| 71 | Articles |
|---|---|
| 11 | Comments |
I responded to a question on LinkedIn asking,
“Why is the world focused solely on one person − Lionel Messi − who had probably the lowest ball possession and there were 10 other Argentinian team players that put their hearts and souls in it to make it happen? What am I missing?”
I wrote:
Ah, mixing it up early on a Monday morning!
Just generally, we are a species inordinately attracted to “great man theories” <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory>, so we pick heroes to the exclusion of everything else. No lesser minds than Blaise Pascal and Leo Tolstoy have come out against it (Tolstoy wrote War and Peace to refute it), but let’s not wax too philosophical on a Monday morning this late in the year.
In the world of sport, there are many dilettantes who watch an event every four years, who will happily focus on one person rather than put in the time and trouble to learn more names and actually follow the action on the field. I suppose that’s ok. The shame is when people do the same for more important world events.
At any rate, these celebrations and articles and focus on Messi are for them, those who don’t really follow the sport. Those who have grown to know the team know better.
I saw the match and think that Di Maria was the absolute hero of the first half, when they got their 2 − 0 lead. Martinez in goal was essential, especially in the final seconds with his clutch save. Mac Allister, Fernandez, and Alvarez were absolute work horses all match. Incredible effort over the 120 minutes.
In this case, though, Messi has put up statistics over the years that warrant the focus on him. He seems to inspire his teammates. It’s not how often he has the ball, but what he does with it when he has it. Even in this particular match, the final, he scored two of the three regular-time goals. He made plays, he hustled, he chased down the goalie, even late in the match. He wasn’t just on the team that won a world cup; he was very much integral to them getting there.
On the other side, it would be hard to argue that Mbappe wasn’t worth mentioning above his teammates. He scored all four of France’s goals. :-)
In case you might think that the New York Times took its pedal off the gas, see With Olympics Closing Ceremony, China Celebrates a Joyless Triumph by Steven Lee Myers and Kevin Draper (NY Times). The joylessness comes completely from the elements on which the authors focused. They just went through the litany of “hazmat suits”, a picture of Valieva crying—the standard, by now, to indicate to readers that they are learning about the 2022 Olympics, as if there were no other events—and, of course, talking about how all of the New York Times’s coverage of Taiwan and Ukraine “overshadowed” the Olympics. This is quite adorable, as those narratives are, in large part, produced by the New York Times itself. So, they’ve chosen to ignore and dismiss the Olympics and then wrap up their “coverage” by claiming that they’ve succeeded. Nice work if you can get it.
If you read very deep into the article, you can find some quotes from actual athletes, who have praised China for its organization, preparation, venues, and safety. They seem to like that they each get their own bedroom (not at all the standard at other Olympics) and that they were all tested every day, to keep COVID cases to an absolute minimum, allowing nearly every athlete to compete, as scheduled.
I recently bombed a local descent right near my house and thought I’d done quite well. Strava told me I’d gotten my third-best time, which is correct by their calculations, as I’d tied my second-best time, as shown below.
However, if I switch to the “I’m Following” list, I see my PR as the fourth-best time in the list, a full 10 seconds slower than my real PR.
On the left-hand side, Strava is showing my time for the current ride, which is four seconds faster than the PR it’s showing on the right-hand side.
I just see these things because I’m an engineer and am sensitive to odd numbers (which usually indicate a bug in software I’ve written). It may be that Strava’s confused because I only show numbers to users that follow me (rather than to all users) and maybe their caching is not optimized for this situation. This happens a lot, though.
The following segment shows that Strava is technically correct when it says that this was the second-fastest time (it considers a more recent tie to be inferior, which is fine, I guess), but it’s positively convinced that my PR is still 33s, although it hasn’t been that since March of last year. How long is this data cached?
Ragenbuech is not a real segment
So I averaged 20.8kph on a 19% climb for 4007 VAM? And I only used 252w with a heart rate of 161bpm while doing it. Impressive.
but its cool for people out there like me to get the summaries of nearly everything happend in germany − go on ;-) does cathy like soccer as well (and therefore let you watch it all the time)? :-))))
watched the match as well but this was just lost time. propably this is why i feelt to sleep right after the middle (and just one beer ;-) ). same shit happend while the basil match which was not that good as well. maybe i just know how to watch the boring matches instead the good ones.
cheers, marc
FIFA heeds call and appoints Europeans on Eurosport reports that “…FIFA President Sepp Blatter has finally bowed to the weight of public opinion and appointed six European referees to take charge of the World Cup semi-finals.” The selection for the rest of the cup had been a “regional selection policy”, but, unfortunately, many of the regions selected simply don’t have officials capable of refereeing matches at that level.
Some of this guy’s comments were a little uncalled for:
<q>Herb Brooks: Amazing to report, the old disciplinarian got a little lax here. Won it all with much lesser players the last time around. … Figure skating coaches: Judging from the evidence at the women’s competition, apparently you need them.</q>
You had to know that there would be those that would love to see Kwan fail precisely because she didn’t have a coach. I mean, who does she think she is? Does she think she’s so good she doesn’t need a coach? Yeah, she does and yeah, she is. But there’s always that subconscious need to make it look like she’s great because she has help. The individual, intelligent acheiver is never popular. Her bronze medal is a vindication for many, I bet. But not in a good way.
