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Sporting Life : Can Andy Murray break the British hex at Wimbledon?
Can Andy Murray break the British hex at Wimbledon? By Lamont Russell The strawberries, the strict dress code on court, the regal patronage…Wimbledon has long been steeped in tradition to an almost...
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Sporting Life : Big Big Fighters
Sporting Life by Lamont Russell For more than a decade, heavyweight boxing has been in decline and unfortunately, the victory last month by Ukraine’s Wladimir Klitschko over the Uzbek fighter Ruslan...
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Talking Sport : Tour de France
Can the Tour de France teach us how to run the Rugby World Cup? by Lamont Russell Watching the last competitive stage of the Tour de France on Mt Ventoux was like watching Frodo and Sam biking all the...
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Talking Sport: Close, But No Cigar
Spare a thought for the guy who comes in second by Lamont Russell If Usain Bolt didn’t exist, Tyson Gay would be the greatest sprinter of the decade. Which is a reminder that professional sport is a...
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Is Test Cricket On the Ropes?
The long version of the great game faces an uncertain future by Brannavan Gnanalingham Test cricket is one of sport’s most uncompromising spectacles. One game can last five days, thirty hours in total...
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Sporting Life : David Tua’s limited future…
…and why the Olympics shouldn’t be promoting golf by Lamont Russell Looks as though David Tua’s demolition of Shane Cameron has set him up for at least one more big payday. To ensure he gets that next...
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Talking Sport : King Roger, against the odds
Surprisingly, 2009 was Roger Federer’s year by Lamont Russell The tennis year of 2009 has unfolded like a great Russian novel, with cataclysmic upheavals, young pretenders, triumph and tragedy –...
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Climbing the next mountain
New Zealand soccer’s uphill challenge at the World Cup next year by Brannavan Gnanalingham The All Whites’ victory over Bahrain in the World Cup qualifier has led to all sorts of hyperbolic claims...
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Talking Sport: Rafa in the Twilight Zone
Why is tennis treating its top players as utterly disposable ? by Lamont Russell. On Tom Tebbutt’s tennis blog in the Toronto Globe and Mail, there’s a heartwarming story about Rafael Nadal, arising...
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Tie Me Salary Cap Down, Sport
Should there be any restraint of trade rules when it comes to sport? by James Robinson “In any other job people accept that you try to improve your circumstances and get in a better position for your...
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Talking Sport : The Tour de France, 2010
Sportsmanship survives in the most unlikely of places by Lamont Russell For a sport that has become so thoroughly commercialised and prone to doping scandals, cycling has still somehow managed to...
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Away Games
The challenges (and consolations) of trying to play cricket in America by James Robinson “It is indeed hard upon a man to find himself a lost stranger, helpless, incomprehensible and of a mysterious...
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Talking Sport : Stanley Cup Fever
Mania on and off the rink by James Robinson The bicycle was hoisted in the air above the crowd gathered outside the Haymarket subway stop in the North End of Boston. The chanting, jumping, occasionally...
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Cricket and Depression
Is there something about cricket that puts its top players at greater risk of mental illness? by Gordon Campbell The causal links between cricket and depression, says Heath Mills, chief executive of...
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Gordon Campbell on Muhammad Ali
As with Bob Dylan, Muhammad Ali changed the times in which he lived so thoroughly that anyone coming along afterwards will probably struggle to understand the scale of his achievement. At the time,...
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Gordon Campbell on the IOC’s treatment of Russian sport, and lone wolf terrorism
The International Olympic Committee has made the right decision by leaving it to individual sports federations to decide whether particular Russian athletes will be eligible for Rio. Collective...
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Gordon Campbell on rugby’s sense of entitlement
Supposedly, there’s a tradition in this country where strippers get hired for ‘stag dos’ and “hen nights.” Chippendale blokes for the ladies, a sexy garter or two for the guys. It is usually crystal...
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Gordon Campbell on the Rio Olympics
Were you pretty excited earlier this week when Vietnam won its first ever Olympic gold medal? Hanoi, reportedly, went wild. In the men’s 10-metre air pistol event on Day One in Rio, Vietnam’s Houang...
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Gordon Campbell on the politicising of the war on drugs in sport
Ironically, the media coverage of the Olympics has been a sterling example of the rabid nationalism that the Olympics were supposed to transcend. So far, its been all about us and our medals and/or our...
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Gordon Campbell on the waning fever for the Olympics
According to the spin merchants and others with an interest in whipping up an audience, these have been our most successful Olympics ever. Huzzah! Yet given that the public spent more money (circa $215...
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Gordon Campbell on the funding changes in special needs education, and Uber
The plan to strip out the educational support for older “special needs” children in order to meet the existing shortfall in funding for special needs in early childhood education is so miserly and...
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Living with Rio’s Olympic Ruins
Even as they were being built, Rio’s Olympic projects were already starting to collapse… by Mariana Cavalcanti Mariana Cavalcanti is Associate Professor in the Sociology Department of the Institute of...
View ArticleGordon Campbell on welfare blackmail, and the therapeutic use of drugs in sport
So, in order to chase up the fathers (and in a few rare cases, the mothers) who may be dodging their responsibility for paying child support… WINZ is evidently willing to blackmail the parent who is...
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Gordon Campbell on dairy farming, the battle for Mosul and drugs in sport
So….wholemilk powder prices were down 4% overnight, the first decline since July. Well, boo hoo. Arguably, the last thing New Zealand needs is for the current levels of dairy production to return to...
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