BlackMan Time

Archive for the ‘Sports’ Category

Boxers Evander Holyfield and Mike Tyson met again but this time it was on The Oprah Winfey Show, last week.

Clearly they’ve buried the hatchet, thankfully, not in each other’s skull! Holyfield said he wanted to appear with Tyson on television to demonstrate to young people caught up in violence that reconciliation is always possible. “We can come together. We know you can come together,” he said.

I just love the strong positive message this public reconciliation emits following their world title fight at the MGM Grand hotel in Las Vegas on June 28, 1997 when Tyson bit a chunk out of Holyfield’s ear in their third round of their championship fight.

Nuff respect is due!

Photo: (c) Splash News, 2009.

I wished I had been there at Sabina Park to see it first hand! Any West Indies cricket victory over an England test eleven is worth savouring for as long as memory can last.

But this wasn’t any victory: it was an innings and 53 runs trouncing, bowling out the great England team for a paltry 51 in the process!

The last time West Indies defeated England on home soil was in 2000. But, it hasn’t always been this way, where we have struggled to do well against them…

I can still remember the glory days of the 1970s and 1980s when the West Indies dominated world cricket.

Rubbing

I should have moved from here there but those memorable moments helped me through school to whoop it up over my English school mates who would have otherwise rubbed it in.

Sport was like war, but whereas the real thing brought death and destruction sport only brought joy, pleasure and disappointing pain. It was always very friendly rivalry.

With the greats such as Clive Lloyd, Vivian Richards, Gordon Greenidge, Michael Holding, Courtney Walsh and others having left the game, decline set in. Somehow, we haven’t been able to lift ourselves up out of the doldrums since then.

Hopefully, yesterday’s victory will be a positive move towards achieving this. It would be good for West Indies glory days to return but we’re cautiously optimistic. It’s a restart…

Yesterday tennis ace Serena Williams recaptured the number one spot after winning the Australian Open. Commenting on this someone wrote the following note on Facebook:-

“I also wish she (Serena Williams) read more and was a bit more intelligent in her public speeches. She has a laziness to her social interaction and I think it’s less about her intelligence and more about lacking social graces…”

From I was knee height to a grasshopper I’ve been told that I should have shiny shoes and combed hair in order to get respect from others. As I grew I came to realise that shiny shoes and combed hair had nothing at all to do with respect.

Respect

Respect, I realised, is shown and is reflected back when you specifically try not to hurt other people’s feelings with what you say about them and/or how you treat them.

By describing her in the unconstructive terms the writer has served a great desrespect on Serena Williams, the number one tennis player in the world and the highest income earner in women’s sports.

No other woman in sporting history has earned more money than Serena Williams yet people like the writer are only concerned because she doesn’t read or enunciate to their satisfaction!

Perspective

Having an opinion is one thing but having a perspective that doesn’t take into account prevailing realities is another. As far as I have seen in the past, Serena Williams has always been gracious and respectful, even in defeat to her peers.

My problem with the writer’s note is that it comes across as pompous for suggesting Serena, who rose to greatness from a humble ghetto beginning, is somehow lacking because she’s not very soft or may not be as eloquent or articulate as some of her more packaged adversaries.

I mean who really gives a damn about speaking well and playing the hypocritical class game when you’re number one in your chosen field and earn more money than anyone else in that field?!

Apparently the writer does…

Success encourages negativity in only the most envious and jealous of people, but it is a reality of life.

This is one lesson being learnt by new F1 champion Lewis Hamilton whose father Anthony has just revealed the full extent of the racism, criticism and negativity generated in their direction as a result of his son’s phenomenal success on the track.

Dealing with racism from the fans is one thing, but having to deal with unfavourable comments from among your race rivals also, like Lewis has had to do this year, apparently comes with the territory.

It is telling that other great F1 champions like Brazilian Ayton Senna, who Lewis cite as a mentor, and German Michael Schumacher, were also not very well liked by their peers out of sheer jealousy and envy. But rather than hinder their progress it probably propelled them to greatness!

Motivation

Nothing motivates a competitive person more than a challenge. And what better challenge can there be than the motivation to prove people wrong? That you are much better than their belittling criticism?

Lewis is not the only famous Black person who has had to carry this burden. Consider the tribulations of politician Barack Obama who now stands poise to become the first Black US president after receiving race-centred death threats.

Footballers Emile Heskey, Sean Wright-Phillips and others have also been race hatred victims. They’ve all prospered, as do a great many ordinary people whose resolve have only become stronger…

In the end Lewis Hamilton gets to laugh last. He is laughing all the way to the bank with the 2008 F1 championship, rock solid family, beautiful celebrity girlfriend in Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger, fame, huge potential and promise still intact.

The sad thing is that none of this success actually insulates you from the malicious intentions of detractors.

Lady Luck, or somebody, has smiled upon me again! Yesterday afternoon a representative from Betfair.com, a sports betting company, called me and offered me a free bet, as an enticement to using the account I had signed up for ages ago but not actually used.

To cut the long story short they persuaded me to have a bet on something and as England was playing Belarus later that evening I said I’d bet the “free” money they were giving me on that match.

In a split second I told the rep the result was going to be 3-1 to England. I then asked how much would I win with the “free” money I was putting on with those odds. Wow, it was a sizeable amount…

I tuned into the match live shortly before half time. The score was 1-1. I followed it the rest of the way until the end where England actually won 3-1! There was a nervous moment in the 80th minute when Steven Gerrard missed an open goal which would have made it 4-1. But, I’m glad he missed and happy that England won.

