It is never good to
let your enemies know what your weakness is.
And that holds true
in every aspect in life, not just sports.
Somehow, Dallas
Cowboys owner/GM/point-man Jerry Jones never learns his lesson.
Prior to last month’s
NFL Draft, everyone, blind or not, could see that the Cowboys were badly in need
of a couple of good running backs and were looking to pick a couple of them in
the draft, probably in the fourth round. But they did not have a fourth-round
pick thanks to the trade for backup quarterback Trey Lance. The result? Other
teams that needed running backs drafted an astounding 12 (TWELVE!) of them
between the Cowboys’ picks in Round 3 (#87) and 5 (#174). That had completely wiped
out the Cowboys’ draft board and in the end, they did not draft any running
back and only signed one rookie free agent.
While Jones would sign
Ezekiel Elliott who returned to the Cowboys after being released last year, Zeke
clearly was no longer the spectacular superstar he was when he was drafted fourth
overall in 2016. To put it politely, he made “business decisions” every time he
touched the ball and often goes down at the first contact, and seldom breaks
tackles anymore.
The below-par
running back room several years ago was exactly why the Cowboys drafted him
fourth overall in 2016. And somehow, their running back room this year is just
as bad.
Stuck on an
under-performing Honda for the past couple of seasons, the eight-time World
Champion joined Gresini Ducati this season. It did not take him long to secure
his first podium, and he soon mastered his Ducati to be among the front runners
in all four races so far. If not for a sudden gust of wind, he would have won
the Sprint race last weekend in Jerez, the circuit where he badly broke his
right arm in 2020. Undaunted, he put a show in the Grand Prix proper and literally
traded tyre marks with reigning World Champion Francesco Bagnaia throughout the
race. In the end, he came home a close second to Bagnaia, and now sits sixth in
the World Championship. And it is now a matter of when, not if, the 31-year-old will win a
race this season, something that was unfathomable in the past couple of
seasons.
Meanwhile, still in
MotoGP, rookie Pedro Acosta has been sensational, with three podiums out of the
possible eight so far. In Jerez he had a very slow start and could only come up
a lowly tenth, but that was just an aberration as he is now the highest-ranking
KTM rider in the Championship, ranked even higher than the factory duo of Brad
Binder and Jack Miller, and has 59 points more than his teammate Augusto
Fernandez. Acosta has been a revelation since Moto3 just three years ago, when
he won his first race in Doha while starting from the pit lane. Like Marquez,
many expect him to win a race soon. Not turning 20 until later this month, he
still has a shot of beating Marquez’s record as the youngest winner in the
premier class.
Supercars Championship is something Yours Truly has been somewhat
following for a while. Off the top of his head, he can name several top drivers
like Craig Lowndes, Jamie Whincup, Cameron Waters, etc.
And of course, Shane van Gisbergen of New Zealand.
In fact, van Gisbergen has been dominating so much like Max Verstappen
in Formula 1 that he is probably the only Supercars driver that Yours Truly can
pick out from a Police lineup, if there is one.
(Speaking of Verstappen, he and van Gisbergen both drive a car with Red
Bull livery and, of course, they both have Dutch heritage.)
Then, Trackhouse Racing in the USA came calling as part of their effort
to put international drivers behind the wheel in selected NASCAR races, in particular street and road races. Van Gisbergen took up the offer, and entered
the race in Chicago.
The Grant Park 220 to be exact, held in the Chicago Street Course last weekend.
Van Gisbergen impressed right away in testing and qualifying, and started the
race third on the grid.
He ran in the top ten all day, and challenged leader Justin Haley for
the lead late in the race. Van Gisbergen was in such a good form that he
overtook Haley not once but twice for the lead, after his first overtaking maneuvre
was judged to have taken place just after a yellow flag was shown. He became
the first driver to win a NASCAR race on his debut in 60 years, since the legendary Johnny
Rutherford’s victory in the qualifying heat race for the Daytona 500 in 1963.
Meanwhile, the top three drivers in the standings before the race,
Martin Truex Jr., William Byron and Ross Chastain, finished 32nd, 13th and 22nd
respectively.
Now spare a thought for the regular NASCAR drivers, who risk their lives
every week trying to outrace and outscore each other in one of the tightest motor-racing
series in the world.
Imagine you are one of them, having spent your whole life honing your
skills, trying to move up the ladder and beat the other 30-plus drivers every
single week. Then someone from literally the other side of the world, whom you
will probably never see again for the rest of your life, comes and beats you up
the only time he races you.
Duh.
Joey Logano, himself a two-time NASCAR champion who finished 8th in the
race, said simply, “He made us look like a bunch of fools. A foreigner came in
and kicked our butt today”. (Courtesy of Brett Winningham @NASCAR_BRETT)
The end of the pay Cable TV service reminds me of the time when Yours Truly worked for them.
