The Blog of Record

Haddadi has already received a warm welcome from a Clippers announcer: “You’re sure it’s not Borat’s older brother?”

While international athletic authorities are trying to find out whether the South African runner Caster Semenya is indeed a woman, as she claims to be, here are ten of the previous Olympic gender scandals, nine from track & field and one from judo.

From Locusta.

IOC logic: women’s boxing yes, women’s ski jumping no.

The Pittsburgh Steelers’ star just isn’t a big fan of Washington:

James Harrison plans to pass on another trip to the White House with the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Harrison, the NFL Defensive Player of the Year, says he’ll skip the Super Bowl champion’s visit to the White House to meet President Barack Obama on Thursday, just as he did when the Steelers were honored by President George W. Bush in June 2006.

“I don’t feel the need to go, actually,” Harrison told Pittsburgh station WTAE-TV. “I don’t feel like it’s that big a deal to me.”

He’s treating Obama exactly like he treated Bush – can’t say this about the White House press corps.

Lechuza Caracas polo team owner, Venezuelan banker Victor Vargas:

“People write stories about me saying I have a Ferrari, a plane, a yacht. But it’s not true. I’ve got three planes, two yachts, six houses. I’ve been rich all my life!” In 2004, his daughter Margarita wed Luis Alfonso de Borbón, a cousin of Spain’s King Juan Carlos, great-grandson of the late Spanish dictator Francisco Franco and a legitimate heir to the non-existent throne of France.

He has thrived under Hugo Chávez, which also tells a lot about him.

Mark Kriegel on what makes LeBron unusual – and so good:

The most amazing stat in pro basketball?

That would be 12-30-84, LeBron James’ birthday.

At 24, he’s more than the best player in the league (not to mention, the rightful MVP). He’s a new kind of player, an archetype never before seen. And his physical dimensions — 6-foot-8, about 270 pounds — might be the least of it. LeBron James is blessed with a preternaturally wise basketball sense. What’s more, he has what so many pro athletes come to lack, people skills. Something about LeBron James makes his teammates want to be better than they are.

Consider the league’s second-best player, Kobe Bryant. A couple of years ago, Bryant became famously frustrated with a rookie named Andrew Bynum. He went so far as to vent his frustrations to a guy with a cell-phone video camera. Bryant was 29, a veteran of 11 seasons.

Now contrast that episode to James, already playing for a team without much firepower when he lost his shooting guard, Delonte West, to depression.

“Whatever you’ve got to do, I want you to know that we’ll be right here, waiting for you,” James, then 23, told him.

I wonder what they gave these horses:

(CNN) — Fourteen thoroughbred horses dropped dead in a mysterious scene Sunday before a polo match near West Palm Beach, Florida, officials said.

State and local veterinary teams are trying to figure out what happened at the International Polo Club Palm Beach in Wellington, Florida, as team Lechuza Caracas prepared to compete in a U.S. Open match.

Two horses initially collapsed, and as vets and team officials scrambled to revive them, five others became dizzy, said Tim O’Connor, spokesman for the polo club.

“A total of seven died on our property,” O’Connor told CNN. Seven other horses died en route to a Wellington horse farm and a veterinary hospital.

The cause of the deaths has not been determined, and necropsies and blood tests were underway, he said.

Something tells me the tests will find some interesting substances that were supposed to make the horses run a bit livelier. Things like erythropoietin (EPO) can kill if overdosed.

Update 1: It’s now 21 dead horses, and a veterinarian suspects sabotage.

Update 2: The horses died of heart failure possibly caused by a toxin in their feed, vitamins or supplements:

Dr. Scott Swerdlin, a veterinarian at Palm Beach Equine Clinic near the polo grounds, treated one of the sick horses. He said it appeared the animals died of heart failure caused by some kind of toxin that could have been in tainted food, vitamins or supplements or some combination of all three that caused a toxic reaction.

“A combination of something with an error in something that was given to these horses caused this toxic reaction,” Swerdlin told reporters.

It may take days or weeks to get the results of toxicology tests that could identify the toxin, he said.

Another veterinarian who was at the scene said something triggered heart failure among the horses.

“Well clearly, it’s an intoxication, clearly there’s some sort of a poison,” Dr. James Belden told NBC’s “Today Show”.

Update 3: A Florida pharmacy says it overdosed an ingredient in a medication for the horses.

Click the photo to enlarge.

Original baseball patented in 1883 by Samuel D. Castle is exhibited by Assistant Commissioner of Patents Karl Fenning. October 8, 1925.

Source.

“The battle is over, and the recruitniks have won”:

How did college football recruiting get to be bigger than, say, the Stanley Cup Finals?

Part of it is simple and obvious: Football is more popular than ever before. But there is more to it than that. The recruiting fervor has outpaced the growth of the sport. And that is largely because of how the world has changed in the last 10 years, especially the media world.

Ten years ago, most sports news came from newspapers (the actual, good old-fashioned print editions) or ESPN. Each was dealing with a finite amount of space or airtime and had to make editorial decisions based on what the masses seemed to want. Both could exercise restraint when it came to recruiting.

These days you can read any newspaper in the country and hundreds of other news and commentary sites, as long as you have an Internet connection. Pleasing the masses doesn’t work so well anymore. The key to success is finding a niche, owning it and expanding it.

And it helps if you have a lot of little tidbits in an ongoing story.

And if you have opinions that spawn debate.

And if you can post a few video clips to support your point.

Let’s face it: The Internet was damn near made for football recruitniks.

That Interenet thing destroys everything it touches.

The New York Knicks often did better when they had to play without their superstar Patrick Ewing. There’s a whole theory based on that observation, and it goes beyond sports.

(Link from Baseball Crank.)

All here, if you can wait through the ads.

The news, wich is not yet official, is broken here and here. Honda finished the 2008 season 9th among F1’s ten teams, and the only team that finished lower did not score any points. This despite having the biggest budget in Formula 1.

The Indiana High School Athletic Association has a rule that prohibits girls from trying out for baseball if their school has a softball team on, because the sports are comparable.

What’s the problem with just trying her out? If she’s not as good as the boys, case closed. If she’s better, which is possible at her age, the team will get the best player.

Of course, if she loses out to a boy, who can guarantee that she won’t sue again, saying that she was only turned down because she’s a girl?

You go, girl!