Sports

When I was a child, my mother wanted me to be elegant. She sent me to dance class. I didn’t like it. I cried before the class because I didn’t want to do it. But my mother didn’t allow me to quit. After five years of dancing, I finally stopped going to the classes. I never participated in any concerts, even though everyone else from this dance club did several times. I wasn’t good enough. I felt like a failure.

After dancing, I didn’t come back to sports until I was in university.

When I was doing my third year in university, I tried Thai boxing (Muay Thai). I loved it. Now I am training 5 times a week and preparing for my first competition. It has become a very big hobby of mine. Thai boxing brings me lots of benefits, such as a good mood, self-confidence, great physical shape and a lot of friends. It doesn’t bring me any money and it does not promote me in my career. But it is something I love. Finally, I feel I have succeeded.

The Italian football world is again experiencing racism within its ranks. A series of players have been subject to racist abuse by fans, with little or no response from clubs, officials, or the media. Hard-core fans claim they have the right to abuse players any way they want, and certain clubs deny that racism even exists.

Finally, Lega Serie A, the organization that oversees the country’s highest division, launched an anti-racism campaign, but the campaign itself has been accused of racism. One of the initiatives in the campaign uses the image of a series of monkey faces in club colors. The image was created by artist Simone Fugazzotto, who often uses monkeys and apes in his work.

In the early 1800s in England, football and rugby existed as different variations of the same game. Aristocratic boys came up with the shortened terms “rugger” and “soccer” to differentiate between Rugby Football (from Rugby School, in Warwickshire, England) and Association Football.

According to a letter to The New York Times, published in 1905: “It was a fad at Oxford and Cambridge to use “er” at the end of many words, such as foot-er, sport-er, and as Association did not take an “er” easily, it was, and is, sometimes spoken of as Soccer.”

But by the 1980s, Brits started to turn against the word. “The penetration of the game into American culture,” Stefan Szymanski, a professor of sports economics at the University of Michigan writes, “has led to backlash against the use of the word in Britain." 

On Sunday 8th April, Ohtani had a perfect game through six innings and ended with seven strikeouts. Oh, and this was after hitting home runs in three straight games as the Angels designated hitter.

Ohtani has frequently been called the Babe Ruth of Japan, in reference to the most well known player in the majors to serve as a pitcher and hitter. But even the comparisons to the Babe may be underselling just how good Ohtani has been at both roles already, as noted by the Washington Post.

One thing is for sure, watching Ohtani continue to blaze this unique trail for the Angels will be one of this year's most fascinating stories in not just baseball, but all of sports. 

At just 30 years old, Yuki Kawauchi is in a distance running category of his own.

As of January 1, Kawauchi—one guy—has run more sub-2:10 marathons since 2011 than the whole United States put together. Kawauchi’s best time for 2017—2:09:18—was two seconds faster than the fastest marathon of the year by any U.S. man, which would be Galen Rupp, who ran a career best of 2:09:20 in Chicago. Rupp, like most athletes at that level, ran two marathons in 2017. Kawauchi ran 12.