That’s the average speed in miles per hour of Northern Ireland’s Michael Dunlop as he obliterated the previous lap record around the Isle of Man TT course earlier this week.
Such is the enormity of this achievement that the organisers have decided to publicly share that lap of the usually hugely copyright-bound racing. It makes for some scary, but compulsive viewing.
Do yourself a favour and find 17 minutes to watch this.
Length of circuit:
37.733 miles (60.725 km)
Lap record:
16 minutes 58.254 seconds
= average speed of 133.393 mph (214.675 km/h)
We’re in that post-season, pre-big tournament phase, where some international teams are playing each other to get in game time and practice, and others are playing each other just for the hell of it.
This one falls into the latter category:
Neither Guatemala not Armenia will be at their respective continental championships this summer/winter, but that didn’t stop them having a bit of fun with one another this evening.
What I like about this game was that until the 39th minute, Armenia were one down, but then just basically scored a goal every ten minutes until the referee stopped the fight to prevent lasting damage to the Guatemalans.
Much like the -escu of Romania and the -ev and -ov of Bulgaria, it seems that -yan is the surname suffix of note for Armenians.
The final? Tonight is the final of the Champignon’s League, and I’m going to stick my neck out and say that the trophy will be heading back to Madrid. Astute? Yep. That’s me.
The ad? This UCL final will will also mark the end of the Heineken ad which has been plaguing entertaining us since last September. You know the one. Where the rag-tag motley crew of sailors that raid the contents of their cargo to rig up a technologically-unlikely solution to enable them to watch the footy from the middle of the sea.
We all had to cram in tiny cabins all day long, fighting gasoline smells and seasickness.
Oh dear. But could you watch the football?
The ship? It’s called the Jules Edgar in the ad, but it actually turns out to be the Hilmi K – a Turkish general cargo vessel:
According to MarineTraffic, the crew of the Hilmi K will be watching the final in port in Istanbul, so no need to jemmy open the containers and find an implausibly large magnifying porthole and a selection of smart dinner attire.
Oh, and the music? That would be (then 18 year old) Rita Pavone‘s 1963 hit Viva La Pappa Col Pomodoro. The video is arguably better than anything Heineken gave us.
Shared on twitter earlier, but (I think) deserving of some further degree of record for the sake of posterity (i.e.ISTOTBIDMPD), this Cricinfo.com description from the Afghanistan v England game in the World T20 today:
After a disastrous batting innings, England bowled (just) well enough to get past the Afghans.
Other than this ball, of course.
It was the big bicyling event in Cape Town again this weekend, with many bicyclers raising money for charities and many more raising blood pressure for any of the city’s 4 million odd residents trying to actually do anything with their Sunday.
This is one of the biggest bicyling events in the world, and certainly the biggest in Africa. Friendly foreign person Oleksiy Mishchenko came down to the Cape to do some bicycling and found a uniquely African way to train for this uniquely African event.
Contrary to popular belief, we don’t (generally) have wild lions roaming around Cape Town CBD. There are some zebras on the mountain *points* just there, though. However, ostriches are fairly common in this little corner of Africa – especially down towards Cape Point where these guys were bicyling.
Training using ostriches is frowned upon by the SA Bicyling Union, given that we’d still have dodos if it wasn’t for those pesky penny-farthing races on Mauritius in the mid 1800s. Still, these foreign people probably weren’t to know that, so we’ll just wish them well and say thanks for the laughs.
