Freakosports

The Freakonomics blog has been featuring quite a few sports stories of late. First, Steven Levitt covered the current scandal rocking the NBA of a referee having placed bets on the games in which he was officiating. Then, with the Tour de France going to the dogs with title contender Alexander Vinokourov (well, he was a contender when the race began; not by the stage when he was dumped) and yellow jersey Michael Rasmussen getting kicked out for doping, Stephen Dubner suggested that maybe we should just legalize doping in the Tour. Finally, today, the blog features a rebuttal by sports writer Joe Lindsey on why legalizing doping in sports won't work. All make for interesting reading.

Something I think everyone can learn from ...

(An excerpt from Irfan Pathan's interview on Cricinfo)

You have said you made an extra effort to not let stardom go to your head. Can you elaborate on that?

I have made an extra effort in the sense of doing normal things which I do regularly. Small small efforts like sitting on the floor to eat when I'm at home. Not everything, but whatever I can do. I try really extra hard. I think everybody should try harder to not let it affect them.

When you are playing international cricket, when there is so much hype, people only say nice things to you and about you. Everything is good, good, good, nothing is bad.

I remember when I had done well against Australia [2003-04]. I was bowling really quick, and I heard some nice things said about me. What I did the next day was go the gym and do an extra workout. I told myself, "Look, this is my life. People are going to say so many things, and I need to work hard." In doing that hard work, I did some new exercise to push myself, and after two days there was a game and I injured myself. It was a side strain, minor injury. At least I learned from that - not to push too hard, not to let what people say affect you.

I wanted to work hard. I wanted to say: This is my life; I just need to go out, bowl, run, bat; that is going to give me everything. Then I tried to shut people out, not let what they say affect me. But at the end of the day, it does affect you. There are so many people in India who say so many things. You go on flights, people say something; the driver has something to say; the paanwala has something to say; your friends have things to say. I have to put in extra effort to not let all that get to me.

Eating goes mainstream

As I had blogged earlier, there was much hype about hot dog eating as a sport a few weeks back. However, in spite of the tonnes of online space devoted to hot dog eating, I was surprised today to see this Coors Light ad on TV that stars Kobayashi, the former world champion at hot dog eating who got dethroned at this year's contest. Considering that the other Coors Light ads in this series feature Michael Johnson (the world record holder in 200m and 400m), and Magnus ver Magnuson (the world's strongest man), this is quite a rise in status for hot dog eating in the world of endorsements.

Soccer question

Has the referee in a soccer match ever overturned his decision? I don't think I've ever seen that happen. And, yet, every time a card is handed out, be it yellow or red, all the players on the affected side swarm the ref and crib big time. I don't understand what's the point given that even the players know the ref is not going to change his decision once he has made it. In fact, like cricket, if fines were levied whenever the players showed dissent, I think their match fees would not suffice, and soccer players would have to pay out of their pockets!

A case of reliability paranoia, or a cool idea, or an illusion?

Yesterday, while watching the Copa America semi-finals game between Brazil and Uruguay, I thought I saw the referee wearing watches on both hands. Oddly enough, that issue came up due to completely different reasons while chatting with a friend yesterday night. He said soccer referees do wear two watches all the time. With my curiosity perked up, I hailed wikipedia to resolve the issue. Unfortunately, wikipedia let me down on this occasion. Then, randomly hunting on Google, I hit upon this page which says "Prepared referees will wear two watches in case one goes out, even though it looks a little funny.". My immediate reaction was "That's crazy!". How often do watches fail? Soccer referees must be really paranoid to account for reliability against such failures of abysmally low probability. It's not as though referees get banged up on the field like the players!

Anyway, continuing with my hunt on Google, I found this message board, which presents a more plausible explanation:

Some referees will wear two watches, one counting up to 45 and one counting down. The one counting up will be the one that is like a stop watch and the one counting down will run without stopping. That way when the countdown stops a ref can quickly look at the counting up watch and calculate how much time needs to be added.

