Freakishly Long Tennis Match

Game suspended at the end of its second day.

Word Cup Trash Talk

Most excellent! Barack Obama notwithstanding, the special relationship continues.

Competitive Advantage

Looks like the ice-skating's going to be a bit more athletic at the Vancouver Olympics.

God, Country, The Redskins

Not necessarily in that order.

Seen in the grocery store parking lot last week.

Six Redskin flags and pennants and a huge decal on the rear window. Attached to the top of one of the 'Skins flags: a teeny-tiny American flag. Those two little decals on the left rear window? Knights of Columbus and American Legion insignia, respectively. Our Lady of Guadalupe (not visible in this shot) swinging from the rear view mirror.

Catholic Patriotic Skins fans, unite!

Eugene Robinson Jumps The Shark

I am studiously ignoring a certain golfer. However: can we all agree that when a WaPo columnist yearns for women to come out from under the yoke of oppression that is a libidinous sports hero's lack of lust for them, he should retire?

If only playas lusted for every body type equally? That's what we want for the sistas?

Sigh. It's only women.

We're Lame & Unfriendly, Choose Us!

Not exactly the strongest case made in Copenhagen.


Although, actually, the Danes say it was because Obama did no prep work and truly thought a speech from him would be everything.

Curtsies to Gateway and Insta Pundits, respectively

Swedes Joyfully Welcome Israeli Tennis Team

6000 Muslim Rioters Attack Police Protecting Israeli Tennis Team In Malmo, Sweden
shamelessly pinched from Gateway Pundit

The Swedes courageously had the Israeli team play its Davis Cup match behind closed doors, by the way. So all that partying above is strictly on the rumor that Jews were in the area.

The Swedish team won the match, if you're interested.

Update: I stand corrected. The Israelis won a tie-breaker.

Roberta!

My spy at the Fairfax rally also attended some luncheon at the Capitol Hill club at which Roberta McCain spoke. She's 96 years old and they offered her a chair, which she refused. Spy says she was impressive. Love this story told by whoever introduced her:

Mrs. McCain and her twin sister were 94 and flew to Paris for a vacation. Mrs. McC wanted to rent a car, but the agency said that they couldn't rent her one because of her age. So she said that she would just buy one instead and they drove all over the country and then sold it when they were ready to come home.

Speaking of tough birds, how about this on Todd Palin?

VAN SUSTEREN: And the speeds? I mean, it gets even crazier if you go through -- how fast do you go?

DAVIS: You know, the top speed probably around 100 miles an hour, which isn't real common. But you know, the average speed for the 2,000 miles will be in the 50s, probably 38 hours to ride 2,000 miles, which is hard to do in a car.

VAN SUSTEREN: All right. Now, the first dude, as I'll call him during this segment, got hurt in February when this race (INAUDIBLE) What happened to him?

DAVIS: You know, he just hit a barrel that was frozen, river bank outside of Galina (ph), you know, kind of ripped off the side of his suspension and A-arms (ph) and sent him flying. Took him in, tried to get him some medical attention. He wouldn't -- he refused it. And so we patched him back together and continued on. And when we got to the finish line, he went to the doctor and ended up had a broken arm. And (INAUDIBLE) worked on a snowmobile for two hours and rode 500 miles to the finish line with a broken arm.

VAN SUSTEREN: He sounds pretty tough.

DAVIS: He's a tough guy.

If McCain wins, there will be a refreshing no whining, no victims attitude in the first and second families.

Random Post-Olympic Thoughts

• Please forgive me, but I can't think of table tennis, water polo or beach volleyball as sports (no matter how much our female medalists love W.) They say what makes water polo exciting is the fighting going on underwater. Then show us that, for heaven's sake. Otherwise, I can't bear to see grown men bobbing around in those silly caps.
  
