thomas once ate 65 hard boiled eggs in 6 minutes 37 seconds. For the pasta she used innovative “two-fork instrumentation”. Her apparently large oesophagus, allied with a lot of muscle tone, great jaw strength and very effective chewing, allowed her to beat the new record with an incredible 10 lbs in 14 minutes.
Up to the gastronomic tatami stepped the muscular young Takeru. In a pre-match interview he said through an interpreter that he was interested in seeing how far he could push himself. When that limit would come he didn’t know. His opponent, in a gesture that recalled, for some of the audience, the famous “Messieurs les Anglais, tirez les premiers”, at the battle of Fontenoy (1745), delayed the both of them digging in immediately. Once Kobayashi did decide to start shoveling in the spaghetti, the commentator contented himself with an awestruck: “Boy, can he put it away!” As indeed he could: thirteen and a half pounds in 14 minutes. He looked about as likely to be beaten as an American in the Tour de France.
The quarter-finals consisted of seven minutes of crunching “chopped mixed salads lightly tossed in a sun-dried tomato and basil vinaigrette” (pronounced “bayzle”, I now know). The surprise of the round was vet Rich Lefevre (that’s vet for veteran by the way, I don’t think a vetinary could do this) succumbing to rookie Tim Janus, who is being groomed as the Beckham of the meatball. Picture a handsome young man, dressed fashionably for his age, I presume, with a reversed baseball cap (hence Janus, I assume, but no one mentioned this) and face paint - honest. Cookie in his Stars-and-stripes bandana beat Badlands. Sonya whupped her increasingly red-faced opponent. As did Koby, using spoons like chopsticks to shovel in the salad. An interesting comment by a commentator on Sonya’s ability here was on “her large mouth – that’s in the evolutionary sense”, whatever that meant, quickly adding the rider “ – not to debate the Creationists”. Sports channels can’t afford to be controversial and lose viewers even if the viewers believe that God created competitive eaters as a separate species.
2 lb plates of potato skins proved no semi-final obstacle to either of the two favourites, and certainly not to Kobayashi’s power nibbling. The rookie lost to Sonja and Cookie to Koby.
Awaiting the two finalists were six-pound tailgater platters, assortments of appetisers from spinach dip, through celery and crooditays, to Swedish meatballs, to name but a few. And fifteen minutes of munching. “There is only one man in the world that can challenge Kobayashi” screamed the commentator, “and that’s a woman”. The petite American had beaten some big power eaters, but was she a match for the muscular Nippon, with his secret weapon, not yet used in this competition, the Koby shake? The Koby shake, we are informed, is being copied on the disco floor, such is the young man’s growing celebrity on the club scene “worldwide”. It’s pretty even to start with, but Kobayashi gradually pulls ahead with his tremendous jaw speed. Two minutes to go and Sonya looks beaten, she’s groggy, her eyes are rolling. Glass jaw rather than glass ceiling. Koby delivers the knockout blow with combination bites into another buffalo chicken sandwich. With a scarcely suppressed burp he accepts the trophy and a check (as we must spell it) for $10,000. Phew! Pass the Alka-Seltzer, someone.
On the IFOCE website fans can subscribe to the official IFOCE magazine, “The Gurgitator”, and buy IFOCE T-shirts (sizes: Large, XL, XXL, XXXL and XXXXL). (http://www.ifoce.com/), honest!
Cricket has not caught on over here as far as I can see, whereas the Tour de France got a lot of live coverage on Outdoor Life Channel. This small channel also broadcasts hunting programmes where you can see grown men in camouflage showing young men in camouflage how to stalk and shoot elk, with pictures of the hunters posing beside the still warm corpse congratulating each other. One advert in this programme was for a brand of bullet, I noticed.
Not all “minor” sports warrant as much TV coverage as the Tour de France, but some unusual ones are worth mentioning. College lacrosse, drag racing (not what some may imagine), professional poker and the national arm wrestling championships. I’ll not mention beach volley ball as unusual or monor, since it is after all an Olympic sport.
