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Auto Racing

South of Heaven

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February 24, 2014
Auto Racing
2 Comments

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Looks unremarkable, right? It should. Podium ceremonies are customary at the end of most motorsports events outside the US – check the Daytona 500 for Victory Lane-as-American exceptionalism – and this image from Sunday’s FIM Supersport World Championship race in Australia is no different. Three men mount the rostrum, three men receive modest trophies and a bouquet of flowers, three men pop expensive champagne bottles once the winner’s national anthem is played. A team owner laughs, soaking up the victory. A cameraman catches it for posterity. Across the road, someone takes a photo to summarize the weekend.

What’s so strange about this podium is who’s on it. To the right, Italian Raffaele de Rosa, wearing leathers for a team he no longer rides for; to the left, journeyman Scot Kev Coghlan, still winless; and in the center, the most remarkable story of the weekend. But this is World Supersport at the Australian Grand Prix in 2014. This is life at its most whimsical. This is life at the top of the bottom of the world.
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What is and Never Could Be

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September 28, 2013
Auto Racing
2 Comments

PedrosaCOTA1It’s been four months, I know, but we should go back over some groundwork together. As a reader of this experiment, good for you: You know your limits. You embrace hypothetical supercontests. You have time to read the legalese between EA Sports and the NCAA. You snagged Yeezus the hour after the hour it leaked to ensure you got a decent rip. You know Messi’s first name. You see baseball as a New York-everything else binary. You follow the important Tumblrs. You care about The Roots on Fallon. You get it.

There are, of course, things you don’t know or get. You don’t know about Rodan live in their prime, say, or life writing poetry under Pol Pot. You don’t get motorsports. Again: Good for you, you know your limits. A delusional Dale Earnhardt Jr. commercial? Sordid tales of French all-nighters three months ago? If you click on the Categories sidebar to the right long enough, any Chipotle pitstop can eventually seem effortless.

You know it’s easy to visualize experiencing “The Everyday World of Bodies” in person with the help of a VHS rip to YouTube. You know it’s easy to compartmentalize the struggle of a ruthless dictatorship when you parse out the prison lit. You get guiding a 160kg piece of machinery at 200+mph when you’re doing it from the comfort of your wireless Xbox controller. You’re also smart enough to know these are approximations. You don’t really know Rodan. You don’t know Pol Pot.

And you don’t get having to guide a 160kg piece of machinery at 200+mph year after year, on the best piece of engineering available, with the highest and darkest forces of sports and politics backing you, for millions of dollars, and losing. Dani Pedrosa does. And it’s about to happen again.

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Dale Earnhardt, Jr. is King of a Hellish, Post-Apocalyptic World

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August 24, 2013
Auto Racing, Sports
2 Comments

Dale Earnhardt, Jr. is known to be somewhat of a weird bird around NASCAR. He’s a little too shy, a little too awkward and a little too goofy. But that doesn’t mean he is without endorsements. Being the son of a racing legend (RIP), his name generates attention just because of the association. Dale is nowhere near as successful as his father, in terms of the competitive arena, but he sure knows how to make that endorsement deal money.

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A Long Day’s Journey Into Night, And Back Again

By
June 22, 2013
Auto Racing, Sports
1 Comment

Now that the basketball season is a wrap, and with hockey soon to follow, only one of the four major North American seasonal sports, Major League Baseball, will be in session. While the great American pastime certainly carries with it a tradition which is engraved in the hearts of millions, the dog days of summer can get repetitive in the nationally-televised sports world, as diving catches and cannonball home runs take sole possession of center stage on ESPN. By the third instance of a 4-6-3 double play in the SportsCenter Top 10, viewers find themselves rolling their eyes with the reluctantly accepting frustration of Lester Freamon in the pawn shop unit.

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