American car racing. 500 miles of cars turning left. I'm losing interest in all American sports but still enjoy the NFL and the baseball and hockey playoffs. Anything except fighting which involves judges. If the object of the game isn't either to get a better score or to render your opponent unconscious, it's not really a game, it's some kind of twisted show. Here are a few sports I'm surprised how much I like: I love Olympic rowing. No doubt because I used to row. God help me, cricket. Because I'm beginning to understand what's going on. Any martial arts sport. Boxing and any kind of grappling, including Olympic wrestling, judo, jujitsu I find very watchable. But MMA I have very mixed feelings about. Sometimes watching MMA consists of watching one guy beat the crap out of another, which I don't really want to see, or at least am not very comfortable seeing. The Olympics in general. I love the Olympics. If people competed in Olympic tiddlywinks I'd be enthralled. (Though I draw the line at anything judged.) I dream of going to Mexico for the next Winter Olympics, just because the last one was so much fun there. They showed lots of competition, very few human uninterest stories, and had commentators who were frank about their lack of technical knowledge, but were long on humor and enthusiasm. Olympic Ice Hockey: Second only to football (and maybe rowing) for viewing enjoyment to me, and with many of the same virtues. The NHL divides the world hockey talent pool thirty ways and misses some good players. Olympic ice hockey divides a bigger talent pool into six or seven, and puts them in bigger rinks, so it's played at a much higher level. The game is reasonably continuous, and I suspect football fans would like it if they gave it a chance. I like televised golf. There, I've said it. It's one of the best shot American sports. The networks manage to weave an exciting contest out of a lot of mostly non-athletes walking for ages to take one swing at a stationary ball. Olympic marathons. Surprisingly interesting to see who can avoid being broken by the pace. Funny, that's what I like about them. Human beings are massively overrated. Don't forget the ridiculous outfits. No principal in American sports is more sacred than the one that states that you can't play them without dressing up like a complete t**t. Though this applies to cycling as well. Very true. The two biggest American sports consist, essentially, of inaction. The enjoyment is spending this time trying to guess what the next play or pitch should be...or otherwise thinking along with the players. It is enjoyment of a kind, but you have to know the game quite well to have any of it. Just to begin with, if you can't tell a slider from a curve from a fastball from a change up, baseball will be no fun at all except for the biggest moments. And you need to understand the very complex and arcane rules involved in both baseball and football.
American Football = Sumo wrestlers in armor being asked to run at each other and collide for 20 seconds at a time- whilst one or two slightly less fat people run around with a rugby ball as a side-show. With every 20 seconds of action interrupted with 5 minutes of inaction to give presenters chance to talk about statistics.
It's actually an average of five seconds, not 20. So American football is four times worse than you thought.
Enough panning of American sports. I think if you're an aficionado, you get enjoyment from all the intricacies of the games (like cricket) but to outsiders it's all too baffling. Football (soccer) remains the game for the masses. Still essentially a simple game, its allure is its familiarity, universal appeal and nevedr ending drama.
Well yeah, I've never seen anyone cheering on a dog they don't have money on. It's probably a big fix but I quite like a trip to the Wimbledon dog track. I love nothing more than watching darts or snooker when I'm hungover. They're so easy going and relaxing, and darts is quite good drunk too actually... Oh and bowls! Great hangover watching
Womens Tennis. If you turn off the visual and just listen to the sound you imagine your listening to a very sensual sapphic encounter. There was one exception last year. I had a half day, and the wife was watching Wimbledon. I wasn;t taking too much notice, but eventually got enthralled with the game. The match was between two German girls and not one of em grunted squealed or groaned. . Brilliant
I can get into any sport on TV if the context is right. I once got really into watching darts. Weird. But golf. Come on. I always thought when I was a kid that the day would come when I would be able to follow the ball's flight. But now I'm pretty sure they just aim the cameras up at the sky and hope for the best. Tiny white balls traveling really fast against a mainly white, cloudy (if it's in the UK) background is not fun.
I have the same problem with ice hockey. When I first came to live in the states, I thought that would be the game I could watch and understand. But, all you saw was the hitting the puck, never where it went - that was just a blur. As for Baseball, I could watch the last one or two innings but the rest was just sooooo boring!..
Judo is hard to watch. I've done Judo and still remember most of the moves, but it's all too technical as a sport. Someone wins with a single throw and just looks like the other guy fell over. Boring. Someone needs to get winded, or choked, or have an arm bent in the wrong direction, but it never happens. Crown green bowling. Watch it like you watch snooker and it's golden. I'm amazed at the skill involved. Sailing. How can people watch that? You can't even tell who's winning or where the finish line is.
I love Ice Hockey- its the one sport I enjoyed watching after moving to the US... don't watch it on TV- but used to have a local minor-league team in the city and I used to go to a half-dozen games a season or so. It's easy enough to see the puck in the stadium. Only reason I stopped is because the teams learnt they got more spectators by fighting... so there would be at least one staged fight per game... it got old quickly... I wanted to see the hockey not the fighting. If I wanted a fight I'd go watch boxing. (now there's a boring spectator sport)
Yeah, I know what you mean. This is 30 odd years ago, but I used to go to Blackhawks games when I lived in Chicago. Much better, you could see all the action. As for the fighting, yeah there was plenty of that too!....I saw one game where one of the player's came through the gate, up the steps, and proceeded to beat **** out of this spectator who had been heckling him!...
that bike racing round the oval, slanted, wood, indoor track...they go round like snails for 95% of the race and then go ****ing mental...seriously, WTF?
Boxing. Hate to see people deliberately hurt each other. Love most other sport apart from the American stuff. Glued to Le Toure atm. Gutted re Cav & Froome. Looking forward to The Open next week. Nice being retired, plenty of time to enjoy all the sport!
Cycling, because there's a direct corrolation between British cyclists winning things and more and more cyclists being a menace to pedestrians and motorists alike.