One minority sport that most Brits will be unaware of, but where you would think we should excel is Competitive Eating. August saw the US Open of Competitive Eating in Las Vegas. Highlights were covered on Saturday TV. Like any other self-respecting sport it is rigorously regulated – by the International Federation of Competitive Eating. “Pro-eating”, I discover, is a mixed sport, where men and women compete on equal terms. Two women were among the 16 “eaters” (as we aficionados refer to them) attempting to get though to the quarter-finals. This round involved eating pasta, easy enough you may think. A significant rule in this round was that “utensils were mandated”, so no use of the fingers. One commentator said of a competitor; “My mom would nail him for eating badly but the rules of etiquette don’t apply in competitive sport”. The eater was using a fork rather than his fingers nonetheless, but you could see what he meant.
I cannot say how popular the elite version of the sport is, but looking around me I reckon it has a strong grass roots base. The regular eater however has to put down his pizza and applaud the game’s stars.
There is the Richard and Carlene Lefevre husband and wife team. The name is pronounced Le Fever by the way. Carlene is reckoned to be one of the "most elegant eaters" on the circuit. I read that she frequently can be seen reapplying her lipstick immediately following a contest, using the side of a knife as a mirror. She has given her name to one interesting move. By popping up and down as she eats, she settles the food down in her stomach, releasing any air pockets. This move is known as "The Carlene Pop”.
38 year old Ed “Cookie” Jarvis is seen by some as a fading star, but holds more titles than anyone in the world, including the World Ice Cream Eating Championship. The former IFOCE Rookie of the Year did last year manage a corned beef and cabbage win, but he faltered at Coney Island in the 27th Nathan's Famous hot dogs and buns contest. From the nickname I guess he excels in sweet rather than savoury.
Eric “Badlands" Booker a 420 lb African American has been on a run lately, so to speak, with victories in cannoli, of which I plead ignorance, cheesecake and pumpkin pie. He has also released a rap album entitled "Hungry and Focused”. He is regarded by many now as the top American. His significant victories include a pea contest in which he put away nine and a quarter pounds of peas in 10 minutes. Reports don’t say whether it was fresh, processed or mushy peas – but if mushy I guess not chipshop flavour, 'though there is a chip shop in manhattn called A Salt and Battery, honest . Badlands is a conductor on the New York City Subway. "Conductor" may mean he is a driver, but I can't be sure.
The Americans are, however, no longer top of the tree. The favourite for the US Open was the winner of the competition that brought the sport to my attention, the Coney Island hot dog contest, Takeru Kobayashi. The 27 year-old, nine and a half stone Japanese now dominates pro-eating as Tiger Woods dominates golf. The trouble is he is not American. He obliterated the competition in Coney Island by consuming forty-nine hot dogs in 12 minutes. Superbly fit, he is also one of the most cerebral of the elite competitors. He did, after all, once eat 17.7 lbs of cow brains in 15 minutes.
In Las Vegas the fans were asking can anyone beat Kobayashi. Well, America’s new great white hope is a woman, the diminutive Sonya Thomas. Slender of stature and, from her speech, of Hispanic extraction, she has been excelling recently, second only to Kobayashi in Coney Island (which does not appear to be an island in itself by the way). She was IFOCE 2003 Rookie of the Year and was rarely beaten in competition in 2004, except, we learn, for one highly controversial loss to Dale Boone in a baked bean eating contest in which the beans were said to be far too hot. She prefers the Long Course version of baked bean eating (an outdoor sport, I hope), and her record for Pulled Pork is 23 pulled pork sandwiches in 10 minutes. She is single by way, chaps.
Turning to the most recent competition, the Alka-Seltzer US Open of Competitive Eating, to give it its full name, sponsorship oblige, the unit of measure in Round Two was 20 oz platefuls of cooked spaghetti (al dente) in a marinara sauce. Contestants go head-to-head, or should it be mouth-to-mouth, in knock-out contests to progress to the next round. Carlene Lefevre (Le fever, remember) was eliminated in Round 2, despite a few Carlene pops between plates. Like most competitors she used the single-fork-fill technique. Interviewed, she illustrated the demanding nature of the sport: “If you don’t feel lousy at the end, you haven’t done your best.”
