Overlapping sports schedule taxes top players, diehard viewers
On Friday the 13th, if you chanced to be watching television ( and I suspect most of you were) you had a sports smorgasbord at the click of a remote.
There was the first full day of competition at the World Cup, with Mexico getting past Cameroon, Chile thumping Australia and the Netherlands producing what is likely to be the stunner of the tournament — a 5- 1 win over defending champion Spain.
If soccer isn’t your bag, there was the U. S. Open, with German golfer Martin Kaymer making Pinehurst look like a mini- putt course.
The Canadian Football League opened its exhibition season with the B. C. Lions and the Edmonton Eskimos.
Oh, and there was a little hockey game, with the Los Angeles Kings winning their third overtime contest of the final, this time in double OT, to oust the New York Rangers in five games and win their second Stanley Cup in the past three seasons.
The Kings did it the hard way throughout, beating four of the league’s toughest teams in San Jose, Anaheim, Chicago and the Rangers, coming from behind so many times that when New York took the lead in Game 5 you sensed the Kings had them right where they wanted them.
At the risk of stating the obvious, the NHL season is too long. Two of the Kings, Jeff Carter and Drew Doughty, were also part of Canada’s gold medallists at the Sochi Olympics.
For players like Carter and Doughty, it’s too much to ask. The same applies to star strikers Diego Costa of Spain and Cristiano Ronaldo of Portugal heading into this World Cup. Costa’s Atletico Madrid team won the Spanish La Liga title before losing the Champions League final to Ronaldo’s Real Madrid in a penalty shootout on May 24.
Not surprisingly, both Costa and Ronaldo are banged up starting the World Cup barely three weeks later. Soccer officials talk of easing the burden on players, but talk is all it is. Tennis players can skip tournaments despite pressure from the ATP and WTA to play, but they do so at the expense of the rankings.
The problem is most severe in hockey. A football player on a team that wins the Super Bowl will play roughly 20 games, but a Stanley Cup winner more like 110 games. The only way fans can keep up with it all is to stay in training with lots of beer, nachos and thumb callisthenics. The World Cup is my favourite event on the entire sports calendar. I love Wimbledon and the Tour de France, which begins July 5 — a week before the World Cup ends.
No wonder I don’t have time to go to the gym.