pe Page 855 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Speed Skater Wins Gold After Everyone Else Crashes
China's Li Jianrou found the perfect place to be in today's women's 500-meter short track final: the back of the pack....

This Photo Of Dick Vitale Is Art
"It is brutal out - stranded at airport" is the caption that accompanied this photo on Dickie V's Instagram account. ...

How <em>Sports Illustrated</em> Botched The Michael Sam Story
Journalism isn't hard. You watch something and describe it. You read something and paraphrase it. You have a conversation with someone and transcribe it....

The Crime Novelist Who Reinvented Soccer Writing
The Books Issue is the eighth issue of The Classical Magazine. In addition to the piece below, it features writing by Alex Belth, Holly M. Wendt, and many more writing about such subjects as North Dallas Forty, the making of "What Do You Think of Ted Williams Now?," Harry Crews, The Pogues, and bike...

Kelly Clark Wipes Out On First Run In Halfpipe Final
Kelly Clark's halfpipe final experience is beginning to mirror Shaun White's. As one of the top snowboarders in the world, she put up a big number in the qualifying round but struggled in her first run of the final and wiped out when she hit the lip. She is currently in 12th place, halfway through t...

Shani Davis And Koen Verweij Are Best Olympic Bros
American speed skater Shani Davis is a minor celebrity in America, but he's practically a folk hero in the Netherlands, where speed skating is beloved all year round. According to the Wall Street Journal, Davis is so respected by the Dutch that even his Olympic rival, Koen Verweij, considers him a h...

Which Cleveland Browns Rumor Is Funnier?
Browns owner Jimmy Haslam punted his general manager and CEO today, and his late front-office shuffling has produced two interesting but dubious rumors. It's difficult to decide which is better, so judge for yourself....

The Evolution Of The Halfpipe: Faster, Higher, Safer?
The men's halfpipe final was sort of a disaster today, as a terribly maintained Sochi course led to falls (or at least slips) for most of the major competitors. But, hey, no one got hurt! ...

Not Helping, Pelicans
Pierre the Pelican has just emerged from the "surgery" he underwent in order to become less of a nightmarish hellbird. This isn't really making seem that much more cuddly, Pelicans!...

BBC Snowboarding Commentators Are A Blast
Ed Leigh and Tim Warwood handle the BBC's snowboarding commentary from Sochi and listening to them call the runs might be more fun than watching the runs themselves. Snowboarding and other X-Games-related sports all seem to have their own weirdo jargon, shouted out by anthropomorphic cans of Mount...

Who's Your Favorite Old-Man Olympic Hockey Player?
If you too are quivering with excitement for men's hockey to get underway tomorrow, you could do a lot worse to tide yourself over than this New York Times profile of five of the Olympic games' oldest athletes, NHL legends all. It's tough being in your '40s in a young man's game; it's a bit easier w...

Dutch Airline Boss Arrested For Peeing On Putin's Fence
If you're a foreigner in Sochi for the Olympics, one of the things at the top of your "Things not to do at the Olympics" list should be "Peeing on Vladimir Putin's fence." Someone should have told that to Dutch Airline mogul Atilay Uslu....

Men's Halfpipe Final Ends In Disaster Of Gnarly Wrecks
Shaun White was unable to defend his back-to-back gold medals in men's halfpipe today, and in fact the American extreme sport superstar finished out of the medals entirely despite having the top score coming out of the prelims. He wasn't the only snowboarder to falter, though; the piece-of-shit Soch...

Marreese Speights Dominates: The Spectacle Of The Fattish NBA Gunner
About halfway through the second quarter last night, Marreese Speights missed a step-back three. It was the first shot he'd missed all night, and it seemed to be off more because Speights got tired from bludgeoning the 76ers with their own dismembered arms and legs than because of anything Philadel...

The '86 Series: Best Of Times, Worst Of Times
Here's Peter Gammons writing about Game Six of the 1986 World Series in the '87 SI Baseball Preview:...

Russian Skater Gets Away With False Start Thanks To Broken Starter Pistol
Ekaterina Lobysheva is a veteran Russian speed skater, but everything about her run during today's 500m prelims in Sochi today was amateur hour—from the broken starter pistol that let her get away with a second, disqualifying false start, to the broken ice that made her wipe out at the end....

Speed Skaters Have Gotten A Lot Faster Since 1924
Similar to what The New York Times did for the 100m dash in 2012, The Wall Street Journal has developed a great graphic to show just how much faster the top speed skaters have gotten over the years. The still above is part of an animation pitting every male 500m gold medalist against each other; the...


Dutch Twin Brothers Battle For Gold In Speed Skating
The Dutch own speed skating. Over the weekend, Ireen Wust won gold in the women's 3,000, they swept the podium in the men's 5,000 and today they swept the 500. This was a particularly tense set of races because identical twin brothers were jockeying for position. This is a split-screen video of the...
