1. Sport is supposed to be the purest form of meritocracy (except when you have to be able to afford a show jumper or whatever to do it). And these days, even middling competition has so many checks and balances that it’s impossibly hard for even a committed chancer to game the system. Very occasionally, though, someone slips momentarily through the net, and I am indebted to the AFC Wimbledon fanzine Wise Men Say for drawing my attention to a spellbinding football tale. Are you sitting comfortably? Then we’ll begin the story of Bobby Shillinde.
2. Among the people hitching a ride on a charter bird was Mario Andretti, the 72-year-old race car driver who’d been hired as COTA’s “official ambassador.” And so it was that I found myself, at six-thirty in the morning on the Friday before the race, in a meeting room at the downtown Embassy Suites, where a smiling man behind a bar was already offering chilled champagne.
When the American Grand Prix came to Texas last year, Katy Vine was there to investigate why it was there — and why it was there to stay.
3. When Roy Race – traveling to scout a player – lost control of his helicopter, time stood still. Race survived, but his famous left foot was amputated, drawing the curtain on a career spanning 38 seasons – longevity MilanLab can only dream of. The Race legend is secure, yet his is a name often overlooked when pundits and pub patrons debate the greatest ever. It’s an impossible question, but Race deserves a place in the highest echelons of historical footballing royalty.
[JUSTIN T KENNEDY/The Canadian Press/Press Association Images]
4. Twenty-six racers had left Whitehorse six days earlier, vying for their share of the $100,000 purse, and for the 20 teams that remained in the race after the Dawson City layover, there were 500 miles yet to go. For at least four or five more days and nights, the mushers and their dogs would run the frozen trail, pausing for feedings, sleeping in two-hour catnaps (if at all), watching the Northern Lights give way to daylight and reclaim the sky again hours later. At the same time, a second, parallel race was playing out.
5. “They call it a miracle,” Kieran Farrell says, his eyes opening wide as wintry sunshine streams through the lace curtains of his parents’ front room in Heywood. Tucked away in gritty anonymity, between Bury and Rochdale, Farrell has lived his whole life in Heywood. Yet last December, just over three months ago, the 22-year-old nearly died after a brutal battle. Farrell and Anthony Crolla produced one of the fights of the year as their struggle for the English lightweight title went the distance in Manchester. Crolla got the verdict and Farrell, who still believes he should have won the fight, sank slowly to the canvas and into an oblivion which skirted death.
Boxing nearly ended Kieran Farrell’s life at 22 but it still gives him his sense of purpose every day. The ever-brilliant Donald McRae sits down for an interview with the young English fighter.
6. Berlin is an indifferent sporting city. In a soccer-mad country, its teams are league doormats that Berliners mostly ignore. Yet in the local sports scene, such as it is, Café King was once a hub. Players from soccer team Hertha BSC hung out there, as did basketball players from Alba Berlin and members of ice hockey team Eisbären Berlin (the Berlin Polar Bears). The cafe’s owner, Milan Sapina, knew the athletes and made them feel welcome. The place could get rowdy after games.
7. The first match of the last tournament of Anthony Robles’s wrestling career began with his dropping to the mat in a tripod—two hands and a knee. There was no other limb to use; Robles had been born without a right leg, and now the bottom of his maroon-and-gold Arizona State University singlet hung shriveled and slack on that side. His opponent in the 125-pound weight class, a Virginia sophomore named Matt Snyder, loomed over him, twice his height, even in a wrestler’s crouch.
This is brilliant by David Merrill on Deadspin — the sensational life of Anthony Robles, the one-legged wrestler who conquered his sport and then left it all behind.
Roy Race, Yukon sledding and one-legged wrestlers: the week’s best sportswriting
1. Sport is supposed to be the purest form of meritocracy (except when you have to be able to afford a show jumper or whatever to do it). And these days, even middling competition has so many checks and balances that it’s impossibly hard for even a committed chancer to game the system. Very occasionally, though, someone slips momentarily through the net, and I am indebted to the AFC Wimbledon fanzine Wise Men Say for drawing my attention to a spellbinding football tale. Are you sitting comfortably? Then we’ll begin the story of Bobby Shillinde.
