kottke.org posts about sports
Senior living communities generally don’t go viral or gain media attention for positive reasons, so it’s nice to see this story about the University Village Retirement Community in Tulsa, Oklahoma and their champion Wii bowling team.
On this recent Thursday in June, their hopes are pinned on Phyllis Wimer, known as Phyllis Killer or Phyllis the GOAT for the many strikes she bowls; Charlene “the Grasshopper” Giles, whose hop gives her some extra oomph as she releases the ball; “Marvelous” Marcia Ness, who describes herself as a “tough old broad,” ready to bowl after recovering from a broken wrist and back; and “Rollin’” Ron Demaree, who grips the lower-left handlebar on his motorized wheelchair to propel himself upward and forward for more power in his roll.
Phyllis the GOAT is 95 years old and rolls 300s in practice sessions like it’s nothing. Here’s a local news segment on the team from a few months ago:
I was very into Wii Sports 20 years ago (!!!) and still occasionally play Switch Sports with the kids (golf, bowling, and tennis mostly). They’re great party/gathering games and evidently also great for staying active and sharp in your 90s.
Fulfilling the purpose for which it was built almost 2000 years ago, football fans packed the Roman Theatre of Amman to watch the Jordan v Algeria World Cup match. I don’t know whether Roman rulers, builders, and architects envisioned their works would remain standing & useful millennia after their construction, but longevity is certainly not a priority these days.
Here’s a video of Jordan fans watching their opener vs Austria in the theater:
Update: I’ve learned something today: a theater and an amphitheater are two different things. I’ve corrected my post. (thx, francesca)
Although I’ve seen a highlight or two, I have not overcome my FIFA+Fox+Trump disgust to watch any of the World Cup so far. MAGA dipshit Alexi Lalas is high on the list of reasons not to tune into any of Fox’s braindead coverage, but it sounds like he’s being dragged on the regular by Thierry Henry. The French Aristocrat and the All-American Idiot: Henry v Lalas Is the World Cup’s Most Compelling Battle:
Lalas enjoyed a solid playing career, but he’s obviously not in the same league as Henry, widely considered the greatest footballer in Premier League history. This vast gulf in on-field pedigree has become more awkward as the tournament has progressed, with Lalas retreating into a meek silence whenever Henry reveals his depth of footballing experience. In a conversation where his co-panelist is casually reminiscing about his days playing alongside Messi or exchanging shirts with Ronaldo Nazário at the World Cup, what exactly is Lalas going to talk about — coming on as a second-half substitute for Earnie Stewart in a friendly against Scotland in 1998? Helping the Kansas City Wizards finish last in the 1999 MLS Western Conference? Did Lalas enjoy an elite playing career? No. But does he do the background reading that could compensate for his relative lack of standing in a conversation with titans like Henry and Zlatan? Also no. But is he charming or funny or charismatic or otherwise magnetic on screen? Eh, no.
Savage. Here’s Henry and Zlatan kicking the ball around in the studio and pointedly not letting Lalas have a go:
As the World Cup gets underway here in the Americas, here’s a look back at a football battle for the ages: Germany vs. Greece in The Philosophers’ Football Match. Germany’s lineup included Nietzsche , Kant, Hegel, Wittgenstein, and Marx while the likes of Plato, Socrates, Sophocles, and Archimedes took the field for Greece.
Hegel is arguing that reality is merely an a priori adjunct of non-naturalistic ethics, Kant — via the categorical imperative — is holding that ontologically, it exists only in the imagination, and Marx is claiming it was offside.
(thx, meg)
This is kind of fantastic: Ribbie lets you watch actual MLB baseball games “rendered pitch by pitch in a cozy 8-bit view while they happen”.
Ribbie is a simple way to keep a live baseball game nearby. It shows the score, the bases, the count, and a tiny pixel field that moves with the real game.
I built it because I wanted something between a stats tab and a full broadcast. Something you can leave open while you work, cook, or do whatever else, then glance over and know what is happening.
There are a few different views you can use. The image above is the fullscreen view. Here’s the fullscreen game chooser view and the room view of the game.
