Favourite sports events?

[_Ed_]

Just wondering what people would rate their favourite sports events. I like lists, so I'll give you one.

1. Kentucky Derby: There are major problems with American horse racing, like the fact that a huge number of the horses are being given performance enhancing drugs and nothing is being done about it, but I just absolutely love this event on the first Saturday in May every year. 150,000 people, My Old Kentucky Home, the blanket of roses...beautiful. Something about the way Americans do big sports events really appeals to me. I hope I can make it there one year.

2. NZ Derby: Not quite in the same league, but still pretty decent - at $2.2 million it's behind only the Kentucky and Epsom Derby in terms of prize money for 3 year-old races in the world. Not bad. The 2009 Derby will be the 11th I've witnessed live at the track. Just have to be there every year.

3. Chappell-Hadlee Trophy: It's still young but it's amazing the number of thrilling games that have taken place since its inception - Telstra Dome and SCG 2004, Wellington and Christchurch 2005, Auckland and Hamilton 2007. It's seen a few amazing catches too - Sinclair at Telstra Dome, Bond in Wellington. Love it. Bring on the 2009/10 renewal.

4. Summer Olympics: Not much sleep during those 2 weeks.

5. Cricket World Cup: 2007 was rubbish, but I really enjoyed 96, 99 and 03.

Yours please.

[dontcloseyoureyes]

AFL Grand Final Day
Boxing Day Test
FIFA World Cup

[BoyBrumby]

Football World Cup - It's the biggest and the best. Briefly unites the country in expectation and then in grief, occasionally produces some football worthy of the occasion (Bergkamp's winner versus the evil Argentines in 1998 was almost literally orgasmic), gives us strange heroes (Roger Milla, Letchkov in 94), predictable villians (usually Italian defenders or Argentinian divers) & has been much aped but never surpassed.

The Ashes - Yeah, we usually lose, but when we win: man.

6 Nations - Probably the only real chance for the home nations to commit sporting fratricide now and also gives us a chance to beat the frogs with stout yeoman masculine virtures opposing their flashy, untrustworthy gallic "flair".

Lions Tours - 4 nations become one and every British rugby fan develops a siege mentality for a couple of months. Te excpetion is where Clive Woodward is involved, of course.

Rugby World Cup - Like the football one, but we usually exceed expectations. Nice to see another four years of Kiwi hand-wringing too.

European Championships - The football one. Was a great spectacle this year, devoid as it was of any leaden-footed British interjections.

[masterblaster]

Cricket World Cup
Border Gavaskar Series
The Ashes
Football World Cup
Boxing Day Test
Australian Tennis Open

[dontcloseyoureyes]

Originally Posted by BoyBrumby

(usually Italian defenders or Argentinian divers).

Or combinations of both.

[steds]

Challenge cup final
Ashes
The good friday derby
Olympics

[andmark]

The Olympics- The world of sporting nations joins together to present the world's toughest men and women in a magnificent gesture where they all do what they do best. I particularly respect the cyclists in the Olympics having to travel 80km in seven hours. It is very impressive.

Anything which isn't football- Football is taken too serious (in Britain). It has caused hooliganism, it is over waged. People in England (not sure about the rest of the world) treat football like the holy grail. If you live in England, if you saw the back page of a newspaper I can guarantee there will be a football article on it. Now it is over dramatic, footballers are giving children who look up to them a bad influence by the falling over if a fly flies onto them. This makes the children do it. Soon enough you won't be able to play a fair game of football.

Thank god that's out of my system.

[Barney Rubble]

Originally Posted by andmark

Anything which isn't football- Football is taken too serious (in Britain). It has caused hooliganism, it is over waged. People in England (not sure about the rest of the world) treat football like the holy grail. If you live in England, if you saw the back page of a newspaper I can guarantee there will be a football article on it. Now it is over dramatic, footballers are giving children who look up to them a bad influence by the falling over if a fly flies onto them. This makes the children do it. Soon enough you won't be able to play a fair game of football.

Thank god that's out of my system.

