Saul Raisin will return to the peloton

tonyzackery

Coming to the defense of one of the greatest all-time warriors in the history of the sweet science - Evander Holyfield...the man who is "dumb as a fox" and laughing all the way to the bank...

Bro Deal

Gotta give props to Holyfield. But he really should not be fighting today. The last I read he had made about $240 milltion during his career. I am sure all his children and ex-wives have siphoned some of that off, but he is stilll very well off. There is no reason he needs to still be fighting. Older fighters do not handle head shots as well as younger fighters, and Holyfield has slowed down a lot.

I thought he should have retired after the second Lewis fight. That was sad. I think he could see the openings but was no longer able to pull the trigger. The Holyfield of three years earlier would have walked through Lewis.

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"You are like the wind and I like the lion. You form the tempest. The sand stings my eyes and the ground is parched. I roar in defiance but you do not hear. But between us there is a difference. I, like the lion, must remain in my place. While you like the wind will never know yours." -- Mulay Hamid El Raisuli, Lord of the Riff, Sultan to the Berbers, Last of the Barbary Pirates

Crankyfeet

The fact that these guys can come back though, reinforces in the public's mind that boxing bouts are contrived shams. They might be able to fill an arena with nostalgists and Holyfield supporters, and people might pay to watch for the novelty value, but the sport's brand-name and goodwill is eroded by the event/stunt. It is a classic business error when short-term positives are obvious (the take) but the long-term negatives (people being turned off) are not obvious.

Its like the insurance company who goes through the phone book cold-calling and harassing people - making one sale every 50 phone calls. At the end of the phone book they have 30,000 sales (yippee!!!), and 1.5 million people who hate the company (um...wasn't taking notice of that).

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Gregers

[QUOTE=Crankyfeet]Actually you're right again. I forgot what the teacher said regarding why we had to speak so badly. It was that it reinforces the feelings of English superiority so that you don't mind as much that we are whipping your butts in most sports.[/QUOTE On reflection, I think that your final, deeply wounding remark is not necessarily accurate.Undoubtedly, it is widely regarded as a naturally ordained fact by those born under the Southern Cross. Like most folk here I actually have a pretty healthy regard for Australian sporting prowess. The Country's very high levels of sports participation is undoubtedly something to be admired. and should be a source of genuine national pride. Conversely, in the debit ledger it seems that for many Australians (and this is not directed at anyone on here), their self image and identity is defined entirely by an inflated notion of national sporting supremacy. As a generalisation, what was once good natured cockiness seems to have morphed into increasingly strident boastfulness.
We have a similar, albeit more narrowly focused disorder here. There are multitudes of misguided half-wits who grotesquely view our over-hyped football team as some kind of repository of national virility. God help us. Mercifully, that particular conceit has been temporarily deflated.
There are very few, true World sports that enable direct comparisons of the two countries to be made on an international scale. Confining the argument to male sports: in Football- even when we repeatedly under perform-we are plainly superior. In Tennis, where you have been historically outstanding and we have been feeble, I think it is the case that, unbelievably, we very recently had more top 50 ranked players than you. Admittedly, the current rankings for both of us are on the whole pretty poor.
Swimming-obviously no contest. We're so much better. Possibly!
Track and Field-since the incomparable Herb Elliot it is arguable that you have not had a single stellar performer. Maybe Ron Clarke-but the lack of big medals detracts. Peter Norman, Rick Mitchell, Rob Castella, Deke Clayton and others were undeniably good but judged by broad criteria none of them were greats, whereas we've had quite a few.
Boxing-we've had and currently have lots of World champions, whereas you have had a limited number of really big name fighters. That's genuine champions, not the Bruno/Harrison alphabet soup, joke variety.
Motor sports-plenty of F1 champs here. You've got Alan Jones. Oh, nearly forgot Black Jack Brabham. Similar levels of success on two wheels.
Golf-probably evenly matched.
Rowing-I think that we have far more crews making finals, though both have had outstanding practitioners.
Cycling-pretty close. Road to you, track to us.
Olympic Sports-Australia seems to be inordinately proud of its record here and it is pretty good. Much better than us in recent years. However, don't forget that not all that long ago, at Montreal, Australia came away with one solitary Silver medal. This provoked a fair degree of national angst and an admirable determination that it should not happen again. You put it right while we bumbled along for decades before taking pro-active measures.
In recent Olympiads Australia has regarded itself as something of a sporting powerhouse. On closer examination, its Gold medal tally in individual Games was not significantly greater than unheralded countries such as Spain, Hungary, Cuba and Japan. Take away your regular hauls from the pool and the final result would not look quite so hot.
At the Commonwealth Games Australia's high participation levels give it a big edge in a wide range of minority sports where opposition is mainly fairly weak. Nevertheless, on medals per head of population, outstandingly successful.
Match Sailing-a big recent success story for us, fwiw.
Equestrianism- a draw. I make no claim as to whether our nags are better than yours. The less said about dogs the better, as misunderstandings might lead to offence being taken..
In many team sports Australia does excel. They are incomparable at Cricket-though they are competing against only a handful of countries. Ditto Rugby League, whose major participating countries can be counted on one hand even after the amputation of various fingers. In the globally much bigger code of RU, the historic and recent record shows us to be very marginally superior, though credit must go to Oz for punching well above its weight. Hockey is a 'gimme' for you.
In Winter Sports both have had occasional successes, although it is not the natural environment of either.
There are probably a number of other sports at which Aus excels but which we have very little interest in. You know, dwarf throwing and the like.
I might be well be wrong on some of these analyses and those more familiar with Aussie sport might be able to advance a more persuasive case on its behalf. I think it fair to say that in the round we are both pretty decent . The claim- routinely and on occasion bombastically advanced by many of its more jingoistic followers-that Australia is massively superior at sport to the UK (and practically everybody else) is not altogether justified. That doesn't mean that Australia is usually anything less than excellent in most sporting endeavours, it is more that you are not quite as all conquering as you sometimes like to think you are.