I love this. Nice use of Silkscreen too. 😊
Artist Claire Salvo has painted the starting five of the world champion NY Knicks on a set of US one dollar bills. If you’re in NYC, you may have seen these cheekily pasted up around the city.
She’s selling a print of all five bills but is also auctioning off the hand-painted originals. The auction ends in a bit more than 4 days and the top bid currently stands at $3200.
See also: The Harriet Tubman $20 Stamp and a discussion of whether such modification of US currency is legal or not.
Sony’s AI division has designed a robot that can beat elite human players at table tennis. From the paper:
Evaluated in matches against elite and professional players under official competition rules, Ace achieved several victories and demonstrated consistent returns of high-speed, high-spin shots. These results highlight the potential of physical AI agents to perform complex, real-time interactive tasks, suggesting broader applications in domains requiring fast, precise human–robot interaction.
Ace is a fine name, but I might have gone with something like WALL-E Supreme instead. (Robbie Supreme?)
The Shape of Paris is a balletic short film of skateboarder Andy Anderson zooming, grinding, spinning, and floating around Paris in the summertime. It is also beautifully shot by Brett Novak; Paris has never looked better. As a YT commenter put it: “bro wtf this is the cleanest footage I’ve ever seen. The cinematography and color grading is insane.”
Also, this is the first skate video I’ve seen with “trick acknowledgements” in the credits. Great touch. (via craig mod)
What’s fun about school closing for the wicked blizzard in the Northeast today is last week was February break for Massachusetts schools, which means many kids are home for the the 6th school day in a row, and many will be home for closures tomorrow and beyond. All this to say, it reminded me a lot of the first couple weeks of school closures in March 2020, when I edutained my kids with Youtube videos about BMX, how to make biscuits, early 90s live punk hardcore shows, and skateboarding clips. And THAT reminded me it’s been a minute since I posted a skateboarding video here.
Here’s a 20 minute clip with something for everyone. There’s kick flips, front flips, backflips, flips off bikes, multiple visually impaired skaters and skaters without legs. There’s also lots of kids, stairs, pools, ramps, massive air, ballet, rollerskating on broken skateboards, incredible creativity, and no falls.
Alan Taylor has shared a bunch of photos of the just-concluded Winter Olympics “featuring infrared imaging, vintage cameras, optical filters, digital composites, unusual angles, unexpected subjects, and more”. Two of my favorites:
The first photo is of a curling match taken by Ryan Pierse with a vintage camera. Taylor:
Images in this series were captured using vintage Graflex cameras, paying tribute to the type of camera that would have been used 70 years ago when Cortina previously hosted the games in 1956. In a modern twist, these cameras have been adapted to record images on smartphones, enabling live transmission of the content captured.
The second is a composite image of the women’s snowboard halfpipe final by Hector Vivas, a technique popularized in recent years by Pelle Cass.
See also photos of the Winter Olympics using thermal imaging cameras.
A New Winter is a project from Colombian-American photographer Sofia Jaramillo that seeks to
This project revisits the early depictions of skiing, which often portrayed Eurocentric ideals and a narrow vision of who belongs on the slopes. By reimagining the first images of skiing in the United States, A New Winter challenges the stereotypes and exclusive culture perpetuated by these initial depictions, inviting us to expand our understanding of winter sports and celebrate its evolving culture. It seeks to disrupt traditional narratives, challenge stereotypes and promote representation in winter sports by placing people of color at the center of these images.
Several of the images were featured in Outside magazine, where Jaramillo says, “I’m doing this for all the young Black and brown girls and boys out there who don’t see themselves when they walk into a ski resort.”
The Track is a documentary film about a group of athletes training in post-war Bosnia to make the Olympics in luge.
The Track is a coming-of-age journey of three friends chasing their improbable Olympic dreams in post-war Bosnia. Training on a crumbling track left behind from the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympics, the boys are guided by their devoted coach Senad, whose fight to rebuild the neglected track mirrors his determination to create a future for his athletes in a country facing one of the highest youth unemployment rates in Europe.
Filmed over five transformative years, The Track captures an intimate and deeply human coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of a nation still recovering from the scars of war, political corruption, and rising nationalism. As the boys balance Olympic ambition with the pull of street life, heartbreak, and survival, their paths begin to diverge, revealing the stark realities young people face in modern Bosnia.
