Today was the final day of the World Championships in Athletics — or track and field, as it is known in North America. It was the first of several big events to be held in Russia in the next few years. The Winter Olympics in Sochi next February, the soccer World Cup in 2018. They […]

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This is a fairly big deal, over here in the Old World. Well, at least in the parts of the Old World that care about rugby, and that would include the British Isles and (go figure) France and Italy. Each winter, they stage a Six Nations competition in which six “national” teams play each other, […]

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In my time in the UAE, the senior national soccer team has been, mostly, wretched. The Emirati footballers completed a hapless campaign in the final round of qualifying for the 2010 World Cup just after I arrived in Abu Dhabi, in late 2009, but I heard about it, and the reverberations could still be felt. […]

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In yesterday’s post, I noted how difficult it is, in the Western world, to have good newspapers in the final week of the year. Parliaments are not in session, stock exchanges take days off, sources are out of town, fewer games are scheduled. At newspapers, one of the bits of enterprise often used to fill […]

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A fascinating event was staged in Dubai this week, entitled the Emerging Host Cities Summit. The idea? A “how-to” for cities to bid for major sports events. Officials from recent and future World Cups and Olympics were in Dubai, giving talks about how to put together a bid and how to win it. That this […]

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It’s vaguely disconcerting to think you might be boarding an airline that will be out of existence in the near future. Because if the company is in financial peril, doesn’t it begin cutting corners on maintenance? This thought came to me in the shower the other day: How many airlines have I flown that no […]

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In my lifetime, suggesting that Barcelona could compete with Paris as 1) a place to visit and 2) a place to live, would have been ridiculous. Talking 1960, 1970 … In 2012, it no longer is a ridiculous notion. From the perspective of sitting in a lovely restored apartment in Barcelona, after another beautiful day […]

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I know this is not ecumenical. I know it’s retro. But I am a child of the Cold War, and we treasured Olympic medals like … well, gold … back then, and kept close tabs of where they went. And I have never given it up. I am always aware of who leads the medals […]

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More peregrinations. From Abu Dhabi to the middle of New Jersey in eight “easy” steps covering 25 hours.

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I’m guessing this Olympics programming is doing well enough in the ratings that NBC will want to renew it. Another 23 episodes, for sure. A whole season. Oh, yeah. The London 2012 Games end on Sunday. Do we have any solutions to this?

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