Who is Bobby Shillinde? And did he ever play for AFC Wimbledon? The Guardian’s Marina Hyde investigates.
2. Among the people hitching a ride on a charter bird was Mario Andretti, the 72-year-old race car driver who’d been hired as COTA’s “official ambassador.” And so it was that I found myself, at six-thirty in the morning on the Friday before the race, in a meeting room at the downtown Embassy Suites, where a smiling man behind a bar was already offering chilled champagne.
When the American Grand Prix came to Texas last year, Katy Vine was there to investigate why it was there — and why it was there to stay.
3. When Roy Race – traveling to scout a player – lost control of his helicopter, time stood still. Race survived, but his famous left foot was amputated, drawing the curtain on a career spanning 38 seasons – longevity MilanLab can only dream of. The Race legend is secure, yet his is a name often overlooked when pundits and pub patrons debate the greatest ever. It’s an impossible question, but Race deserves a place in the highest echelons of historical footballing royalty.
We always have time for a tribute to one of football’s finest. Over at TheInsideLeft, Bryan Davies penned this brilliant celebration of the legend that is Roy Race.
[JUSTIN T KENNEDY/The Canadian Press/Press Association Images]
4. Twenty-six racers had left Whitehorse six days earlier, vying for their share of the $100,000 purse, and for the 20 teams that remained in the race after the Dawson City layover, there were 500 miles yet to go. For at least four or five more days and nights, the mushers and their dogs would run the frozen trail, pausing for feedings, sleeping in two-hour catnaps (if at all), watching the Northern Lights give way to daylight and reclaim the sky again hours later. At the same time, a second, parallel race was playing out.
If you’re not reading about the 1,000-mule Yukon Quest dog sled race, what are you reading about? Eva Holland of SBNation has got this.
5. “They call it a miracle,” Kieran Farrell says, his eyes opening wide as wintry sunshine streams through the lace curtains of his parents’ front room in Heywood. Tucked away in gritty anonymity, between Bury and Rochdale, Farrell has lived his whole life in Heywood. Yet last December, just over three months ago, the 22-year-old nearly died after a brutal battle. Farrell and Anthony Crolla produced one of the fights of the year as their struggle for the English lightweight title went the distance in Manchester. Crolla got the verdict and Farrell, who still believes he should have won the fight, sank slowly to the canvas and into an oblivion which skirted death.
Boxing nearly ended Kieran Farrell’s life at 22 but it still gives him his sense of purpose every day. The ever-brilliant Donald McRae sits down for an interview with the young English fighter.
6. Berlin is an indifferent sporting city. In a soccer-mad country, its teams are league doormats that Berliners mostly ignore. Yet in the local sports scene, such as it is, Café King was once a hub. Players from soccer team Hertha BSC hung out there, as did basketball players from Alba Berlin and members of ice hockey team Eisbären Berlin (the Berlin Polar Bears). The cafe’s owner, Milan Sapina, knew the athletes and made them feel welcome. The place could get rowdy after games.
In Businessweek, Drake Bennett tells the story of Ante Sapina, European soccer’s master of match-fixing.
7. The first match of the last tournament of Anthony Robles’s wrestling career began with his dropping to the mat in a tripod—two hands and a knee. There was no other limb to use; Robles had been born without a right leg, and now the bottom of his maroon-and-gold Arizona State University singlet hung shriveled and slack on that side. His opponent in the 125-pound weight class, a Virginia sophomore named Matt Snyder, loomed over him, twice his height, even in a wrestler’s crouch.
This is brilliant by David Merrill on Deadspin — the sensational life of Anthony Robles, the one-legged wrestler who conquered his sport and then left it all behind.
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