You can check the website for online and IRL showings; it’s on Amazon Prime in the US.
During an exhibition, Japanese volleyball player Yuji Nishida hit a courtside judge in the back with an errant serve. He immediately sprinted across the court and dove prostrate in apology. The gesture was a sort of sliding dogeza:
Even in a country where a sincere apology can go a long way, Nishida’s mea culpa was an extreme example. The most extravagant form in Japanese culture is the dogeza, which can also be used to express deep respect.
When used as an apology, the person in the wrong prostrates themselves and bows so that their forehead touches the floor between their hands. While the dogeza is rarely seen in public, scandal-hit politicians have used equally theatrical gestures to communicate their remorse.
Nishida followed up his slide with several more bows.
“Divers documents the restless anticipation of walking to the platform’s edge and the fleeting serenity found in jumping.” Lovely. Just lovely. (via colossal)
There’s a guy named Orion who surfs the St Lawrence River in the winter, sometimes dodging massive chunks of ice and sometimes riding them downstream, looking for waves. If you’ve ever been in Montreal near the river, even in the summer, you know how scary the water looks — churning & choppy with many eddies; I’m gobsmacked that someone goes out in that in freezing temperatures. The footage in this short film is incredible, otherworldly.
Skydiver & musician Gabriel Brown and astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy teamed up to capture these incredible photos of Brown transiting the Sun while skydiving. You can see a video of the jump and some behind the scenes calculations on Instagram.
We had to find the right location, time, aircraft, and distance for the clearest shot; while factoring in the aircraft’s power-off glideslope for the optimal sun angle and safe exit altitude. Then we had to align the shot using the opposition effect from the aircraft (shout out to the pilot @jimhamberlin) and coordinate the exact moment of the jump on 3-way coms!
As if that wasn’t hard enough, we had a myriad of malfunctions that almost led to the shot not being captured… But as you can see, against all odds, we got it on the sixth try!
That sounds….complicated. But the results speak for themselves. More coverage of this on Petapixel and Colossal.
As Petapixel notes, the photos are composite shots:
After he captured the shot of Brown, he then made the image “super high-res” by shooting the Sun on another telescope and “assembled a mosaic of the entire Sun”, which he later matched with the features in Brown’s photo.
(thx, alex)
I’m totally charmed by these snaps of some of the best sumo wrestlers in the world touring London.
The athletes were in London for a 5-day event at the Royal Albert Hall.
London’s Victorian concert venue has been utterly transformed, complete with six-tonne Japanese temple roof suspended above the ring.
It is here the wrestlers, known as rikishi, will perform their leg stomps to drive away evil spirits, and where they will clap to get the attention of the gods.
And above all this ancient ceremony, a giant, revolving LED screen which wouldn’t look out of place at an American basketball game, offering the audience all the stats and replays they could want.
Sumo may be ancient, and may have strict rules governing every aspect of a rikishi’s conduct, but it still exists in a modern world.
And that modern world is helping spread sumo far beyond Japan’s borders.
The tournament has already concluded; the winner, Hoshoryu, was given a giant bottle of soy sauce:
Todd Weaver uses analog & in-camera experimental techniques to achieve subtly geometric and colorful surfing photographs. Of one of his photos, Weaver says:
This one was taken on my half-frame camera at my favourite place to surf, First Point in Malibu. The colour is a one of a kind. I don’t think I could repeat it in a thousand tries. The stripe is an artefact of my pre-exposing process.
You can find more of Weaver’s work on his website and Instagram. If you like these surf photos, you might be interested in getting a copy of Dream Weaver Journal Volume 2.
Shane Schieffer is attempting to swim the entire 140-mile length of Lake Powell in 10 days, self-supported. Yeah, that means he’s dragging 215lbs of gear behind him on a paddle board while he swims. He’s documenting the whole thing on Instagram; here’s a video where he explains all the gear he’s taking with him.
I’m attempting to be the first person ever to swim across Lake Powell. Here’s how I’m preparing for this massive journey-
I will be swimming from Hite Crossing Bridge in Utah to Glen Canyon Dam in Arizona. This means that I will need to swim 140 miles in just 10 days. Ambitious, I know.
