One more great lost this year. Of course, his soccer playing was incomparable, but I will miss most his smile, his humanity, and his humanitarian efforts. I’ll never forget that the day David Beckham arrived in Los Angeles with great fanfare, Pele was playing in a match to benefit UNICEF. The article in the NYT reminded me of the beauty of Rob Hughes’s (essentially philosophical) writing about soccer and introduced me to that side of Pelé’s greatness.
Tag Archives: sports
VCM 2020
19 AprThe Vienna City Marathon (VCM) 2020 has, of course, been canceled. It would have been held today, and the weather would have been good for it–not too hot or sunny and not much wind.
A few years ago I started writing the VCM date in my calendar so that I could set aside time to watch it undisturbed. This was after a number of years of having it on the TV in the background but not planning to really watch it. At some point I had to accept that it was oddly absorbing and enjoyable to watch people run for hours and that there was no point in trying to get anything else done while the VCM was on.
I still watch on TV but there is a point at which the runners pass about 10 minutes from my flat so I have taken to walking down there and cheering on the front runners: first man, first Austrian man, first woman, first Austrian woman. (I have never gotten the sense that they took in that we were there cheering, but I like to cheer them on nonetheless.)
There is a hole in my calendar this year where the VCM would have been. I’ll especially miss seeing Valentin Pfeil, a gifted and personable Austrian marathoner, and Nancy Kiprop, the Kenyan teacher who runs to earn funds for her school and has been the winner among the women three years in a row. I’ll miss the shots of this beautiful city I live in, the streets cleared of cars but lined with fans. I’ll miss the people who run it with a sense of fun, dressed up in silly costumes and not looking at the clock. I’ll miss the ORF commentary. And I’ll miss the stories of the runners and how they came to be in the VCM.
This, too, is a part of Vienna in the times of coronavirus.
Runners
28 MarNot me! I’m just a dog-walking observer. And as an observer I can’t help noticing how many more runners there are than there were just two weeks ago.
The other thing I’m noticing is how fast some of them are running. I still remember walking through Central Park in New York with my then Austrian partner, about 15 years ago, who couldn’t get over how fast all the runners were moving. Vienna was in the throes of the “slow running” fad, and until now I hadn’t really thought about it, but Vienna was still in the throes until the coronavirus lockdown started!
Clearly, there’s currently a lot of energy out there that is not getting used up in other ways.
Marathon world record in Vienna Prater
12 OctEliud Kipchoge did it! He ran the classic marathon distance in under two hours (1:59:40). And he did it in the Prater in Vienna. I’ve never seen him so happy. 😁
Ice skating in Vienna
1 DecThis interested me very much. I used to live near the Engelmann ice-skating rink, which is on top of a building. Apparently, it opened in 1909 and was the first open-air rink. Cool! 😉
A scene from the World Cup
16 JunSince neither Austria nor Italy are in the World Cup (which in the case of Austria is not so surprising) this is the only flag I’ve seen so far. (The Pride flag wasn’t there yesterday. I assume that is because of the Pride Parade today.)
Boxing
3 JunAs usual, I am reading the Kurier at Saturday breakfast and am learning something. Boxing is not a sport I associate with Austria, and indeed there is only one professional female boxer in the whole country, Eva Voraberger-but she is the world champion in the light bantamweight class, which means she weighs 52 kgs (about 114 lbs) or less(!). Who would have thought?
ecbinvienna 