For the final part of this mini-series looking back on moments of great drama in Olympics track & field history, there is a veritable queue around the corner of possible contenders - be it Abele Bikila setting a world best time for the marathon in 1960, whilst running in bare feet, or Paavo Nurmi winning nine gold and three silver medals across thee Olympiads in the 1920s, or Bob Beamon’s gravity-defying leap in the 1968 Mexico Games that would go unsurpassed for over two decades, or Fanny Blankers-Koen winning four gold medals in 1948, or the incomparable Emile Zapotek claiming the men’s 5,000 metres, 10,000 metres, and marathon titles four years later.
However, the final story belongs to Wilma Rudolph of the United States. She was the twentieth of twenty-two children to be born into a dirt-poor family in Tennessee in 1940. At her premature birth, she weighed a scant 4.5lbs. Whilst barely more than a toddler, she then contracted double pneumonia, polio, and scarlet fever. The illnesses were so debilitating that her left leg needed to be fitted with a metal brace, which she would wear for three years. Read more »
Brian Hayes, the Fine Gael spokesman on education, is clearly not going to be outdone by Mad Merv up the North. The genius proposal of this highly-remunerated parliamentarian is to segregate the children of migrants from the rest of their classmates until they can speaka de English properly.
There is no need to adjust your computer screens, ladies and gentlemen, you read that correctly the first time around.
Indeed, as a former teacher himself, Brian might even go so far as to recommend nursery rhymes as a good way to start building up these children’s vocabulary.
For most casual fans of the Olympics, there is understandably nothing more thrilling than two 100 metres gladiators going head-to head in the final, with the wearer of the laurel wreath being decided by who’s hair is the longest when they dip for the line. It is simply unadulterated chest-thumping, alpha-male drama at its finest.
For distance running fans, this sort of outcome is pure fantasy.
Normally.
If life was fair, Paul Tergat of Kenya would have been the greatest distance runner of his generation. A silkily smooth runner, he won the World Cross-Country Championships an incredible five consecutive times, including through the mud, wind, and rain of Belfast in 1999 (which I had the good fortune to witness). He also set a world record for the 10,000 metres and world best times for the half-marathon and marathon. Read more »
The land, the sea, and the coast that divides them are frequently recurring references on Wagonwheel Blues, the debut album of Philadelphian quintet The War On Drugs. Last night, the three-axe assault felt like a naval bombardment of shoreline defences. POUND, POUND, POUND, boomed the guitars. It was bordering on the brutal.
Now do not get me wrong here - there is always plenty of room in the House of Oz for amped-up rock-mongerers to ply their trade. It is just that all of the subtle sounds on this album and especially the Dylan-esque quality of the lyrics were hopelessly lost in the ceaseless barrage that rained down on the audience last night. Read more »
Some time ago, I remember reading online reviews of a garage band performing in Dublin. The writers were complaining about being verbally abused and spat upon by a guy who could not sing. They were watching an old-school punk band so!
I was reminded of this incident last night with The Death Set.
They set up on the floor of the venue and were quite insistent on getting the crowd to gather right around them because “it was better that way”. Invite a bunch of skinheads from the East End of London to bang heads like that thirty years ago and someone would finish the night going home in an ambulance. However, those days are gone and the young alternative-scene crowd eventually shuffled into place. A few even got into the proper spirit of the occassion by throwing themselves around and even knocking over the microphone at some stage. Read more »
What was all the fuss about really? Okay, so a few jobs may have been lost, there was a touch of the old negative equity, inflation lost the run of itself for a time, and the Social Partners ended up having a bit of a spat over trifles such as wages. Yet it has all proved to be nothing more than a flash-in-the-pan spell of panic! For you see, the recession is over!
Welsh singer Duffy has announced her return to Dublin after stunning crowds earlier in the year at the Academy. She will perform for one night at the Olympia Theatre on Monday 24 November. Tickets priced €33.60 ( Ground Floor Standing/Upper Circle Seating ) and €39.20 ( Circle Seating ) incl. booking fee are on sale from Friday 22 August at all usual Ticketmaster outlets.
Now, if wily old MCD think that the paying punter is willing to part with the best part of €45, once the extras are included, to see this overhyped young lady do her nice but ordinary repertoire, then the corner has surely been turned, the economy is booming once more, the Celtic Tiger has rediscovered its roar!
Its time to max those credit cards out again chaps! Tally ho!
Ahoy there me hearties! The day when Kevin Costner-like mutants with webbed feet and gills rule the world surely drew a little nearer this week with all the rain that we endured. The need for something bright ‘n breezy ‘n melodies-over-easy on the No Ordinary Fool vidbox seems appropriate in the circumstances.