This journey will be completely unassisted. My safety crew will not be offering me food, navigation, or pacing.
To carry my gear, I’ve designed a floating rig from an inflatable paddle board with solar power, water filtration, and dry boxes for food storage, gear, and human waste (yes, I will be leaving NO trace).
Schieffer, 49, is going to be consuming 8000 calories each day on his journey and told a local TV station that “I’ve anticipated about 200,000 rotations of the shoulders out there in the water”.
He started on Sept 2, so this is day 3 of the trip. Again, you can keep up with the whole thing on Instagram.
In the mid-70s, Mike Mandel traveled around the United States photographing photographers as if they were baseball players, capturing the likes of Imogen Cunningham, Ed Ruscha, William Eggleston, and Ansel Adams.
I photographed photographers as if they were baseball players and produced a set of cards that were packaged in random groups of ten, with bubble gum, so that the only way of collecting a complete set was to make a trade. I travelled around the United States visiting about 150 photographic “personalities” and had them pose for me. I carried baseball paraphernalia: caps, gloves, balls, a mask and chest protector, a bat, as well as photographic equipment, and made a 14,000 mile odyssey. Out of this experience came 134 Baseball-Photographer images. I designed a reverse side for the card which would allow for each photographer to fill in their own personal data that in a way referred to the information usually included on real baseball cards: Favorite camera, favorite developer, favorite film, height, weight, etc. I used whatever information each photographer provided me.
You can hear Mandel talking about the project in this SFMOMA video — the gum he included in the packages of cards was donated by Topps:
You can find some of the cards on eBay for around $10-50 apiece and a complete set, signed by Mandel & Imogen Cunningham, can be had for $3,650. (thx, duncan)
I love these author cards from McSweeney’s in the style of baseball cards.
For years you’ve seen athletes, web-slinging superheroes, orcs, and pocket monsters get the trading-card treatment, while you’ve sat in your room hoping upon hope that the heroes of magical realism or giants of New Journalism would get their own. The wait is over, friends.
They have three sets: the first set is a part of their 74th issue, series 2, and series 3. The authors featured in the sets include Octavia Butler, Judy Blume, Lauren Groff, Toni Morrison, Stephen King, George Saunders, Sarah Vowell, and Kurt Vonnegut.
The other day I was surprised to learn that several years ago, FC Barcelona streamed the entire match of their Nov 2010 5-0 dismantling of Real Madrid to YouTube and you can still watch it in its entirety.
The El Clásico match was notable not only for how much Barça dominated the game1 but also for who played (Messi, Iniesta, Xavi, Puyol, Busquets, Abidal, Villa, Valdés for FCB; Ronaldo, Di Maria, Benzema, Özil, Xabi Alonso, Sergio Ramos, Casillas for RM) and coached (Pep Guardiola for FCB and José Mourinho for RM).
I remember watching this game. Messi didn’t score because the Madrid defense was trying to put him in the hospital but he assisted on two goals and famously walked off the pitch near the end of the match, right past Cristiano Ronaldo, looking at the scoreboard and grinning.
The teams met four more times that year, in just a span of 18 days: a 1-1 La Liga draw, a 1-0 Real Madrid victory in the Copa del Ray final, and a pair of matches in the Champions League semis that ended with an aggregate score of 3-1 in favor of Barça, who went on to a dominating 3-1 win against Man United in the final. That 2010-2011 Barcelona club is considered one of the best club teams of all time.
As an occasional yoyo-er, I’ve watched a fair amount of yoyo routines, but this championship-winning routine by 8-time world champ Hajime Miura is the best one I’ve ever seen. Miura’s routine falls somewhere on the spectrum between magical illusion & performance art; even the music is perfect. The result is mesmerizing. (via the kid should see this)
Meet Jackson Goldstone. He’s 6 years old, lives in British Columbia, and is already ripping it up on his bike. Here’s a video of him taking the long way around on his way to kindergarten:
Wow, if he keeps riding and improving, I wonder how good this kid could be? Ok, I’m funning you a little bit because that was several years ago and Jackson is starring in GoPro videos at the age of 10 and riding the hardest trails faster and better than many adult riders:
I mean, I think Jackson could really be world-class some da— Ha, more tricks! Jackson is actually 21 years old here in the present of 2025 and is actually now one of the best downhill mountain bikers in the world. Here’s the POV video from a recent win of his:
There are a couple of notable things about this video:
1. Watch the way he goes through a bunch of tree stumps at full tilt at ~1:10 by basically jumping over the whole thing with a couple of quick hops. Adjust the playback speed of the video to 0.5 or 0.25 to see how he does it. I’ve watched this like 10 times and it’s still bonkers.
