The five-day USA Cycling Elite Track National Championships offered a virtual crash course (sorry, poor choice of words) on the number of different ways you can set up a bicycle race.

Scratch races, sprint races, pursuits, Madisons. Something called Omniums, which is cycling’s answer to track and field’s pentathlon…but with one extra event. Or heptathlon …but with one fewer…well, you get the point – they’re doing a lot of stuff on a bike on a track.  

Hmmm…what to watch…what to watch? How about the Team Pursuit? Done and done. And it was off to the L.A. Velodrome.
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…Continued from the previous post.

The very first thing I noticed about the 2010 Lawn Bowls U.S. Open was the smell. It smelled like golf – more specifically like a putting green first thing in the morning. Which was no coincidence, since the Newport Harbor Lawn Bowling Club’s entire playing area was one big painstakingly manicured putting green.

I liked the place immediately, even if it did evoke suppressed memories of 90-hour work weeks as a golf course GM. I managed to fight off the reflexive duck and cover response and find a bench from which to survey the scene.

I had been surprised to learn that the Newport Harbor Lawn Bowling Club was not a private facility. It is actually part of a larger, meticulously maintained public recreation facility in Corona del Mar, California. Open to anyone who wants to learn the game. That in a nutshell, encapsulates the vague public perception of the sport – for the small portion of the population that even holds a perception.
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I don’t get it. I just don’t get it. How can it be that lawn bowls not one of the most popular games played in the country?

OK, the name is kind of quirky – I’ll give you that. Why not call it lawn bowling? That would at least give people a head start on relating to the concept. That will also cut down on the confusion created by the fact that “bowls” is the name of the game, the equipment AND the action taken. As in “One bowls with his lawn bowls in lawn bowls”. But I digress.

Let’s get one thing straight right from the start. Lawn bowls is NOT bocce. Yes, it bears a family resemblance. But lumping them together is like saying that the Soapbox Derby and NASCAR racing are the same thing because both involve something with four tires and a steering wheel.
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Let me introduce you to Henry Hyde. He’s a talented kayaker from Colorado, by way of Frisco, Texas. If he looks a bit on the young side, there’s a good reason for that. He’s 9 years old.

The son of two elite paddlers, Henry has been in a kayak since the age of 3 ½ (well, other than for meals and bedtime stories). He’s been competing in junior events since he was 6.

He was in Maryland recently – as was I – to take in the USA Canoe/Kayak Slalom National Championships at the Bethesda Center of Excellence training center. There was one small detail that differentiated our visits though. Henry was there to compete in the National Championships.
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Michal Smolen of Gastonia, NC

You know what I like about sports? I mean aside from all of the obvious things that would motivate a previously sane individual to spend a year of his life chasing down events to watch?

It’s the unexpected and the ironic. And I found both at the USA Canoe/Kayak Slalom National Championships, where the unlikeliest of partnerships was on display.

The event venue, the Bethesda Center of Excellence whitewater course, is a man-made one, measuring 40 feet across and a quarter mile long. The beauty of this artificial river – and what makes it truly unique – is that the water that tumbles through it is always at least ten degrees warmer than that of the neighboring Potomac River, whose western shore runs parallel to the course and serves as its runoff point.

“How can this be?” the alert reader might ask. An excellent question.
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