Accordingly, this week’s choice comes from a band by the complicated name of She & Him and a sweet little song from their debut album with the equally complicated title of Volume One.
The ‘She’ in question is Zooey Deschanel, an American actress who has appeared in a good variety of films, often where the role involves singing. The ‘He’ is M. Ward, a singer-songwriter from Oregon, who is best known to date as a guest musician on recordings by a truckload of the indie good and the great, including Cat Power, Bright Eyes, and Jenny Lewis.
This song is called Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?
Make sure to get up and shake your bootie this weekend now folks, y’all hear!
I have to admit that this one caught me unawares. However, this business of not being able to buy alcohol after 10pm in supermarkets or off-licenses is frankly ridiculous. The idea is to curb excessive drinking by us booze-hound Paddies. Apparently.
However, let us call a keg a keg here. Anyone mad to get their hands on drink will modify their shopping habits accordingly. Have no fear of that. This is an inconvenience, nothing more, for them. Life, as they know it, will go on as before.
Moreover, pubs still remain open. In truth, they ought to do even more business now, which is good news for vintners who have suffered the consequences in recent years (the poor lambs) of excessively raising their prices. Instead, more and more punters opt to enjoy themselves at home and buy their drink for less from off licensed premises. How fortunate, indeed, for one of the lobbying groups that Fianna Fail pays serious attention to. Read more »
Tickets to see The Charlatans play in Dublin in October go on sale tomorrow morning. Their last two records have been pretty ordinary, yet I loved their music when they were at their peak.
Indeed, I last saw them play two Christmases ago when they toured to promote an album of their greatest hits. The songs were great, but the show felt too one-paced, as they simply went from one cracking tune to another. Now, that might sound like an odd thing to say, but a little bit of downtime during gigs is necessary if you are to enjoy the high points all the more. In other words, you can have so much of a good thing that you cease to appreciate it… At some stage, I started to drift a bit and the show passed me by.
Anyway, I would not like to think that this is my last memory of The Charlatans playing live. At the same time, I am lukewarm at best regarding the new album.
Does anyone care to try and persuade me either way? Has anyone seen them recently?
I will not pretend to know any more about the Caucasus than the next man you may happen to meet on the streets of Dublin. However, in following the events of recent days, there has been one thing that has surprised me above all else.
I am referring to the readiness of commentators to casually dismiss the decision of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili to order his troops into the city of Tshkinvali as being ” criminally insane”, “foolish”, “naive”, “a reckless gamble”, “a monumental misreading of the situation”, and such like.
Even without the benefit of hindsight, maybe the decision was all of these things. As I said, I do not know enough about the situation to make a judgement either way and suffice it so say that I find his decision a highly baffling one to comprehend. However, in saying that, two things are not sitting right with me at present. Read more »
Last time out, this mini-series celebrating powerful moments of drama in Olympics track & field finals recalled the shock defeat of Noureddine Morceli in the 1,500 metres final of 1992. As an Irishman, this next story of disappointment cuts a lot closer to the bone. Yes, it is the sad tale of Sonia O’Sullivan and the women’s 5,000 metres final of 1996.
O’Sullivan, in her prime, was an outstanding athlete. She announced herself on the world stage with a silver medal in the 1993 World Championships in the 1,500 metres, having notoriously been beaten into fourth in the 3,000 metres by three little-known Chinese athletes all fuelled up on coach Ma Junren’s magic diet of turtle soup and dried caterpillars. A year later, she would become the European 3,000 metres champion, before an overwhelmingly dominant 2005 season was crowned by victory in the inaugural women’s 5,000 metres World Championship. Read more »
Having written about his amazing son last week, it would be amiss of me not to note the sad passing in recent days of Peter Coe on these pages. He was 88 and had been in poor health for some time.
Peter was coach and mentor to his son throughout his career. He was completely self-taught in the art of athletics coaching, having only turned his mind to it when Seb showed some initial promise as a teenager. His approach lacked much of the conventionality of the time, but would prove to be revolutionary in retrospect.
Quite literally, the man (an engineer by training) sat down and studied physiology and biomechanics. Based on his findings, he devised demanding speed endurance training schedules for his teenage son that were all focussed on the long-term aim of delivering world records by the early 1980s. Seb would go on to set three world records in three different events over the space of six weeks in 1979 alone. More would follow.
At the heart of Peter Coe’s programme was one key idea - less quantity, more quality. This even extended to driving his son repeatedly back down a steep hill, after the latter had gone up it every time like a streak of bolt lightning, in order to eliminate any unnecessary impact on the boy’s joints. Read more »