2. And then at ~1:52, he screams through a tunnel and gaps directly onto a wooden berm — and you can hear how the crowd reacts. Here’s another view of that same gap and the rest of his run:
Other riders clear that gap too, but somehow not as big or direct as Jackson does it. I don’t actually know enough about mtn biking to know how Goldstone is doing what he’s doing, but if you want a hint, check out the “Bike Jesus” section of this video that starts at ~5:30:
3. Oh yeah, and just how ungodly fast he and the other riders are going past trees and through rocks and all sorts of other lurking assailants. Blimey.
ImillaSkate is a Bolivian female skate collective whose members dress in traditional cholita clothing. This is a great short documentary about the group, the challenges they face, and the change & joy they’re trying to bring to their communities.
Some people in my generation are embarrassed to wear a pollera [traditional skirt]. Because the pollera highlights your features. Your indigenous features. Highlight what we are as indigenous people, as the daughters of women of polleras. It’s a part of my family legacy. And without my family, I’m nobody. It’s about giving the pollera new meaning.
I wrote about ImillaSkate a few years ago as well. I poked around to see if they were raising funds for their activities (lessons, building a skatepark) because I wanted to contribue, but didn’t find anything — if anything pops up, I’ll let you know. You can follow their adventures on Instagram and via their website. (via @lizziearmanto)
From an excerpt of his new book, It’s Only Drowning (Amazon), David Litt writes about the frustrating and humiliating experience of learning how to surf at the age of 35.
Yet I didn’t quit. I returned to the dog beach twice more the week of my first solo session, and four more times the week after that. I could count my total number of successful pop-ups on my fingers, so it wasn’t the rush of riding waves that kept me coming back. It was something deeper. During each surf session I felt frustrated, exhausted, humiliated, terrified, depleted, confused, and sore — but never depressed. While flailing in pursuit of whitewater may not have been fun, it was something different to think about. It paused the spin cycle in my mind.
I started mountain biking almost 5 years ago, at the age of 46. The sport is not so geared towards young learners as surfing, but it presents sufficient physical challenges and danger for the older human that feeling “frustrated, exhausted, humiliated, terrified, depleted, confused, and sore” is guaranteed. But also: exhilarated, fulfilled, happy, and engaged. While my cardio could still use some work, I’m no longer terrible at mountain biking and continue to improve, which is both a source of satisfaction at my progression and hunger to keep getting better.
See also: To Air Is Human and The Joy of Fortnite.
Derek Bolz made a video about what biking does for his mental health. A partial transcript (boldface mine):
Life has been rough lately. I don’t want to air my dirty laundry on the internet, so I won’t go into detail. But for a number of reasons, I am quite stressed out, maybe more than I’ve ever been before. To put it simply: everything is not ok.
But then, suddenly, everything is ok. My hands are on the bars, my feet are on the pedals, the wind is in my face, my mind is clear. All I have to do is clear that jump, rip around that corner, clear that other jump, land that trick, hold that manual, hold that wheelie, hold on for dear life, pedal harder and harder and harder.
That is the beauty of biking. It demands so much of your attention that you have no option but to live in the present. There’s no time to worry. It’s like meditation while moving. And then you always feel a bit better after.
This is one of the reasons I’ve fallen in love with mountain biking over the past few years — riding is so all-encompassing that it forces me out of whatever past or future crisis is occupying my thoughts and into thinking no more than a second or two into the future. And moving through physical space feels like you’re making progress, which is amazing when you’re feeling stuck in the rest of your life.
