Diving, Golf, Table Tennis, Tennis

Why you should never strive for perfection

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I’ve just spent a few days in Korea, where the country’s female golfers are perhaps as dominant on the world stage as any team in sports today. Comparing different teams in different sports brings to mind apples and oranges, but 35 of the world top 100 players are from a country with a population of under 50 million. South Koreans have won six of the past eight major championships, and came second in the other two.

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Korean golfers winning…again

What do they get for this? “Boring”, “faceless”, “robots”, “predictable” etc. Inbee Park has won three majors this year and gets fewer column inches than Hunter Mahan’s new baby. Today’s Sports Talk column looks at why sports stars might be better off striving for one level below perfection: become perfect and the fans and media will turn on you – or worse – just ignore you.

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Boxing

Things I learned about boxing in China this week

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Filipino boxer Manny Pacquiao was in Beijing this week, along with legendary boxing promoter Bob Arum, to promote his fight against Brandon “Bam Bam” Rios at the end of November in Macao. I had the chance to interview Manny and some of his camp. Here’s what I found out:

Manny rocked by some searching questions
Manny rocked by some searching questions

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Football

Money trumps player safety in EPL’s Hong Kong jaunt

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I wrote about the state of Hong Kong stadium last week, after which two more Barclays Asia Trophy games took place and another player was injured. I don’t usually sympathize with players who get paid tens (and sometimes hundreds) of thousands of pounds per week for kicking a ball around a field, but that changes somewhat when their safety is willfully put at risk simply because the Premier League must make money at all costs.

The Manchester United squad was pictured watching the games on Saturday. Do these faces look like they are happy about playing here this evening?

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Diving, Football, Swimming

Weekly Wrap: diving, sliding and Camacho

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Hong Kong has been drawing lots of negative attention this week – specifically the semi-flooded state of the Hong Kong Stadium pitch, on which the Barclays Asia Trophy is being played. It consists of 3 EPL teams and a local side sliding through puddles under the guise of vaguely competitive soccer.

Hong Kong pitch
The Beautiful Game
Picture credit: Getty/The Telegraph

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Football, Rugby

Huawei using sports to combat bad PR

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With all the negative press that Chinese telecoms firm Huawei has been receiving in recent days – that it “spies for the Chinese government“, or that the Brits are investigating Huawei’s involvement in a cyber security base in the UK – you would think it might take more than a little gentle sports PR to turn things around.

Huawei - front and center in Canberra
Huawei – front and center in Canberra

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Football

Soccer teams avoid China – but should fans care?

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Maybe things will be different next summer, but pre-season tours of China by European soccer teams appear to be a thing of the past. This week’s Sports Talk column, posted below, explains why, though when English Premier League teams are touring Costa Rica but not China, it’s obvious the business model here is broken. It would be interesting to see how many fans would turn up if a – gasp! – regular season EPL game was played in China; if the NFL, with its far shorter season, can do it, then why can’t the EPL? I suspect it would be a full house, but ticket prices might be an issue, as I discuss below.

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Golf

Chinese golf’s latest torchbearer [UPDATED]

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The kids have been getting all the attention recently – and not just the teens, but those in single digits – though it will take a good few years before any of them progress to the pro ranks. But it’s important to have figures for China’s next generation of golfers to look up to, targets whose records they want to beat, and Wu Ashun – at 28, still young in golfing terms – will today become just the second Chinese male ever to play in the Open Championship.

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Wu Ashun, China’s sole representative in the Open, enjoying his time in Scotland

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Baseball, Football, Golf

Weekly Wrap: Manny, golf prodigies and the return of match-fixing

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There have been a couple of fantastic, long-form articles written in recent days about sport in this part of the world. The first comes from Brook Larmer, author of the 2005 book Operation Yao Ming which details the rise of China’s most famous sporting son. Writing in the New York Times, Larmer turns his attention to golf, describing a fascinating picture of the wealthy, driven parents of kids as young as eight essentially creating their own mini versions of the state-backed sports schools that have been so successful in churning out Olympians. Here’s an extract:

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Photo credit: New York Times

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