Yours Truly's first summer job was with Cable TV.
That was during the Olympic Games in Atlanta, where another college student and Yours Truly were hired to assist in the “live” broadcast of the Games on Channel 06 or 07 in those days. A red-eye shift for Yours Truly, starting from 12 midnight to 6 in the morning.
Due to contractual reasons, Cable TV was not allowed to broadcast the Games live in full. 30% of an event was the most we could broadcast live. Usually we didn’t care about that requirement as we didn’t plan to broadcast anything live, as our main goal was to provide regular verbal updates, without footage, on some of the more popular events every 30 minutes, hosted by an athlete-turned-commentator who used to play goalkeeper for the Hong Kong national soccer team.
But that requirement became a major issue when we decided to broadcast the men’s 100 metre race live.
Not every part of a race is created equal, and the most exciting part, of course, is the finale. That is why our plan was to broadcast the final 30 metres or so of the race. And what about the first 70 metres or so? Our plan was to pretend that we had overrun the commercials, but somehow managed to catch the last part of the race, just as we returned from the break.
We had the commercials lined up, and the host fully ready to start commentating at a certain time and hour. The schedule was announced months in advance and we could plan around it. Say, the race was scheduled to start at 4:00, and we were ready to end our commercials and start our “live” broadcast at about 4:02.
But we forgot about the jump starts, a pesky and annoying thing that had disrupted our plans. While the experienced Olympic runners were rarely unnerved by them, our host, this time a former track and field coach, was left completely stranded as he had to start rambling while staring at our cameras when we returned from the commercials, and we could not put the live broadcast on screen yet. Thankfully, he didn’t have to ramble for too long as the race finally started shortly afterwards, and Yours Truly remembers that our live broadcast began around midway through the race, despite the 30% requirement.
As for the most important question? Who won that damn race?
No one really knows. In fact, no one really cares, after all these years.
Yours truly feels obliged to write about Diego
Maradona, the fallen soccer hero who passed away two days ago due to a heart
attack.
Even though the Argentinian was never his cup of
tea.
Truth be told, Yours Truly grew up in a world
dominated by English soccer, which was heavily broadcasted in Hong Kong in the
early 80s. In fact, that was probably the only world-class soccer action
broadcasted in Hong Kong back in those days, as the coverage on Bundesliga and Serie
A came later. Not surprisingly, Yours Truly was really fond of English soccer,
and did not know that there were other national soccer teams that he could root
for.
So when England, his favourite of the time, was
beaten by that diminutive Argentinian single-handedly (figuratively and
as-a-matter-of-factly speaking) in THAT quarter final of the 1986 World Cup, there
could only be one public enemy for him.
To make matters worse, when Yours Truly started following
Serie A, he grew a liking to Milan, and to this day, he will maintain that his
all-time favourite is the great Dutch striker Marco Van Basten. But when the
minnows Napoli often got in the way of Milan's path to glory, he could always put
the blame on that Argentinian genius not much taller than him.
(Speaking of an Argentinian genius not much taller
than Yours Truly, there is another one playing for Barcelona right now. And you
may have heard of him.)
Anyway.
Yours Truly is impressed by what Maradona had done
in his professional life. From humble beginnings to being a global superstar,
for leading Napoli, which had achieved virtually nothing before his arrival, to
two excellent Serie A titles in four years and a UEFA Cup victory in 1989 (over
Stuttgart with Jurgen Klinsmann in the side), and for captaining and leading
Argentina to the 1986 World Cup title almost single-handedly, his impact to the
game could never be overstated.
While his private life and drug and alcohol problems
may have tarnished his image to some (Yours Truly included), perhaps he should
be regarded as a rock star, who rocked and shocked the world with his performance
on stage and his undoing off it.
Sevilla, a modestly successful Spanish soccer team
with ONE La Liga title under its belt, has won the UEFA Europa League (formerly
the UEFA Cup) SIX times (all in the last 15 years), which is one more than the La Liga's big three, namely Real Madrid, Barcelona and Atletico Madrid have won COMBINED (FIVE).
Evidence #2:
Nick Heidfeld, the retired Formula One driver who is
known for having never won any Formula One races in a 12-year career, had
maintained his perfect winless record in his four-year Formula E career. In
fact, the closest he came to a victory in Formula E was in its and his first-ever race,
when he made a kamikaze late lunge in the final corner in Beijing in 2014, with
disastrous consequences.
...
Evidence #33:
On the very first day of the 33rd week this year (i.e., August 9), South African rookie Brad Binder shocked
the MotoGP world by winning the Czech MotoGP race on a KTM. Earlier, Italian
rider Enea Bastianini won the Moto2 race, his second in a row. Later that day,
Dutch driver Max Verstappen came home first in the 70th Anniversary Formula One Grand Prix in
Silverstone.
They all had race number 33.
...
