Word: championing
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...books about the runner tackle in very different ways the paucity of behind-the-scenes substance and the absence of telling interviews with the man himself. In Barefoot Runner: The Life of Marathon Champion Abebe Bikila, former rock journalist Paul Rambali weaves a powerful narrative through a series of vignettes. The book, just out in paperback, makes liberal use of fictionalizing devices - interior monologues, imagined conversations - that render it less reliable as a historical account, but help to capture the drama of Bikila's life. It's hard to read Rambali's well-paced description of the Rome race without...
Last week, Joey Cheek was pumped. Over lunch in New York City, I talked to the wide-eyed Olympic champion about his upcoming trip to Beijing, where the ex-speedskater and Darfur activist planned to rally athletes to raise awareness of troubles in Sudan. He wanted to outline the steps that China, which has close ties to the Sudanese government, could take to stop the atrocities in Darfur. I half-jokingly asked him how he managed to get his hands on a visa, since the Chinese government was notoriously begrudging to let potential nuisances step foot in the country during...
...fate of Leeds United, once among them. The northern English powerhouse overstretched its credit lines in order to sign players that would keep it in contention for English and European honors, and then disaster struck as a run of disastrous form saw the club miss out on Champion's League qualification. The resulting loss of projected revenues forced an emergency sell-off of star players, but that failed to avert a financial collapse, and the once mighty Leeds United now languishes in England's third-tier league. Just as wealth and success on the field go hand in hand...
...television rights: in the English Premiership, this guarantees even the bottom clubs $50 million a year, and a lot more for those in its top tier. The clubs that finish highest in all of Europe's domestic leagues also get to play midweek games in the European Champion's League, qualification for which is worth a further $20 million at least...
...hundreds of millions of dollars into the transfer markets as teams compete to gain an edge. It's a cutthroat game, precisely because revenues are closely related to a team's performance: only the top four teams of the 20 in the English Premier League qualify for the European Champion's League, and United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool have in recent years established a lock on those four slots. But they have to win consistently to get there, and failure to do so can be financially disastrous. Things are as treacherous at the lower end of the league, from which...