• When did divers become so freakishly stringy? The horrors of over-refined training, I think. They used to be the most aesthetically pleasing of all athletes.
• Taking nothing away from Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt, my favorite moment was when the Aussie denied the gold medal in platform diving to the Chinese. The judges' scoring was so obviously anti-American (not that our guys would have medaled, necessarily, but when the Norwegian judge gives you a 9 and the Venezuelan judge a 7, routinely --and when the calculus is reversed for Chinese divers making obvious mistakes, it gets old) that I felt a little frisson of the Cold-War-era rivalry. Yay, a free country won, in spite of judicial favoritism. The Chinese were expected to sweep all eight diving events, but Matthew Mitcham denied them.
  

He Did It!

Yay!

Iraq Is In After All

Iraqi sprinter Dana Abdul-Razzaq

Hey, cool. I missed the news that the IOC reversed its ban on Iraqi athletes for the Beijing olympics. Go here to see video of the team getting a vigorous ovation.

People Can Be So Lovely

Who is cooler? The Lost Boy turned American champion? Or his foster parents? Lopez Lomong is actually only the first of 6 boys from Sudan his foster parents took in. Look at what his father says about the experience of greeting terrified refugees at the airport (the family also took in a family of 11 from Kosovo for a time).

I got the privilege of being the person that represented America to that family when they came here, and then as each one of (the Sudanese) boys came, I was the guy who took them by the hand and led them to America," he said. "That's an extreme privilege to be in that position in someone's life where you'll be remembered by that person for the rest of their lives as the person who represented America to them.

Think about that. He did this for religious reasons (RTWT) and personal ones, but also as an American. I love this man! This is interesting, too. One of the boys they took in got a whirlwind tour of the Eastern U.S. when he first arrived.

In his first six weeks in America, Anthony went to Disney World, Washington, D.C., and Boston. He surprised the Roger when he told them "parents" were the most amazing thing he had seen in America. "We never would have expected that answer," Robert Rogers said.

Parents. Do watch the little video at the link; it's delightful.

Bush In China

He understands what he's doing, this fellow. After attending Church services in Beijing, President Bush said:

Laura and I just had the great joy and privilege of worshiping here in Beijing, China. You know, it just goes to show that God is universal, and God is love, and no state, man or woman should fear the influence of loving religion.

It's nice that 41 & 43 are traveling together. (Triple rooting for Michael Phelps, by the way: not only an American champion, but a local kid and a nice Catholic boy.)

Here's the President in Beijing with Lopez Lomong, our flag-bearer for the opening ceremonies. Apparently his story's widely known but I just learned it. He was one of Sudan's Lost Boys --ripped from his family in the middle of Mass one morning. Eventually he escaped and now, as the President put it,

the boy who once had to run for his life is a man about to run for gold in Beijing -- representing the United States of America.

Here's the rest of the American team as the President approaches.

...and then arrives.

The First Chinese Olympian

This is Eric Liddell, the Scottish runner who inspired Chariots of Fire. My all-time favorite movie line (I think) comes when Liddell says

When I run, I feel God's pleasure.

Anyway, nice piece on him here. Liddell was born in China and lived there 'til he was five. Then he returned to Scotland to be educated.

He became a great athlete (cricket, rugby, and running), and participated in the Paris Olympics in 1924. But since the 100 meter race - in which he would have made his best time - was scheduled for a Sunday, he declined to participate, because of his strict and solid religious upbringing.

According to some witnesses, it seems that the king of England himself tried to convince him to compete, in the name of "national pride", but he declined because "the commandments of God come before national honor. I will not run on Sunday."

After the Olympics he earned a science degree and returned to China as a missionary. I was just a kid when Chariots of Fire was released --is this in the movie?

In 1941 he sent his wife and kids to Canada in fear of the Japanese, but he remained in China. He died in a Japanese prison camp.

Eric Liddell died on February 21, 1945. A few months earlier, prime minister Winston Churchill obtained the liberation of some of the prisoners, and the famous athlete should have been one of them, but he gave up his place to a pregnant prisoner.

His last words were: "It's complete surrender".

He's buried in the Mausoleum of the Martyrs in Shijiazhuang.