Sports : life magnified

Joey Cheek won the 500 metres speed skating gold. With it he won $25,000 cash bonus.

What did he do with it?

As you know, there’s been some media but not a ton [about] the Darfur region of Sudan [where] there has been tens and tens of thousands of people killed. My government has labeled it a genocide, and so I will be donating money specifically to refugees in Chad where there are over 60,000 children who have been displaced from their homes….

Yes he donated the money and urged fellow Olympians to do the same. For him it is not about the money.

I have been blessed by competing in the Olympics in speedskating. If I retired yesterday I would have gotten everything in the world from speedskating and from competing in the Olympics. So for me to walk away today with a gold medal is amazing…. And so, I’ve always felt that if I ever did something big like this I wanted to be prepared to give something back.

Sportsmen are role models, yes. Sportsmen can also make a read difference. They enjoy a platform from which they can impact several lives by their examples, and setting examples. In India, Tendulkar donates to many charitable causes away from the spotlight. Schumacher made some praiseworthy donations last year. Steve Waugh has set an example in Calcutta.

Sport can indeed make differences in more ways than one.

Hat tip - Road to Torino blog.

Australia have won the VB series in some style after the initial hiccup. Many weaknesses of the Australian one day team, once invincible, are there for all to see now though.

The biggest problem has been the bowling. A look at the VB series stats is enough. Apart from Lee and Bracken, NO one impressed. With Warne (who I believed would be back for the world cup) not looking in that direction (at least for now) and McGrath is future uncertain with his personal crisis the bowling cupboard is extremely bare. Can we really expect Brad Hogg to perform better than ordinary? He is no great force. And even if we consider him to pass the cut, who play the roles of the 4th and 5th bowlers? Watson, perenially injured, may solve a bit of the problem. But guys like Watson, Symonds can play support roles. If some player doesn’t step up, the Aussie team can look to chase big totals against the other strong one day teams.

Regarding the batting - the team has had collapses. With Katich and Martyn not performing at a level required, there have been situations of trouble. It is an area which needs to be strengthened to ensure not losing matches because of collapses. It is an area which Australia can rectify hopefully in the future (with Jacques or some one else stepping up).

But I do not know how Australia can counter the first problem it is encountering.

The VB series showed there are plently of problems for South Africa (specially since the world cup will be played in the slow, low pitches of the Windies) and a lot of positives for Sri Lanka. Without going into those details, the marathon series, often sluggish, has shown a lot regarding the three participating teams.

UPDATE - Peter Roebuck holds similar views to mine here.

Rebels - Renault, Honda, Toyota, BMW-Sauber and McLaren-Mercedes have threatened to set up a rival series after 2007.

There has been utter disarray in F1. I wrote regarding the same last year here, here and here.

Max Mosley has now set a deadline for the rebel teams. BBC adds further:

They want a bigger share of revenues, more say in F1’s future and are upset at plans to limit technology from ‘08. Mosley, president of the sport’s governing body the FIA, wants to give independent teams without support from car manufacturers more of a chance by limiting the budget needed to be competitive to around £57m a year. Ferrari’s budget, the biggest in F1, is reputed to be as much as £287m, with Toyota not far behind.

Are restrictions on technology, number of teams really the answer? In a free world, open economy it doesn’t work. The simple demand-supply works. If the F1 authorities continue to try and boss around, the break is very much a real possibility. It has happened in cricket with Packer and has threatened to happen in cricket again recently (I wrote regarding the same here, here and here). Individuals or individual bodies do not relish seeing their scope restricted. Self interest has to be looked into by the authorities in-charge. Without that, a team or an organisation cannot function. Often people try to take this the other way around and the problems arise thus.