Bennett’s attack blitz falls short of podium
Aman who has taught his 50 million Twitter followers words like “wether”, “boarder” and “unpresidented” apparently thinks LeBron James is a dummy.
In a tweet sent last weekend, President Donald Trump said journalist Don Lemon, who was interviewing James while the US president was busy hate-watching CNN, made “LeBron look smart, which isn’t easy to do”.
Why did James elicit that missive from a president who’s usually such a paragon of restraint? He simply spoke this self-evident truth to CNN: “What I’ve noticed over the past few months is [Trump] has kind of used sports to divide us.”
But while the debate between James and Trump seems a little unbalanced — in one corner, we have perhaps the greatest basketballer of all time, a player who has at times single-handedly dragged his teams to eight straight NBA Finals, and a man who last week opened a public school for 240 at-risk kids; in the other, we have a sack of old peaches that has been left in the sun for too long — on this occasion, I’m going to have to take issue with LeBron.
Long before Trump’s fat thumbs first turned on the caps lock, sport was always a cause of division, in ways both good and bad. It’s part of what makes it so captivating. Trump is merely causing another fissure, in a week that has featured plenty.
Some of the division is good-natured and ultimately meaningless.
For example,
Beauden
Barrett is Kiwi George Bennett has finished just short of his second podium finish at World Tour level, claiming fourth overall at the Tour of Poland.
The LottoNL-Jumbo was again heavily involved on the final stage, launching a volley of attacks, but in the end his fifth-place finish on the stage saw him leapfrogged by Briton Simon Yates and Frenchman Thibaut Pinot on the overall standings.
Yates won the stage, counter-attacking with 10km to go after Bennett’s initial efforts, and escaping to grab the solo victory. Bennett was part of nine riders to cross the line in a group 12 seconds later, but Pinot picked up six bonus seconds after sprinting for second place, knocking Bennett off the podium.
Polish rider Michal Kwiatkowski won his home race, coming across the line in Bennett’s group to hold on to his overall lead, and winning the Tour by 15 seconds.
“All in again [yesterday] but didn’t have the goods to make the difference,” mused Bennett afterwards.
“It’s a pity that we were unable to secure a podium [yesterday],” said LottoNL-Jumbo sports director Grischa Niermann said. “All in all, it was a successful Tour of Poland, also with a view towards the Vuelta. George rode very offensively and showed that he was the strongest climber in the race.”
Despite coming up short of a final berth on the podium steps, Bennett can take plenty from the Tour, showing his prowess on the types of climbs he’s set to see at the Vuelta a Espana in a fortnight.
He was the aggressor on the final stages of the Tour, once again attacking on the going to start in the No 10 jersey for the first Bledisloe Cup test against Australia next weekend, despite the clamouring of Crusaders fans pressing the deserving case of Richie Mo’unga, while the
All Blacks are going to beat
Australia, despite the quality banter from coach Steve
Hansen about his opponents being favourites.
Some division has a fair bit of enmity attached. Look no further than the Premier
League that kicked off this weekend, marking the official end of a magical summer in which England rallied around their surprising World penultimate climb on stage seven. Bennett unleashed several attacks of which only four other riders could follow but, just like on the previous stage, it wasn’t quite enough to gain a rare victory.
That honour went to Yates, who is one of the bookmakers’ favourites for the Vuelta, while Bennett’s impressive showing has seen him leap from outrageous prices into the top 10 favourites.
Bennett, who has now finished in the top 11 in all six of his stage races this year, will be aiming to go better than his 10th place at the Vuelta in 2016, and improve on his eighth place earlier this year at the Giro d’Italia.
Whether he can sustain this form and peak during the latter stages of the Vuelta will be determined, but from what he’s shown in Poland, there are plenty of promising signs ahead of the year’s final Grand Tour. Cup heroes, a feel-good atmosphere that will inevitably be replaced by chants that would make the Green Party proud.
And some, unfortunately, is just plain toxic. Although Trump has successfully vilified African American athletes for kneeling during a stupid song, other perhaps almost equal travesties are continuing unabated in the sporting world.
This being sport, of course, no matter the offence, there are always fans willing not only to forgive but lash out at anyone on the other side of the dividing line.
A quick example: we discussed a couple of weeks ago the racist and homophobic tweets sent by Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Josh Hader when he was 17. It would be difficult to defend such hurtful words. Except for Brewers fans, who proceeded to celebrate Hader with a standing ovation the next time he took the mound.
And this week, we have Ohio State University football coach Urban Meyer.
Meyer has become embroiled in a controversy surrounding his knowledge of domestic abuse allegations involving a former assistant.
The coach was placed on paid administrative leave as Ohio State investigated whether he mishandled or even overlooked the accusations, after a damning investigation from a former ESPN reporter.
So how did Ohio State fans respond to news of their beloved coach’s potentially grave mistake? They headed to the stadium, conducted a rally to defend Meyer and lashed out at, sigh, the “fake news” of ESPN.
Sports are inherently partisan and fans are instinctively tribal, perhaps now more than ever. Trump can take some credit, or blame, but a player like James who was once as heavily criticised as any athlete knows division has always existed in sport.
New Zealand fans are occasionally criticised for being less fanatical in their fanaticism. And while that may create quieter atmospheres, it equally begets better people.
Not having a dried-up Jack-O’-Lantern as our leader helps, but so does keeping our divisions limited to topics like which world-class first-five deserves to kick off another walloping
of the Wallabies.