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A good week for ...
It's got loud music between races, outlandish protective garb and more rowdy American entries than a village on the outskirts of Baghdad. But all of a sudden BMX is our new favourite game.
Danny Lee is banging on the PGA's door. Let
the boy in!
What a great Olympic Games for lovers of junk food. Michael Phelps eats breakfasts that would make Homer Simpson ill and Usain Bolt pigs out on chicken nuggets before shimmying his way down the track to world acclaim. Now Phelps has signed a deal to promote the kind of sugar-coated breakfast cereals that make kids bounce off walls. Brilliant! Pass SuperShorts some more Cheezels and another beer - we have to get in shape for London 2012.
So whose Olympics was it? Phelps or Bolt? We say Phelps is yesterday's man. The cleancut, pancake-munching aquatic robot has been, er, blown out of the water by the track star. Sure, the Yank was six golds ahead, but the Jamaican claimed the games on nonchalance alone.
That's the Premier League title sorted then. Dimitar Berbatov has been caught on camera signing a Manchester United shirt. Expect a contract to follow within a week.
Excuse me? Isaia Toeva? At first five-eighths? Clearly it has been a good week for hitting the bottle before making team selections down at Eden Park.
Forget the little lip-syncher and the fake crackers from the Olympics opening ceremony - spare a thought instead for the performers who emerged from boxes towards the end of the show. Turns out, 900 of them who crouched under 40-pound boxes as part of the show wore adult nappies to let them stay hidden for at least six hours. An Olympian effort you can't turn your nose up at.
He may have a toff's name, but Bradley Wiggins celebrates like a proper yob. The British cycling double gold medallist went out on the town in Beijing after his campaign was done and got hammered. The hijinks concluded when he decided to roll over a taxi's bonnet. The driver didn't see the funny side and the local fuzz had to restore order. Good lad. Forget the negativity Afghanistan won its first medal of the Games with Rohullah Nikpai's bronze in the Taekwondo. Nice.
A bad week for ...
How did TVNZ, the official broadcaster of the Olympic Games, get scooped by rival network TV3 to the story of Tom Ashley's gold in boardsailing?
Sri Lanka's cricket authorities have dumped a team of eastern European cheerleaders from the one-day series against India after locals protested over the scantily-clad women at Dambulla International Stadium. Cultural Minister Yapa Abeywardena said: "It is not in keeping with our tradition," he said. "I have asked the cricket board to drop this item immediately." In keeping with our tradition? Clearly that tradition has nothing to do with the fifth-century Sigiriya rock fortress, a World Heritage site near the ground known for its frescoes of bare-chested women.
The Aussies aren't going, our players don't want to go and the Poms would rather stay at home and make gazzillions playing Twenty20. So, naturally, a spokesman for New Zealand Cricket announces, er, that there will be no announcement on whether the Black Caps are sent to the Champions Trophy in Pakistan. "I'm not trying to create any expectation around the timeline; it's possible we may have a decision by Friday [today]."
Never mind undiegate - the bizarre situation that saw New Zealand hockey's manager banished to the stands because his boys wore non-regulation black briefs under their white shorts - who the hell allowed the German triathlon winner to run with a rogue frankfurter tucked down the front of his one-piece suit?
Once again Jimmy Cowan has been shown up. Former New York Yankees pitcher Hideki Irabu was arrested on Wednesday for allegedly giving a bartender the bash after drinking "20 mugs of beer". Unwisely the barman at a joint in Osaka informed Irabu that his credit card was rejected.