The statistical equivalent of speed of the ball in cricket and baseball or strokes per minute in rowing, the Chew Track statistics on jaw movement did not seem to be in operation during the competition. However, the specialist commentators made up for this by pointing out when certain competitors were eating more quickly than they could sustain. One technical innovation is a headband holding in place a micro video camera that protrudes from the contestant’s forehead giving the TV audience the eater’s view of the plate. Adapted probably from Formula 1, the device is called the Chew-View Cam. It's true.
Sixty-year-old Rich Lefevre (good, you did remember), whose forte is the longer contests favoured in Japan rather than the 15 minute rounds or less as in the US Open, nonetheless broke the world record by scoffing 9 lbs of spaghetti marinara in the allotted time. Asked what had been his strategy, he offered this insight: “Eat as much as I could as fast as I could and when I got tired slow down a bit.”
Sonya “the Black Widow” Thomas once ate 65 hard boiled eggs in 6 minutes 37 seconds. For the pasta she used innovative “two-fork instrumentation”. Her apparently large oesophagus, allied with a lot of muscle tone, great jaw strength and very effective chewing, allowed her to beat the new record with an incredible 10 lbs in 14 minutes.
Up to the gastronomic tatami stepped the muscular young Takeru. In a pre-match interview he said through an interpreter that he was interested in seeing how far he could push himself. When that limit would come he didn’t know. His opponent, in a gesture that recalled, for some of the audience, the famous “Messieurs les Anglais, tirez les premiers”, at the battle of Fontenoy (1745), delayed the both of them digging in immediately. Once Kobayashi did decide to start shoveling in the spaghetti, the commentator contented himself with an awestruck: “Boy, can he put it away!” As indeed he could: thirteen and a half pounds in 14 minutes. He looked about as likely to be beaten as an American in the Tour de France.
The quarter-finals consisted of seven minutes of crunching “chopped mixed salads lightly tossed in a sun-dried tomato and basil vinaigrette” (pronounced “bayzle”, I now know). The surprise of the round was vet Rich Lefevre (that’s vet for veteran by the way, I don’t think a vetinary could do this) succumbing to rookie Tim Janus, who is being groomed as the Beckham of the meatball. Picture a handsome young man, dressed fashionably for his age, I presume, with a reversed baseball cap (hence Janus, I assume, but no one mentioned this) and face paint - honest. Cookie in his Stars-and-stripes bandana beat Badlands. Sonya whupped her increasingly red-faced opponent. As did Koby, using spoons like chopsticks to shovel in the salad. An interesting comment by a commentator on Sonya’s ability here was on “her large mouth – that’s in the evolutionary sense”, whatever that meant, quickly adding the rider “ – not to debate the Creationists”. Sports channels can’t afford to be controversial and lose viewers even if the viewers believe that God created competitive eaters as a separate species.
2 lb plates of potato skins proved no semi-final obstacle to either of the two favourites, and certainly not to Kobayashi’s power nibbling. The rookie lost to Sonja and Cookie to Koby.
Awaiting the two finalists were six-pound tailgater platters, assortments of appetisers from spinach dip, through celery and crooditays, to Swedish meatballs, to name but a few. And fifteen minutes of munching. “There is only one man in the world that can challenge Kobayashi” screamed the commentator, “and that’s a woman”. The petite American had beaten some big power eaters, but was she a match for the muscular Nippon, with his secret weapon, not yet used in this competition, the Koby shake? The Koby shake, we are informed, is being copied on the disco floor, such is the young man’s growing celebrity on the club scene “worldwide”. It’s pretty even to start with, but Kobayashi gradually pulls ahead with his tremendous jaw speed. Two minutes to go and Sonya looks beaten, she’s groggy, her eyes are rolling. Glass jaw rather than glass ceiling. Koby delivers the knockout blow with combination bites into another buffalo chicken sandwich. With a scarcely suppressed burp he accepts the trophy and a check (as we must spell it) for $10,000. Phew! Pass the Alka-Seltzer, someone.
On the IFOCE website fans can subscribe to the official IFOCE magazine, “The Gurgitator”, and buy IFOCE T-shirts (sizes: Large, XL, XXL, XXXL and XXXXL). (http://www.ifoce.com/), honest!
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