Crankyfeet

I agree with everything you say. It also makes me cringe when I listen to typical Australian rhetoric regarding sporting prowess. And it is only concentrated in a few sports. Mostly because Australians ignore ones they are not good at. The national psyche is so wrapped up in the country's sporting successes, that if we went back to a barren period like the mid-seventies, the country would go into an economic depression, of its own making.

But having worked with a lot of English people during the nineties, it was obvious then that England particularly was suffering from the negative effect to national psyche. The whippings in cricket, rugby, and the Olympic sports in that period were depressing the country to the point of national cynicism. It seemed obvious that if the country got things sorted out on the sports field, it could help the psyche of the whole country.

Really, Australia's rise from the obscurity of 1976 to holding its own now, could be mostly attributed to the government investment in sporting academies and institutes, which England procrastinated on implementing, perhaps because the political will wasn't there. I think culturally, England still tends to view sport as an amateur pastime, relatively speaking, even in professional sports, and gives a lot more emphasis than Australia does to culture and the arts.

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Gregers

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You have nailed it. These things tend to be cyclical in nature. I, too, recall Australia's barren period and remember Kim Hughes's hillariously lachrymose response to yet another thrashing. I actually think that it is to our credit that we are still reasonably cynical about sporting endeavour and are able to mock ourselves. One of our piss poor Cricket teams went around Australia with the imfamous epithet 'can't bat, can't bowl, can't field' following them. It became a badge of pride when they proceded to annihilate the much lauded opposition.
But things are changing. With greater professionalism and more public money infiltrating all areas of sport, the public is less willing to treat Kipling's 'two imposter's' of victory and defeat as just the same. Naturally, the press whips up the hysteria. Its apotheosis came a couple of years ago after a football defeat to Portugal (you would think that we would get used to it). The clown's who pour all their limited emotional content into a simple game of football rampaged across the country and destroyed anything remotely linked to Portugal that they could find. Of course, being morons it was the poor old Spanish that also had to bear the brunt of their misplaced rage.
Lord knows why people cannot keep a sense of proportion. Sure, I'll support our sports teams in most things but I hope I never make the mistake of thinking that these 'flanneled fools and muddied oafs ' actually represent me or my country in any meaningful way.

cyclingheroes

Saul gets married with Aleeza Zbriskie (sister of..) tomorrow.

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jhuskey

And they think racing is too dangerous

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Whenever I can't get excited about riding I just fantasize about someone else's bike.

cyclingheroes

The Cyclingheroes website will have a relaunch in 2008. One of the new writers in our team will be Saul Raisin.

An interview with Saul:

Saul Raisin: "I need to find new dreams to follow"
http://www.cyclingheroes.info/id1004.html

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jhuskey

Thumbs up!

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Whenever I can't get excited about riding I just fantasize about someone else's bike.

Frigo's Luggage

Just bookmarked your page. Good luck.

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We are all made of stars.

Lucy 7

A class act just got classier!

cyclingheroes

Saul Raisin to appear at Nytro

http://www.cyclingheroes.info/id1115.html

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Bro Deal

Sounds like Raisin is going to race a triathlon.

http://www.saulraisin.com/sitemain/...ntpage&Itemid=1

__________________
"You are like the wind and I like the lion. You form the tempest. The sand stings my eyes and the ground is parched. I roar in defiance but you do not hear. But between us there is a difference. I, like the lion, must remain in my place. While you like the wind will never know yours." -- Mulay Hamid El Raisuli, Lord of the Riff, Sultan to the Berbers, Last of the Barbary Pirates