Whilst I do agree that footballers are wankers etc etc etc etc ad infinitum, football is never, ever going to die out in popularity in England. Either learn to like it, leave the country, or get used to it. Everyone I know who enjoys letting it be known that they don't like football usually comes across as bitter, snobbish and anti-social. If you don't like it, that's fine, but you're up against such a vast number of opponents that you might as well just accept it.

[headhunter]

Fifa World Cup
Aintree Grand National
Cheltenham Festival
All-Ireland Hurling & Football Finals
Summer Olympics
6 Nations

[Samuel_Vimes]

Winter Olympics - country stops, pretty much. Just about enough events that you can keep up with everything, too - unlike the summer version where you keep shouting at the TV that they're showing the wrong sport.

Ashes - don't really have that much of a cricket interest outside this tbh, especially what with Twenty20 taking over. This compels me to find Five Live on long wave radio.

World speedskating championships (allround) - defies human physiology as you ask the same guy to be the best over both 40 seconds and 13 minutes of effort. Entertaining way of hosting an individual sport.

Football World Cup - usually taken in as an outsider (we've qualified three times and I was only a kid for two of them) it's the premier nation-vs-nation contest. I usually moan about football's dominance in the world of sport, but for these four weeks I don't mind.

Handball championships - European handball may leak goals, but close matches in the last ten minutes gives the kind of tension akin to a football cup match - subsequently released by a 60th-minute strike that either sends you aloft or despairing. Plus we're actually good at it.

50 km cross-country, Holmenkollen - the race has been held since the early 1900s - it's a time trial, so you only get to see the skiers at certain intervals - which leaves you speculating how the skiers did between the points you can see them (and the clock will be ticking on the screen so you know when they need to be in the picture). Unfortunately, Norwegian skiers are getting successively worse at this form and better at sprinting (mass start in short heats - chaos - if I wanted to watch that I'd see athletics)

Bislett Games - athletics is pretty fun to watch live, as there's so much going on simultaneously - on TV you only get the running. Rather dependent on people getting into the cheering though.

[GIMH]

FA Cup 3rd Round - The best day in English football, especially when we're in it. There is always such a buzz at the ground on the first Saturday in January, and you know that somewhere in the country a giant is being humbled by a bunch of amateurs

FIFA World Cup - No point me saying what's already been said - see Brumby's post.

The Ashes - Get such a buzz at the start of this series every time. Generally that's where the buzz ends, but it's good while it lasts, and 2005 (the only victory that I can remember) had the country as united in a way normally reserved only for football

[Uppercut]

Originally Posted by BoyBrumby

Football World Cup - It's the biggest and the best. Briefly unites the country in expectation and then in grief, occasionally produces some football worthy of the occasion (Bergkamp's winner versus the evil Argentines in 1998 was almost literally orgasmic), gives us strange heroes (Roger Milla, Letchkov in 94), predictable villians (usually Italian defenders or Argentinian divers) & has been much aped but never surpassed.

The Ashes - Yeah, we usually lose, but when we win: man.

6 Nations - Probably the only real chance for the home nations to commit sporting fratricide now and also gives us a chance to beat the frogs with stout yeoman masculine virtures opposing their flashy, untrustworthy gallic "flair".

Lions Tours - 4 nations become one and every British rugby fan develops a siege mentality for a couple of months. Te excpetion is where Clive Woodward is involved, of course.

Rugby World Cup - Like the football one, but we usually exceed expectations. Nice to see another four years of Kiwi hand-wringing too.

European Championships - The football one. Was a great spectacle this year, devoid as it was of any leaden-footed British interjections.

Everything on this list, minus the Lions tour. Also love Wimbledon, largely because it reminds me of summer arriving. The Heineken cup somehow drags me in every year too, since it's the only major trophy a team from Ulster has ever/will ever win.

[GIMH]

What is it you dislike about the Lions tour?

[pinchy81]

Ashes

NRL Grand final

FIFA World Cup

Superbowl

[ozone]

Same as mentioned above really, but also the Monaco Grand Prix. The Glitz and the Glamour and everything which represents F1 reaches its peak every year in Monaco.

Particularly agree with FA Cup third round, but also love the first round, as it generally throws up even more upsets.

And, as an Englishman, I love watching the boxing day test every year. Is always an amazing event, especially when its part of the ashes.