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Nick Sweeney

Listed below are comments made by Nick Sweeney between Saturday, 2nd August 2008 and Saturday, 23rd August 2008.

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Why gym doesn't fix it for volleyball 04:58am on 23 Aug 2008 "Beach is the 5-a-side football of volleyball."

No: beach is the 3-and-in of volleyball. Having endured it every night in primetime on NBC, I am heartily sick of it, and the knock-on disrespect accorded to the athletics.

The bikini-only rule was only expanded this year after complaints from an Indian team. The men and women representing Georgia were bought in from Brazil. The competition was set up to provide Americans with flesh and gold medals.

Indoor volleyball actually has a shape and character to it -- but when college players in the US want to make money by having sponsors' names on their backsides, they head to the beach.
Is it time for a really modern pentathlon? 04:37am on 23 Aug 2008 "Who, apart from a few fortunate youngsters, ever really gets the chance to combine these now very arbitrary skills?"

But you could say the same about access to rowing and sailing. Most British modern pentathletes compete through university clubs, which mitigates some of the class elements.

Why drop it? One of the things that makes the Olympics special is that rewards people who compete out of the spotlight for 3.75 years out of four. There are ways that it shouldn't strive for relevance, and this is one of them.

I agree about squash, though. It was shortlisted for 2012, as a potential replacement for softball or baseball, but failed the two-thirds vote along with karate and rugby sevens. (It takes a bare majority to stay on the calendar, and two-thirds to get on.) Two nagging problems: 1. it's considered difficult to stage and broadcast; 2. the Americans don't play it, preferring racquetball.
Losing to the Brits 06:20am on 19 Aug 2008 It was Roy and HG who came up with Fatso the Fat-Arsed Wombat, the 'Battler's Prince', as the unofficial mascot of Sydney 2000.

They're Aussies. (The podcast is recommended, btw.) They offer up (and satirise) the mixture of intense pride and respect and irrationality and parochialism and magnanimity and sour-grapes that makes up the great tapestry of sporting culture in Australia.

So let's push past the cliches, make a date for London in 2012, and redirect our common scorn towards the Americans, their all-beach-volleyball coverage, and their wonky US-at-the-top medal tables.
Pietersen will bring a new style of leadership 10:24am on 05 Aug 2008 I'm sure that the press is lining up its Botham comparisons right now.

The best thing about Vaughan's resignation is that it allows him to recover his batting form with Yorkshire. I'm not convinced that KP's temperament is suited to the captaincy on a long-term basis, but as long as his form doesn't suffer, it has the potential to provide a catalyst for the rest of the side. No way to judge until the series in India's done.
Pietersen fails to complete rescue operation 11:40am on 02 Aug 2008 "you have to accept it as part of the package."

Why? It's shouldn't be a zero-sum game. The ability to change tempo and bat according to the state of the game is what separates the greats from the merely good. It's a strawman to argue that putting Pietersen on an ego diet turns him into Boycott, and it's hardly a defence of his abilities to suggest that he can't play any other way.

Now, there's a decent argument that flamboyance and occasional recklessness is okay at 5 or 6 if you have solid performers further up the batting order. Botham had that role in his prime, and Flintoff has done the same more recently. But the fact that KP's in at 4 shows both the deficiencies at the top of the order, and KP's limitations when a *Test* innings is required of him.

Anyway, any chance of putting up audio from Friday's lunch conversation with Mark Steel? Hilarious.

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Nick Sweeney