That was probably one of the few times I was glad England won anything! Their win, particularly at 3-1, was also my win. Can you beat that, though?!

The president of Gambia, Yahya Jammeh, thinks he has found a cure for AIDS. In fact he says his cure is so good it can also cure asthma!

The problem is the medical world and the World Health Organisation don’t believe him, regardless how diplomatically or politely they state that.

“Whatever you do, there are bound to be sceptics, but I can tell you my method is foolproof,” President Yahya Jammeh has told the press. “Mine is not an argument, mine is a proof. It’s a declaration. I can cure AIDS and I will.”

But President Jammeh also has other critics. They are even drawn from within his own government Ministry of health. Further, many of his country’s people believe him to be mad, or at best “not right in the head.” The reason for this is because Jammeh will arrest, expel or detain anybody trying to dispute his AIDS cure claims.

“Virgin Cure”

It’s not the first time someone from the Africa has declared finding a cure for AIDS. The last such declaration came from a South African a little while back but his so-called cure could, apparently, only work if the victim had sex with a minor.

This is the infamous and pervasively believed “Virgin Cure” remedy but its key criteria of needing to have sex with minors, meant it was never going to take off…

If President Jammeh has really found a cure for AIDS it should not be hard to prove it under the right circumstances to the rest of the world. But would the medical profession, which doesn’t believe in bush medicine, take it seriously?

Wide Berth

Most likely medical people would give the cure a wide berth until they can reproduce Mr. Jammeh’s organic miracle drug themselves and approve it before unleashing onto the public. But, I hardly think they would get that chance because Jammeh is holding quite closely to its secret formula.

Ultimately the quest to find a cure for AIDS probably comes down to money and protecting the interests of those who could make or lose a fortune if such a cure is found. Maybe Jammeh’s is one of these people, or maybe he is not.

Either way, until then ordinary AIDS-inflicted citizens will continue to suffer…

Maybe I’m missing something major but why would a so-called fan pay big money to attend an international football match just to boo their side?

This was a question I asked myself after England fans booed England defender Ashley Cole after he made a mistake which allowed Kazakstan to score in their world cup qualifying game on Saturday, October 11, 2008.

At that stage England was leading 2-0 and the goal allowed Kazakstan to claw one back to 2-1 but still, is that a reason for the booing?

Maybe because it was following on from the scintillating 4-1 win over the highly favoured Croatian team why English fans’ raised their expectation and came expecting a drubbing of the lowly placed Kazakstan team.

Whatever the reason, the booing from English fans on mixed-race Ashley Cole was disconcerting, undermining and unintelligent.

I wonder how the booers, in their warped minds, felt at the end of the game after England emerged 5-1 winners? Maybe they thought: “job done!”

The logic behind their booing still totally escape me…

Everybody was excited over the Olympic Games that unfolded last month in Beijing. But who, apart from those taking part and their families) are really that interested in the Paralympics?

Note: the operating word here is REALLY because lots of people will say they are interested for a number of reasons.

Maybe it’s guilt or political correctness (who wants to be seen to be discriminating against less abled people?) or maybe it’s the politically expedient thing to do. Depending on how you look at it the Paralympics is like a mirror to every healthy ‘normal’ person’s worst nightmare.

We are thankful that we are healthy with all our limbs and faculties intact while others, the Paralympics

Congratulations Usain Bolt for breaking the 200m world record and for running with discipline and keeping Jamaica right up there on top where we belong!

It often makes me smile when people who like to label you try to label Jamaica. They look at our size and automatically assume just because we’re only 2.6 million in local population that must mean we’re weak in other areas too. They’re wrong, of course.

Locally we like to pride ourselves on being “talawah” or small but really effective. In other words we can punch way above our weight and we do this in so many ways that confound even the sternest critic.

Usain Bolt and all of the other Jamaican athletes competing in this Beijing Olympics are testament to the fact that we are ambitious achievers, winners and progressive people.

So, next time you meet a Jamaican instead of trying to label him/her instead lift your hat and say: “Nuff respect…”

Then watch the smile break out on their faces, brimming with pride…

Hooray to Team GB for grabbing the biggest haul of Olympic medals (36 so far) in over 100 years! Hooray! Yawn…

It’s not that I’m bitter at Great Britain winning anything and loving it. I don’t care either way…

It’s not that I see it as hypocritical that a nation which prides itself on being losers and actively encourages a dumbed down, losing mentality, should be making such a big fuss over something like winning in an elitist competition designed to display the skills of those dedicated to becoming champions. Maybe this is closer to the mark…

To prove this, just last week exam results were revealed and showed a record number of students had obtained a record number of high grades A Level passes. It seems the government and the educational establishment have lowered the standards to encourage better results so that everybody could look good.

One school (excuse the pun) of thought is that it’s better to lower the standards and let normal losers: students who are too lazy, stupid or dunce to attain high grades, feel good than to maintain an elitist system where the standards are high with only a few students able to reach the hallowed higher heights.

This, the government has obviously decided, only demoralises the dunces and create an elitist system. It also marks schools out to be the ‘bad guys’.

It’s a pity they don’t apply the same principles to any member of Team GB winning an elitist gold medal in the Olympic Games…