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Category: sports

Skating for Joy

Skating for Joy

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Who knows how much is true or the kind of fairytale the Olympics likes to trumpet, but the outcome can’t be disputed. Alysa Liu just won the first gold medal in women’s figure skating since 2002. The 20-year-old took a two-year break from the sport, then returned to win the world championship and a spot on the Olympic team.

In interviews before clinching the top spot on the podium, she insisted she had nothing to prove. She was already an Olympian. Now she just had to skate, to bring joy to the ice.

When she bounced out onto the rink yesterday with her ombre ponytail flying, she was the antithesis of the tightly coiffed young women who took the stage before her. Some of them skated more elegantly than she did. But Liu skated as if she’d just been released from an earthbound cage into her true element. She jumped and landed, skipped and soared, her striped hair barely tied back, the sequins on her gold costume gleaming.

In the end it was not the “Quad God” who captured our hearts, but this ebullient young skater. Liu reminds us why we should do things in the first place — because we love to do them.

(Photo: Wikipedia)

Improving with Age

Improving with Age

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What is it about watching the Olympics that seems to improve with age? The events themselves seem more audacious and death-defying. Take slope style skiing — the rails and jumps, the sheer moxie needed to fling oneself down a mountain.

Or take figure skating, my favorite winter event. I watched hours of it over the weekend. I learned that the American men’s phenom, Ilia Melinin, grew up 20 minutes from my house, attended a local high school. Has everyone else in the world already heard of this man, who’s called the Quad God for all the quadruple axels, toe loops and salchows he can do? Probably!

No matter. He — and all his compatriots from the U.S., Japan, Italy, Georgia and Canada in the team finals — are all the better for being new to me.

The more inflexible my body becomes, the more I must exercise to keep it in working order, the more I admire youthful bones, muscles and tendons. These are treasures you do not recognize have until you do not have them. And Olympic athletes have them in spades.

Going for Gold

Going for Gold

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The Olympics end today. What a run it’s been! From the rainy opening with the torch carried across the rooftops of Paris to the final games and heats, there have been thrills for sports fan — and for couch potatoes, too. 

It’s enough to make me tackle my chores with Olympic ardor. I already do my own form of race-walking, though with significantly less hip swivel. But yesterday I found myself vacuuming, cleaning and doing yard work with medals in mind. 

A bronze in dusting, a silver in weeding, and a gold in baking. It’s not a 3:51-minute 1,500 … but it’s something.

Pee-Wee Olympics

Pee-Wee Olympics

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Into this week of lake and family come scenes from across the seas: Strong-shouldered swimmers who wiggle like dolphins. Graceful gymnasts who defeat gravity with nerve and style. 

The children imitate them, do somersaults and dance on coffee tables. It all starts here, the advertisements say. 

I think, yes, maybe it does … with renewed appreciation for the families of those who twirl and swim and dive. 

Random Paddle

Random Paddle

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Since we live less than a mile from the border of Camp Reston (my name for this suburb during the summer) and kayaks are available to rent on Lake Anne, a few miles beyond that, taking a random paddle some weekend has been on my list of summer things to do since May. 

Yesterday we were finally able to make good on it, with temps not yet 90 and rain not yet falling. 

What a revelation to kayak among vistas that I usually stroll through. There were the rose mallow, from the other side of the shoreline, the watery one. And there were the backyards and porches of houses I usually only see from the front. 

It was an exercise in perspective-shifting. And it was exercise, period. Both are necessary. Both are good.

Camp Reston

Camp Reston

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On a walk my first day back I marveled at the transformation. When I left for vacation, school was still in session and early heat was still battling spring chill. But now it is full-on summer. 

On the lake, fishermen wait patiently for a nibble. Children cavort on canoes and paddle boards. Sunbathers turn their towels toward the sun. Shade is deep and wide; the walker seeks it when she can. 

The place I live no longer feels like a suburb. It feels like a camp. 

Missing the Derby

Missing the Derby

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For the first time since 1945 there was no Kentucky Derby on the first Saturday in May. There were no thoroughbreds thundering down the back stretch at Churchill Downs. There were, I hear, some fans — many wearing fancy hats — who couldn’t stay away. They appeared, crowned and masked, to traipse around the track and take photos of vacant betting windows and empty paddocks.

We’ve lost many of our traditional markers this spring. No tournament basketball in March, no first day of baseball in April. And now … no Derby in May — to be followed by no Preakness or Belmont, either, at least for the time being.

Of all the pain, sadness and disruption brought on by this pandemic this is hardly the greatest. But for this transplanted Kentuckian, who has never missed a Derby either live (twice) or televised (every other time), it was a loss indeed.

World Series Champs!

World Series Champs!

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Washington, D.C., is waking up late today, pushing snooze at least twice and downing an extra cup of coffee. But as one of the bleary-eyed ones, I can say … it was totally worth it. It was worth it to see the Washington Nationals beat the Houston Astros to win the World Series, an improbable, come-from-behind victory like so many of the others the Nats have achieved this season.

But this victory holds no future trial.  The team has gone from a 19-31 record in May to World Series champs in October. They have nothing left to prove.  But as the oldest team in the league and the come-from-behind specialists, they have something to teach us about determination, drive and never saying never.

What they’ve achieved most of all, though, is to bring us a hometown pride that’s hard to come by in the Nation’s Capital. We’re no longer the “Swamp,” the seat of dysfunctional government. We’re the home of a team with loyal supporters (my neighbors have been season ticket holders since 2005) and a fan base that transcends partisan divides.

Events like this help people feel like they belong. And more than anything else, it’s the belonging I celebrate today. 

Joy in Mudville

Joy in Mudville

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I have to laugh at myself every time I write a sports post, which has been more recently than usual lately. But it’s certainly worth a shout-out that the Nationals have won the National League Championship and are going to the World Series!

It was only two weeks ago that I was gushing about the wildcard berth D.C. had won in the National League playoffs. Now they are the National League champs!

Of course, their next assignment is a difficult one. Even I’ve heard of the Astro’s prowess. But for this town, with its losing football team, impeachment proceedings and month-and-a-half-long rain drought, this is very good news indeed.

It looks like rain today … and there’s joy in Mudville, too.

(Nats Park photo: courtesy Wikipedia)

Sports Writing

Sports Writing

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After reading about the Washington National’s stirring comeback to win a wild card berth in the National League play-offs, I had a thought. It probably won’t last, but it’s how I’m feeling today. And that is that, in my next life, I’d like to be a sports writer. Of course, that would require me to play and understand sports. But this will be my next life, so I may be stronger and more coordinated.

I’d like to be a sportswriter because it’s the one place in the newspaper where you can let fly (pardon the pun) with a description or two. Lyricism is not frowned on, nor is sentimentality.  You can write long and you can even write purple and it will not necessarily be edited out.

Furthermore, there is the theory (which seems truer to me through the years), that sport mirrors life  to an uncanny degree, and that in writing about it one is actually chronicling human nature with all its warts and halos. An infinitely rich and varied topic, to be sure.

But since it is not yet my other life (I’m thankful to say), I will have to content myself with reading about sports — rather than writing about them.

(Photo: Wikipedia)