Socrates has been playing and watching sport for decades and one of the (many) things that has mystified and annoyed him from a young age is the way that some teams, (usually basketball teams), emblazon their uniforms with their team name in text. He doesn't get it. And he worries about where this tradition might be heading! When I was a young pup playing hooker for the … [Read more...]
Mysteries of Surfing
I’ve been trying to learn how to surf now for around thirty years. I like to surf. No. Let’s take that a step further. I love to surf. Do I call myself a surfer? No. A surfer is an athlete who has acquired a specific qualifying level of competence and skill at the act of surfing. I am one person who has not achieved that requisite standard... but, despite loving the act of … [Read more...]
RITUAL: BEING CHAIRED UP THE BEACH
Now that the 2022 WSL World Championship season is over it is probably an appropriate time to revisit a story published by Chas Smith in online journal BeachGrit a few years back. One would think that, after his scathing critique of this ludicrous practice, that winners of surfing contests would have put their feet down by now and refused to be made to look like a staggering … [Read more...]
Training mysteries in the times of COVID
Strange and mysterious stuff happens during Covid lockdown. Even stranger stuff happens when attempting to train under Covid lockdown conditions. A good example of the mysterious times we live in happened to me yesterday. I turned up at my local lap pool, in the morning, ready to knock out two kilometres of freestyle. The sign on the door demanded, not surprisingly, that … [Read more...]
Outstanding (but not well-known) sporting achievement
Lifelong surfer and former Manly (Sydney Northern Beaches) resident, Greg Mossop, is possibly the only surfer in the world who has dropped-in on two world champions on the one wave! He freely admits that many surfers can boast that they have dropped in on more than one world champion in their surfing lives, but it is the fact that he managed the feat on the one wave that makes … [Read more...]