On a rainy Friday in late August, the Evergreen Cougars’ senior-level midget football team prepares for its final pre-season scrimmage. In eight days, the team is scheduled to open its season against the feared South Jeffco Gators, winners of last year’s coveted Carnation Bowl, and a feeling of uneasiness hangs…
Danica Patrick sizes up her passenger through black wraparound shades and quickly lets him know who’s in charge: “All right. Buckle your belt.” One metallic click and twenty seconds later, we’re screaming down the long back straightaway of the Grand Prix of Denver road course at 110 miles an hour,…
It’s been a banner year for very tough guys. Rulon Gardner, the massive farm-boy grappler from Wyoming, has overcome frostbite in his big toe to wrestle again. Tyler Hamilton managed to finish fourth in the Tour de France — riding almost the entire race with a broken collarbone. And then,…
By nature, baseball players tend to be brass-bound optimists. Tuned to the long haul, they keep their hitting shoes laced tight amid soul-killer losing streaks, try to ignore bad omens and play through pain. No single win ever gets them too high, and they take a couple of losses with…
Nancy Canning and her two daughters, Mallory and Erin, who have driven nine hours to Denver from Kansas City just for this event, wait in the vast expanse of parking lots that surround Invesco Field at Mile High. It’s early Sunday morning, and the highlight of the Canning family vacation…
Hold on. This is not the time to ship Kobe Bryant off to the Big House. Not yet. Why, the armies of high-priced lawyers have barely begun to sprinkle ’round their business cards. The energy-drink bottlers and the $200-a-pair sneaker people and the weavers of jockstraps have not yet cleared…
It began, as so many historically significant ideas have, with a vision as grand as it was unique, a lot of sweat and hard work and, perhaps, plenty of hallucinogenic drugs. “Seventeen years ago,” recalls Byron Swezy nostalgically. “Dropping acid and riding mountain bikes. It started as a drug-induced mountain-bike…
When I was coming of political age, in the late 1970s, there were important decisions to be made. Learning what adults meant when they used complicated words like “filibuster” and “the Senate,” for example. And, of course, deciding which political party to join. After carefully researching the Democratic and Republican…
The apocalypse may not be upon merry old Wimbledon just yet, but there are signs: This year, some of the gentlemen are wearing sleeveless shirts, of all unspeakable garments — an offense to sartorial standards unthinkable in Don Budge’s day, or even in John McEnroe’s. There’s been a distressing row…
There’s a moment in his college career that senior Tom Preissing won’t forget. “It was one of the better feelings I’ve had in my life,” explains the captain of Colorado College’s highly ranked hockey team. “I can look back and say, ‘I did that.'” So, did this moment come when…
If we can believe Carmelo Anthony, a nineteen-year-old college dropout with some fancy ideas in his head, the Denver Nuggets are about to achieve greatness. This will happen soon after he, Carmelo Anthony, laces up his sneakers and becomes a Nugget. In fact, Carmelo believes he — not some overhyped…
On a recent morning, former University of Colorado football coach Bill McCartney and Derek Hines stop by a new suburban course just north and west of Denver to play a little golf. Fortunately, they’re not playing together. Instead, they’re lined up on opposite ends of the driving range. This is…
Every broken-down horseplayer has a hero story to tell, and it never hurts to listen. You could be draining an ice-cold martini in the bar at Siro’s, up at Saratoga, when Frankie Bales sits down to describe the time he parlayed the rail speed at Monmouth into a $12,000 pick…
Ask a baseball player why he plays, and he’ll tell you it’s because he loves the game, always has. Football players are usually driven by a passion for their sport, too. “When I stop enjoying the game,” the running back with aching knees will say, “I’ll know it’s time to…
It’s a very long road from the tricky little S-curve at Denver Indoor Kart Racing to the famous Tobacconist’s Corner at the Grand Prix of Monaco. But if passion were the only fuel you needed to make the trip, young Chris Clark would already be there — shrieking through the…
“We are a sports, entertainment and culture company,” said Kroenke Executive Vice President David Ehrlich, who announced details of a ten-year contract. Kroenke Sports Enterprises also owns the Colorado Avalanche, the Denver Nuggets and the Pepsi Center. — from a story describing Kroenke’s recent deal with the Colorado Ballet, Rocky…
Make the odds eight to five that the only decent team playing at the Pepsi Center next season will be armed with those funny sticks with the nets on the end. In its first season, the Colorado Mammoth proved to be a tough-as-nails contender in the indoor lacrosse wars, and…
Every professional athlete and Fortune 500 assistant vice president with a million or two in chump change has a home gym tucked somewhere between the gourmet kitchen and home theater. So you figure a couple of U.S. record-holders for power-lifting would have a pretty sweet set of iron, too. And…
If some of the cowboys wanted him bucked off, they kept it under their Resistols. If there was envy, you didn’t see it. Fact is, in the hours leading up to something called “The Bud Light Million-Dollar Bounty (presented by Ford Trucks)” — aka “The Richest Eight Seconds in Sporting…
As is the case with so many sports stories, the end of this one is the least interesting part. Two months ago, Susan Yemm, who had managed the books for the Boulder Volleyball Club for the past couple of years, was arrested by Lafayette police and charged with embezzling from…
Bobby DeGeorge saw his first Opening Day in 1954, at the age of nine, when his father took him and his brother to New York’s fabled Polo Grounds to watch the Giants play Pittsburgh. DeGeorge doesn’t remember who won. He doesn’t remember what his hero, Willie Mays, just back from…
This past winter, Wendy Hawthorne stopped by the city of Denver’s parks and recreation department, as she does every year. “I’d like to rent a baseball field,” she said. “How old are the boys?” the man asked her. “It’s for women,” she replied. “Then you need a softball field,” he…
