At the U.S. ski team’s summer training facility last month, Matt Chojnacki did something no freestyle skier had ever done before: He stepped into his skis, hurtled down a plastic-coated approach ramp at 35 miles an hour, shot up a steep, one-story jump, launched himself some sixty feet into the…
Behold the ancient rituals of autumn. The sting of just-rubbed wintergreen oil catches in the nostrils. Two tall quarterbacks kneel facing each other, soft-tossing spirals, while a lean wide receiver yanks on a pair of black Adidas sport gloves, then balls them into fists. Weariness mingles with anticipation as a…
When does an athlete stop being an athlete and simply start being a lunatic? The question of where to draw the line occurred to me a few weeks ago when a friend and I drove up to Leadville late on a Saturday night to watch the finish of the Leadville…
If Tiger Woods knows what’s good for him, he’ll keep an eye on the Wongluekiet twins. That’s because ten, twelve, maybe fifteen years from now, Aree Song Wongluekiet or his brother, Naree Song, might sneak up on Tiger and snatch away first-place money at, say, the $35 million Arnold Palmer…
To an outsider looking in, Shane Swartz was on top of the world in the spring of 1997. Twenty-one years-old, handsome, polite, a servant of God with a body as tight as a drum skin, he was living the life he’d always been instructed to envision for himself. He’d begun…
Itching for a fight? Put a pipefitter from the Bronx and a cabbie from San Francisco on adjacent bar stools and ask which team will win the World Series. Or get a couple of lifelong Broncos fans going about where the worm must turn this season — in Brian’s brain,…
In the nine and a half decades since Teddy Roosevelt was president and the Ford Model T was introduced, only two American men — both of whom, as it happens, live in Boulder — have won gold medals in international marathon competition. Most people, non-runners included, could peg the first…
When new Nuggets owner Stan Kroenke held Dan Issel’s big feet to the fire last week, any casual observer of Denver’s beleaguered NBA franchise had to wonder: What is Issel to do? Wave a wand and transform his motley collection of slew-footed children and graying journeymen into the Los Angeles…
Monty Doiel had his first inkling of trouble as he turned right at the end of Mercaderes Street onto Estafeta. The corner is hard and angular, difficult under the best of circumstances. Doiel had hoped his new black Nike Air ACG cross-trainers with the reverse-tread grip would provide an advantage…
Hall of Famer Robin Roberts was once asked to recall his greatest thrill in an All-Star game. The Phillies’ estimable right-hander answered immediately: “When Mickey Mantle bunted with the wind blowing out in Crosley Field.” Your Colorado Rockies should be so lucky. The recent eleven-game losing streak that likely spelled…
Olympic sports purists — i.e., those who stay up until 4 a.m. to watch the live telecasts of synchronized swimming, rhythm gymnastics, curling and badminton every four years — will be gratified to learn that plans are proceeding apace to include the game of contract bridge (and not contact bridge,…
It was with high hopes and a glowing sense of community purpose that Ryan Mullaney began this past high school baseball season as head coach of the woeful Evergreen Cougars. A former standout athlete himself — he’d dabbled with a pro football career before being cut by the Minnesota Vikings…
The Colorado Division of Wildlife recently announced that it will issue more elk tags this year than ever before. A spokesman for the agency says that 106,000 hunters — roughly one for every two elk in Colorado — will receive permission to hunt elk in the state in one of…
KKK Investments. Good morning. Can I interest you in fifty shares of Stars and Bars Flag and Pennant? No? Then how about Foreigner Detection Systems? If your mailman has relatives in Peru, or that fat monkey of a woman sitting next to you on the bus is from the former…
There are things you know — and then there are things you know. The difference is everything. In 1969, while he was in Germany attending his first international track-and-field competition, Frank Shorter roomed with a hammer-thrower, a man of immense proportions. One night the roommate began bouncing off the walls,…
How would this country’s motorheads react if the next three Daytona 500 winners were Romanians driving Russian race cars? What if an NFL expansion team from Amsterdam or Tokyo built a Super Bowl Dynasty? How many tickets would U.S. baseball nuts buy if the World Series featured the Toronto Blue…
It’s springtime in the Rockies, the time of year when a young first-term governor’s fancy turns to education reform, gun control through legitimate legislative means and…high-stakes pigeon racing. Or so I’d heard — about the pigeon racing, anyway (the other stuff seemed reasonably true). “That’s right,” says Richard Ott Sr.,…
The favorite in this Saturday’s Kentucky Derby is a regally bred but half-crazy colt named Fusaichi Pegasus, and if you can pronounce his name, you’re doing better than most of the bourbon-soaked horse gentry decorating the saloons of Louisville. To be sure, Foos-ey-EE-chee, American-bred and Japanese-owned, is quite a runner:…
If you look hard enough, there are plenty of similarities between a car dealership and a strip club. For starters, both rely heavily on sex to sell. (If you’ve ever been to an auto show, the comparison becomes even clearer.) You’ll probably find more pinkie rings per person in either…
In 2000, life among the Colorado Rockies remains a pennant or so short of bliss. National League batting champ Larry Walker recently went to Las Vegas, he reports, where he lost not only his money but his swing. Six games into the season he was hitting an un-Walkerlike .133. “Oh,…
Basketball players and boxers, in particular, like to talk about how they get no respect. What this usually means is that the athlete allegedly being disrespected (see also: “dissed”) feels his opponent is not showing proper regard for the dissee’s sporting skill. Denver-area curlers, though, have a much more basic…
Late in the second round Friday night, native son Stevie Johnston’s left eyelid was gushing a torrent. He knew it was time. Circling left, he caught Julio Alvarez with a stiff right hook that startled the Mexican, then shot a straight left to the chin that sealed Julio’s fate. “I…
