Recent Entries

• ROCK CLIMBING: THE SPORT WHERE THE WALL DOESN'T MOVE AND NEITHE

  by Richard Waters Mon at 11:13 AM
  Gravity has been doing this to rocks since before life existed. You decided to go up anyway. The hold is the size of a quarter. Not the full coin. The edge of it. A crimped edge of polyurethane resin bolted to a gym wall or a feature of granite that a billion years of geological pressure produce...

• CURLING: THE SPORT THAT LOOKS LIKE SHUFFLEBOARD IN A FREEZER UN

  by Richard Waters May 9
  A forty-two pound granite stone. A sheet of ice. Two people sweeping with brooms. The most polite war ever declared. You will laugh at curling exactly once. The first time you see it — the stone sliding slowly down the ice, two people furiously sweeping in front of it with what appear to b...

• OLYMPIC WEIGHTLIFTING: THE SPORT WHERE A HUMAN BEING PICKS UP M

  by Richard Waters May 5
  One second of everything you are. Then it's done. Then you find out. The bar bends. Not metaphorically. Not as an expression of how heavy the weight is. The barbell actually bends — physically, visibly, the steel flexing under the load — when a world-class weightlifter stands over a ...

• TABLE TENNIS: THE SPORT THAT LOOKS LIKE A CHILDREN'S GAME UNT

  by Richard Waters May 5
  A table nine feet long. A ball smaller than a golf ball. Reflexes that belong in a different species entirely. The ball travels at 112 kilometers per hour. From a table that is nine feet long. Which means the ball crosses the table in approximately 0.2 seconds. Which means the player on the othe...

• FENCING: THE SPORT THAT HAPPENS TOO FAST TO SEE AND TOO DEEP TO

  by Richard Waters May 4
  You blinked. The bout is over. What just happened was chess at the speed of a reflex. The touch takes eight milliseconds. Not the whole exchange. Not the build-up — the footwork, the feints, the probing attacks, the retreats, the psychological pressure of two people trying to find a gap in...