Depending on the trail, if I lose concentration for a second while biking, I might get seriously injured or die. As someone who has never been into extreme sports, I have no idea why I decided being on the edge of death is fun and stress-relieving, but it is. 🤷♂️
Mountain biking isn’t for everyone — I know others get a similar sense of presence and focus from running, skiing, throwing pots, woodworking, photography, walking, surfing, writing, knitting, meditation, gardening, painting, reading, and the list goes on and on. I feel lucky to have found my thing and would love to hear if you’ve found yours. (via @mmilan)
Trans athlete Soren Stark-Chessa finished first in the 1600-meter race at a recent track meet in Maine. Republican state representative Laurel Libby complained about Stark-Chessa’s win on a Fox News appearance, saying that trans athletes are “pushing many, many of our young women out of the way in their ascent to the podium”.
Freshman Anelise Feldman finished second to Stark-Chessa in that race and wrote a letter to the newspaper (archive) calling Libby a bully and asserting that she didn’t feel pushed out of first place. Here’s her letter:
Rep. Laurel Libby, R-Auburn, recently used my second-place finish in the 1,600-meter run, and that of my teammate in the 800-meter run, to malign Soren Stark-Chessa, the trans-identified athlete who finished first.
One of the reasons I chose to run cross-country and track is the community: Teammates cheering each other on, athletes from different schools coming together, and the fact that personal improvement is valued as much as, if not more than, the place we finish.
Last Friday, I ran the fastest 1,600-meter race I have ever run in middle school or high school track and earned varsity status by my school’s standards. I am extremely proud of the effort I put into the race and the time that I achieved. The fact that someone else finished in front of me didn’t diminish the happiness I felt after finishing that race. I don’t feel like first place was taken from me. Instead, I feel like a happy day was turned ugly by a bully who is using children to make political points.
We are all just kids trying to make our way through high school. Participating in sports is the highlight of high school for some kids. No one was harmed by Soren’s participation in the girls’ track meet, but we are all harmed by the hateful rhetoric of bullies, like Rep. Libby, who want to take sports away from some kids just because of who they are.
Anelise Feldman
Freshman, Yarmouth High School
Yarmouth
This is a fun story about Sam Bartram, a goalkeeper who was accidentally left on the field when a 1937 game was called off during the second half due to heavy fog.
On Christmas Day 1937, Bartram was in the papers once more after a bizarre incident in a match against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge. With the score at 1-1, the game had to be called off on 61 minutes due to thick fog. Unfortunately for Bartram, he was the last to be made aware. “Soon after the kick-off, [fog] began to thicken rapidly at the far end, travelling past Vic Woodley in the Chelsea goal and rolling steadily towards me,” he wrote in his autobiography. “The referee stopped the game, and then, as visibility became clearer, restarted it. We were on top at this time, and I saw fewer and fewer figures as we attacked steadily.
“I paced up and down my goal-line, happy in the knowledge that Chelsea were being pinned in their own half. ‘The boys must be giving the Pensioners the hammer,’ I thought smugly, as I stamped my feet for warmth. Quite obviously, however, we were not getting the ball into the net. For no players were coming back to line up, as they would have done following a goal. Time passed, and I made several advances towards the edge of the penalty area, peering through the murk, which was getting thicker every minute. Still I could see nothing. The Chelsea defence was clearly being run off its feet.
“After a long time a figure loomed out of the curtain of fog in front of me. It was a policeman, and he gaped at me incredulously. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’ he gasped. ‘The game was stopped a quarter of an hour ago. The field’s completely empty’. And when I groped my way to the dressing-room, the rest of the Charlton team, already out of the bath and in their civvies, were convulsed with laughter.”
London fog is no joke.
P.S. BTW, the photo that frequently accompanies other online accounts of this story is not of Bartram. kottke.org: carefully fact-checking internet fun facts since 1998. 🤷♂️
If you’re one of those people who watches the Olympics and wishes they’d put a normal person in the competition so we can see how fast the athletes really are, this one’s for you.
Eight-time Olympic gold medalist and a 10-time world champion sprinter Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce recently announced her comeback and for her first 100m race, she competed against the other parents at her son’s sports day event. And completely demolished them.
I love how she goes flat-out…no Usain Bolt showboating or looking around near the finish line. All business. (via @rebeccablood.bsky.social)
Update: She did it back in 2023 too.
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