Rio 2016 is the first Summer Olympics I will not attend since Moscow 1980. Yes, it was a good run. I made it to eight consecutive Summer Games. Beginning with Los Angeles 1984 and continuing with Seoul 1988, Barcelona 1992, Atlanta 1996, Sydney 2000, Athens 2004, Beijing 2008 and London 2012. The first four with […]

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This is one of those amusing barroom-type arguments, except this one has comment from experts. Usain Bolt, the world’s fastest human, record holder in both the 100 meters and 200 meters … Would he be any good in the mile? Could he keep up a fraction of his momentum from a 200-meter run and still […]

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The most frustrating aspect of the nearly 40 years I spent in sports journalism was how the blight of doping always lurked in the rear-view mirror. We sped up, slowed down, turned left, turned right, and we could never shake the druggies. Eventually, we suspected nearly everyone — which was unfortunate because I’m pretty sure […]

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I twice saw Muhammad Ali perform in person. On both occasions he came across as a shattered man. In the ring, in 1980, when Larry Holmes gave him a savage beating in Las Vegas. And again at the Opening Ceremonies for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, when he was already firmly in the grip of Parkinson’s […]

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The Russia of Vladimir Putin is not a nice place. It may rival Soviet Russia as a bellicose polity that wants to make the world darker and dirtier … one that will stop at nothing to promoting itself and its agenda. In sports, that means drugs. Lots and lots of performing-enhancing drugs (PEDs) for their […]

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Stephen Curry and the Golden State Warriors went up against the NBA’s best defensive team tonight, and that San Antonio team is also the clear second-best team in the league … and Curry and the Warriors destroyed the Spurs, 120-90. Curry played only 29 minutes but scored 37 points on 12-for-20 shooting, including 6-for-9 accuracy […]

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Much is being made about the brutal cold expected at the NFL playoffs game in Minneapolis on Sunday. The Minnesota Vikings versus the Seattle Seahawks at the University of Minnesota — with a forecast temperature at kickoff of 0 degrees Fahrenheit. That will make it one of the coldest games in NFL history, though the […]

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Qualifying for the 2018 World Cup is really the only international sports story of any significance in the UAE over the next two years. Some runners, swimmers and shooters will go to the Rio Olympics, the government is crazy about jiu-jitsu, various global golf and tennis and cycling tours will pass through the country between […]

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Actually, we’re pushing 60 percent finished with the current decade, given that we persist in starting decades and centuries and millennia on years that end in zero. (Digression alert!) And, by the by, what are we calling this decade? Apparently we haven’t decided because it’s varieties of stupid/awkward. Back in 2009, the BBC did a […]

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Many, maybe most journalists at some points in their careers have thought about being a war correspondent. What could be more intense? What could tell us more about the human condition, and about ourselves, than the most destructive of human activities, seen first-hand? I was reminded of this while re-reading John le Carre‘s novel The […]

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