Evidence #42:
Part 1:
Jackie Robinson Day is held on April 15 each year. To commemorate Hall of Famer Robinson who broke the colour barrier in Major League Baseball in 1947, all MLB players don a nameless #42 jersey on that day in his honour, while his #42 jersey has also been retired by MLB.
This year, however, due to the coronavirus outbreak, the MLB season has been delayed, and the on-field celebrations have been postponed to August 28.
Part 2:
Chadwick Boseman, the Hollywood actor famous for his role as Black Panther in the Avengers series, as well as playing Robinson in the movie 42, died recently.
In its previous life, KTM must have done something
hideously wrong to Johann Zarco.
Otherwise, it would not be possible to explain how
Zarco, intentionally or not, has been spoiling KTM's party in the past couple of years.
Zarco became a red-hot property after his outstanding
first two seasons in MotoGP in 2017 and 2018 with the Tech 3 Yamaha team.
Looking to take the next step, he decided to sign a two-year contract with KTM before
the 2019 season, with the hope of becoming the number one rider in the up and
coming Austrian squad which, at that time, was still finding its footing in
MotoGP despite showing a lot of promise.
With Tech 3 switching to KTM in 2019, the newly-set up Petronas SRT Team became the official customer Yamaha team. Had Zarco stayed with Yamaha, he would have become the leader of the de facto second-best Yamaha team on the grid. His departure though, meant that the honour has now fallen onto the current MotoGP championship leader and fellow Frenchman Fabio Quartararo, who at the time was an unheralded 20-year-old and a surprise choice for SRT.
Unfortunately, Zarco's tenure with KTM ended in disaster.
Apart from starting on the front row in the wet Czech Grand Prix, his best
finish was tenth in the Catalunya Grand Prix. Growing so frustrated with his performance,
he asked for a release from his contract, and was dumped with six races left.
Having severed his ties with KTM, Zarco became a
free agent, and was called up later that season to replace LCR Honda rider
Takaaki Nakagami who opted for season-ending surgery. However, his performance
was not good enough to secure him a ride with one of the so-called big teams.
Let's go back to KTM for a moment. Zarco's replacement
for 2020 is South African Brad Binder, who went on to secure the Austrian
marquee's first-ever win in MotoGP class in the Czech Grand Prix last week.
Now back to Zarco. Thanks to the efforts of various
sides, he had landed a ride with Avintia, a team he initially didn't want to
join because he didn't believe that it is good enough. His concern, in fact, is not unfounded. Despite joining the MotoGP
class in 2012, Avintia has never finished on the podium.
Then it finally came right. In the third race of this truncated 2020 season in Czech Republic, a race that would eventually be won by
Binder, Zarco put in a herculean effort to put his Avintia Ducati on pole. And
he was running strongly in the race when more skirmishes with KTM took place.
Pol Espargaro, the incumbent number one rider in
KTM, ran wide in a corner. Seeing a gap, Zarco decided to go for it, only for
Espargaro to veer back onto Zarco's racing line and the two collided. While
Zarco managed to stay upright and go on to finish third despite being controversially
given a long lap penalty for the collision, Espargaro's race was over. Judging
by the pace of Binder and Espargaro at that time, it would be fair to say that Espargaro
would have finished ahead of the South African.
While KTM did get its first win, its plan to probably
give it to Espargaro, who has been with the team since it joined the MotoGP
class in 2017, was ruined by Zarco.
In the very next race in Austria, Espargaro showed great
pace again throughout the weekend. At one-third distance of the race, Espargaro
had a healthy lead over Andrea Dovizioso and Jack Miller. It looked as though
Espargaro would finally secure his first win in the premier class.
Then Zarco struck again. This time, he did it in an indirect but spectacular fashion, and it almost resulted in tragedy.
While swerving and dicing for positions in the top
ten, Zarco was hit from behind by Quartararo's team-mate Franco Morbidelli, and
their two bikes went out of control, skidded along and across the track at a high
speed, and then somehow somersaulted through the tiny gap between the Yamahas
of Maverick Viñales and Valentino Rossi, who were clearly unaware of what was
going on behind them.
It was such a miracle that the two flying bikes
somehow didn't hit the two Yamaha riders and strike a probably fatal blow on either
of them. It was also a miracle that no one was seriously injured in such a
frightening accident.
With carnage and pieces of bikes (fortunately not riders)
all over the track, the red flag was shown and Espargaro's advantage gone. Clearly
upset and unravelled by it, Espargaro rode with a vengeance but erratically in
the re-started race, and in a carbon copy of his accident with Zarco in the
previous race, he clattered into fellow KTM rider Miguel Oliveira after running
wide, thus ending their races and his hope of victory.
So, what's more to come between Zarco and KTM? So far, the 2020
season, like what is going on in the world right now, has been pretty crazy. Yours truly just hopes that they will bury the
hatchet and things will go back to normal soon.
