I can’t say this enough – the food that you put into your bodies can actually help you get better grades. And it can also affect your performance in sports and other activities too. You see, when you give your body the best possible fuel, you have more energy, you’re stronger, you think more quickly.
Sailing a boat calls for quick action, a blending of feeling with the wind and water as well as with the very heart and soul of the boat itself. Sailing teaches alertness and courage, and gives in return a joyousness and peace that but few sports afford.
I like sports, and swimming is my favorite. Doing physical exercises keeps one fit and healthy and helps one work more efficiently. I think we all need to strike a balance between work and relaxation. This can keep us energetic and help us do our job better.
The first thing I learned in boxing is to not get hit. That’s the art of boxing. Execute your opponent without getting hit. In sports school, we were putting our hands behind our backs and having to defend ourselves with our shoulders, by rolling, by moving round the ring, moving out feet.
Growing up in Huntington Beach, you were either a traditional sports athlete, a skateboarder, or a surfer. I got my first skateboard when I was five and skated off and on over the years, did a little BMX racing as a kid, and then in my freshman or sophomore year I started getting a little bit more into skateboarding.
We live in a world where sports have the potential to bridge the gap between racism, sexism and discrimination. The 2012 Olympic Games was a great start but hopefully what these games taught us is that if women are given an opportunity on an equal playing field the possibilities for women are endless.
I grew up a Michael Jordan fan; that was my first idol. But my true sports idol was Deion Sanders: he was the person I always wanted to be. I wanted to play two sports professionally, which would never happen, but to me, that was every kid’s dream.
Some boys accepted me, some didn’t. And my family had comments made to them. Brazil is still a very macho society, and sports are mainly for boys, so people would say to them: ‘What is this girl doing? Why is she always out there in the soccer games with the boys?’
Some of the authorities would like to remove rhythmic gymnastics from the list of Olympic sports and turn it into art. I think this would be wrong, as rhythmic gymnastics is a true sport – we train around six hours per day and sometimes spend entire days in the gym.
I don’t think that humankind is worthy of trust when we can’t let go of war, draw borders between neighboring countries, seek to become richer than others, find joy in defeating others at sports, and choose someone of the opposite gender based on their appearance.
It was no accident that I made ‘Hoop Dreams’ because it concerned a sport that I loved and hoped would be my dream, however far-fetched that turned out to be. Because of the success of that film, Hollywood pigeonholed me as a sports biopic guy, which led to ‘Prefontaine’ and two cable sports films.
Far and away, the question I’m asked most often is, ‘What’s your favorite sporting event to call?’ I can’t say I’ve ever answered the question well, simply because the three biggest events I broadcast for CBS Sports – the Super Bowl, the NCAA Men’s Final Four and the Masters – each are incomparable.
I grew up thinking that I would become a fighter pilot and was fascinated by aircrafts as I had grown up around that. But my father encouraged me to not become an Air Force person, given the varied interests I had, be it books, movies, sports or fighter flying.
Besides acting, I love reading books, dancing, singing, and following a few sports. My favorite sport is tennis. I love travelling, and I see a new place every year. Luckily, my job helps me do that very easily. In my spare time, I also spend time watching English TV shows like ‘Grey’s Anatomy,’ ‘Modern Family,’ ‘House MD’ and a few others.
I wanted to really ingrain myself in the culture and the people. And I apologize about having an allergy to dairy products that gives me some irritable bowels, but other than that, I mean, I’ve embraced just about everything else Wisconsin – especially when it comes to sports, but also the people and the interactions with our fans.
Young people, particularly in their teens and 20s, are not consuming sports the way my generation did. They are doing lots of things; they are multitasking. They are getting downloads; they are getting alerts on their computers or on their cellphones, and they are consuming sports in a more real-time but less full-time basis.
First of all the name, and the color purple, I think those two things distinguish the Vikings as much as anything. You go anywhere in the country and say ‘Vikings,’ they know exactly where you are. You say ‘Cardinals,’ well, Cardinals who? There are a dozen Cardinals teams in the country in professional and amateur sports.
I have long understood that losing always comes with the territory when you wander into the gambling business, just as getting crippled for life is an acceptable risk in the linebacker business. They both are extremely violent sports, and pain is part of the bargain. Buy the ticket, take the ride.
There were some coaches, some teammates, some sports psychology people who I could trust and rely on. They were very important to keep me focused on the right things – the things which would be beneficial to me instead of catastrophising things and worrying about things which were not in my control.
My first match was against Sputnik Monroe at the Amarillo Sports Arena. It was scheduled for only ten minutes. Sputnik got me down and was on top of me for the first eight minutes. My father came running down to the ring and yelled for me to get up. I don’t know how I got up but I did. I was a lot more scared of my father than I was Sputnik.
A lot of skaters hole themselves up in hotels and focus – and that’s great, and that may work for them. But for me, having the Olympic experience was as great as winning the medal. I have so many memories of living in the village and meeting other athletes, seeing other sports, and feeling the energy. It’s so magical.
Sports exact too harsh a toll on our beautiful women. Like engendered species, they should be protected, and instead, we exploit them and demand they fly too close to the sun for our amusement. We send them into the arena for an exhausting three-setter, an 18-hole playoff, a 200th lap. The burnout factor is insurmountable.
Trip Hawkins – and this was the early 1980s – was saying there’s going to be a day when everyone has a computer and they’re going to want to do more on it, including playing games. So he started up a company, EA Sports, and he was going to have three games, football, basketball and baseball. So I was the football game.
Thanks to the competence, love of God, our country’s security and stability, endowed wealth, integrated infrastructure and quality services, the U.A.E. turned into the world’s renowned destination for tourism, investment and business management: the interface of choice for hosting major cultural events, artistic and sports, in the world.
I was given an opportunity to do sports in college and get a degree because of it. I ran track for the University of Texas and was studying to be a petroleum landman. And I was gifted an opportunity to audition for a film during my last semester in college, which I discovered while jogging around campus.