If this is indeed the reasoning behind the two-watch theory, that's a pretty cool idea. On the other hand, maybe both my friend and I are just hallucinating about refs wearing two watches :)

Update: Confirmed that the soccer-ref-wears-two-watch theory is no illusion in the ongoing Argentina-Mexico encounter.

A lacklustre Tour de France

After my rant about South American soccer yesterday, let me express my disappointment today about the lineup at this year's Tour de France. After Lance Armstrong's retirement two years ago, there was expected to be much more intense competition amongst the riders who constantly challenged Lance but came up short. Sadly, doping scandals have taken away all those riders who had been contenders for the title. Jan Ullrich, Ivan Basso, Floyd Landis, Tyler Hamilton ... all perfectly capable of winning the Tour, but unfortunately succumbed to the temptation of drugs (Talking about drugs, the fallaway of the rivalry between Justin Gatlin and Asafa Powell, due to Gatlin's suspension, was also extremely saddening :-().

Anyway, shorn of all these star riders, my interest in the Tour de France has taken a severe beating. To make the event at least slightly interesting for me, let me stick my neck out and make a prediction. Given the lack of competition from any other serious climbers, I say this year's Tour should be a cakewalk for Andreas Kloden (the second runner up behind Armstrong and Basso a couple of years ago). I'll revisit me prediction in a couple of week's time when the Tour comes to a close :)

Update: So much for my prediction! With the onus of my support on his shoulders, Kloden took a tumble in yesterday's stage and suffered a fracture in his tailbone. His continued participation in the Tour is now in doubt. Looks like I jinxed him :)

BTW, I realized that I got some of my facts wrong. Kloden actually finished second behind Armstrong in 2004, and finished third last year.

South America let me down

I had high opinions of the quality of soccer in South America, and was looking forward to some keenly contested matches in the ongoing Copa America 2007. Instead, this is what the Latinos have to show as the scorelines of the quarter-finals matches.

• Uruguay 4 - 1 Venezuela


• Brazil 6 - 1 Chile


• Mexico 6 - 0 Paraguay


• Argentina 4 - 0 Peru

When I was visiting Rio last year for a conference, my labmate who was with me told me that the best player in the soccer team at their high school used to be a Brazilian. And, that Brazilian dude had to be content playing goalie when he went back home. Looks like I extrapolated a bit too much from that piece of data. Based on the performances so far at Copa America, the right conclusions I should have drawn seem to be -- 1. quality of soccer in the US sucks, and 2. the average quality of soccer in Brazil (not the whole of South America!) is much higher.

Anyway, hope at least the semis and finals turn out to be exciting encounters.

Add eating competitions to my list of favorite sports

If you haven't already been pained enough by the daily coverage on ESPN of the hot-dog eating championship, let me point you to the results of the final showdown that occurred yesterday. Some others have expressed disgust at treating hot-dog eating as a sport. But, count me out of that club of whiners. I had already fallen in love with eating as a contest when we had 2-minute shootouts with grad students stuffing down hot dogs, pies, and chocolates at the TGIF in school sometime last year. Now, after tracking the stories about hot-dog eating over the last few days, I must admit that the sport is filled with more intrigue than this year's Wimbledon.

First, in the lead up to the championship, the main challenger to the world champion (of course, there's a world champion in hot-dog eating as well!) broke the world record. Then, the world champion announced that his jaw had been injured, and so he might have to withdraw from the competition. This was inevitably followed by allegations that the champion was chickening out after seeing his record broken. Finally, Kobayashi (referring to him as world champion is getting repetitive) got his wisdom tooth removed a few days before the event to reduce the pain in his jaw. And, as is obvious to anyone who has had his wisdom tooth removed, this resulted in swollen gums.

Anyway, in spite of all this, the contest between Kobayashi and his main challenger, Joey Chestnut (the one who had broken Kobayashi's record), did happen yesterday. And, lo and behold, as is fitting for any great sport, the challenger triumphed! That too, with both breaking the world record!! Given the relative calm in the rest of the sporting world at the moment, I must say I'm keenly looking forward to Kobayashi making good his promise of reclaiming his title next year.