Rob's Sports, Fitness & Science Blog
Entries Tagged as 'Major Events'
The 2012 Australian Tennis Open starts today, and is set to offer the highest prize money in the history of Grand Slam tennis around the world. The total prize pool will be A$26 million, with the men’s and women’s champions taking home a record A$2.3 million (US$2.18 million) each. Does that sound excessive to you? It may be because I am not a great tennis fan, but I cannot see why we need to give them that much. As it is a grand slam event, you don’t need to offer large amounts to entice players to come and play. The winner of any tennis grand slam event will probably boost their off court earnings more than that anyway by being more marketable. Some of you probably will not agree with my next comment (and that’s OK). Another thing that bugs me is that the event organizers have decided that both the men’s and women’s champions will earn the same amount (in 2007 Wimbledon decided to do the same), despite more interest in the men’s side of the tournament, with longer more entertaining games, and consequently better revenue raising potential. I’ll still be watching the men’s final, and afterwards I hope they can give a little back of their millions to the grass roots of their sport.
Related Pages: Australian Open, Tennis
Tags: Australia·australian open·grand slam·prize money·Tennis
I was compiling a list of rugby union national team names and was surprised to find out that Ireland and Scotland don’t really have one, and that England’s name of the Red and Whites is also not commonly used. Here in the southern hemisphere the terms Wallabies and All Blacks are practically the official names of the national teams of Australia and New Zealand. However, have you ever heard of these teams that are in the current Rugby World Cup: Bati (Fiji), The Brave Blossoms (Japan), Welwitschias (Namibia), and the Oaks (Romainia)?
Related Pages: Rugby Union, Rugby National Team Names, Rugby World Cup
Tags: nicknames·rugby·World Cup
Paul the ‘Psychic’ Octopus, also known as the ‘Oracle of Oberhausen’ and ‘Pulpo Paul’, is a resident of the Oberhausen Sea Life aquarium. He became a celebrity after a 100% success rate at predicting the winners of eight World Cup matches – all of Germany’s games and the final between Spain and The Netherlands. I want to go out on a (octopus) limb, and say that it was all due to chance. I know it may sound far-fetched and very unlikely, but maybe he was just lucky and was able to select the winning teams through chance. No psychic abilities, no hand of God, and no conspiracies – just luck. A lot of luck.
Tags: betting·FIFA World Cup·football·Germany·octopus·soccer
If you have been focused on the Football World Cup, you may not have noticed that after three days of playing, the longest tennis match in history has just finished – what a marathon. The match was played between between American John Isner and Frenchman Nicolas Mahut at the Wimbledon Championships, starting on June 22 and finishing on the 24th. The match eventually took 11 hours and 5 minutes, spread over three days. The match was won by Isner 6-4, 3-6, 6-7 (7), 7-6 (3), 70-68. The fifth set was the longest set in history as determined by both duration and number of games and the set itself would have broken the previous longest match record of 6 hours 33 minutes. The US Open is the only of the Grand Slams to use a tie breaker in the final set on the singles, the other tournaments use an advantage set, meaning they keep playing until there is a winner by two games clear. As you can see, this can mean a game can go on indefinitely. I hope the others don’t follow the US example and remove the advantage set, as we could miss out of such dramatic games as this.
Tags: grand slam·Tennis·Wimbledon
With the World’s greatest sporting event currently well on the way in South Africa, it may be surprising that this is my first post about it. It would not be surprising if you knew that I support Australia, and up until today they have not done anything to write home about. After getting up at 2am this morning to watch them play Serbia, I am much happier and very impressed with their performance. Although they won today, they just missed out on progressing to the knockout round. They did us proud, playing great football and giving everything for their country. Missing out of the final 16 is no great disappointment, the Aussies have played above expectations. I cannot say the same about the French team, and cannot imagine the public out cry at their team’s performance. There is always drama at the World Cup, and that is why we are captivated. A few more sleepless nights to come!
Tags: FIFA·football·soccer·World Cup
Did you hear about Ghana’s first ever participant at the Winter Olympics, Kwame Nkrumah-Acheampong (nicknamed the ‘Snow Leopard’)? He competed in the men’s alpine skiing slalom event, finishing in 47th (2nd last) place. I did, but I did not hear about who won. It is another reminder of why I don’t get too excited about the Winter Olympics. The media think that it is more important to fill up their coverage time with human interest stories rather than the sporting results. As a sporting fan I watch sport to see the action, the competitiveness and the champions. At each Olympics the same thing seems to happen – the media outlets focus their telecast towards the common man, non sports fan, who are more interested in gossip and drama.
Tags: Ghana·Winter Olympics