Category: sport

2015 Subaru WRX STI on TT course

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Here’s a quick (in more ways than one) video of Subaru driver Mark Higgins driving that company’s latest WRX STI vehicle around the Isle of Man TT course, rather nippily.

Of particular interest is the footage about a minute in of the previous record that he set in 2011 and his comment that they “had a big moment; basically the car just got a little bit of of shape…”.

This “moment” stuff is motorsport parlance, of course. There are two types of moment in this context. You can either have “a bit of a moment”, or you can have “a big moment”. For most of us mere mortals, “a bit of a moment” would be more than enough for us to require, at least, a change of underwear and several months of industrial-strength counselling. This, I’ll remind you, was “a big moment”.

And, perhaps unsurprisingly, looking at that bit of the video, it’s evident that Mark’s version of:

a little bit out of shape…

and mine also differ significantly. Superb driving control though. What a save.

Anyway, well worth 7 minutes of your valuable time, if just for the camerawork, the details of the car and the driver and the occasional Manx countryside.

World Cup goal quota photo

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With England already out, you might think that there’s no reason for me to continue to show interest in the World Cup. But I wasn’t really expecting much of England and I’m actually not a huge fan of the national football team. In fact, I was more bothered about losing SuperBru points in the Uruguay game (I had 1-1) than the fact that Rooney et al. were heading home.

Treachery!

Anyway, you’d be wrong about the lack of interest thing, because it’s football; it’s the beautiful game and I will watch every minute that I can simply because of that.

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And proving that you can do beautiful photography of the beautiful game, here’s a fantastic photo by Siphiwe Sibeko of Clint Dempsey scoring for the USA against Portugal. It’s one of the many on the ever-growing Telegraph World Cup Photo Album.

Not the first time we’ve connected the name “Siphiwe” with a bulging World Cup net either, is it?

Earlier than planned

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A bit of a post of ephemera today, which I was going to do this evening, but which I have had to move forward as we are fully expecting to be loadshod later.

All of which brings me neatly to this lovely interactive loadshedding map for Cape Town (link courtesy of @RichardAtUCT), which tells you when you can expect to be in darkness this winter as Eskom once again fails to supply us with the requisite amount of electricity.
Remember, you can also see the full DIY version here – which actually works better if you are wanting to calculate by area, rather than time.
I can’t help but think that integrating the World Cup calendar in there would help as well: for example, I’m going to miss most of the Spain v Chile game this evening, should the switch be flicked.

Talking of the World Cup (“seamless segue” can like to be my middle name), after their defeat to the Ivory Coast in Recife earlier this week, Japanese fans gave the stadium a thorough spring clean. Yes, really.

We’re all fed up with linkbait headlines like the one on that Japan fans story:

Japan Fans Did What No Other Soccer Fans Would After Their World Cup Team Lost

Rather than:

Japanese Fans Clean Stadium After Their Team Lose At World Cup

And now, some enterprising soul (it’s @jakebeckman) has come up with @savedyouaclick, which helpfully and literally saves you a click to find out what the tantalising morsel at the end of the linkbait is:

Just like that.

Finally, never use the Main Road to get anywhere in Cape Town. It might be shorter in distance, but it will certainly be longer in time. I have no decent data or scientific evidence to back this up, but I do have a book to sell.
Well, no, I don’t, but if I did, that might lead me to cut a few corners on the “good science” side of things.

And now, I must disappear, before the electricity does. See you on the other side…

Sad Footballers

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A little short on time (and, if I’m absolutely honest, inclination) today, so here’s a link to something new and promising.

As part of their excellent World Cup coverage (their daily podcasts are the bomb) The Guardian has launched a tumblr entitled SAD FOOTBALLERS. Now, I know what you’re thinking:

What could that possibly contain images of?

Right?

Well, it contains images of the faces of sad footballers who are sad because they are losing/have lost a World Cup game. It’s all started off a bit Iberian Peninsular, for obvious (5pain, Fourtugal) reasons.

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For every winner in Brazil, there will also be a loser. And while we’re watching the former celebrating victory live and in HD, we can, at our leisure, pop onto sadfootballers.tumblr.com and see what the other half were up to. And if it’s just downturned mouths at the moment, wait til we get to the business end of the competition: expect heartbreak.

The World Cup is killing me

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These late nights are killing me. Actually, it’s the early mornings in hellish conjunction with the late nights that are killing me.

2010’s games seemed to be at a much more acceptable hour, almost as if they were designed to be comfortable for our time zone. Weird.

Right now, I’m wondering whether I can afford a couple of extra hours to watch Ghana play the USA.
It sounds like quite an attractive idea at the moment, but that might not be the case at 6am tomorrow.

UPDATE: And why this fuss? Because death by World Cup exhaustion is a thing.