Recent Entries

• ARCHERY: THE SPORT WHERE STILLNESS IS THE WHOLE GAME AND YOUR H

  by Richard Waters Wed at 6:48 PM
  You are trying to be completely motionless while your heart insists on beating. This is the entire problem. The arrow doesn't care about your anxiety. This is the central fact of archery and it is absolutely ruthless. The arrow will go where physics sends it — where the bow was pointing wh...

• SKIING: THE SPORT WHERE THE MOUNTAIN SETS THE COURSE AND THE ON

  by Richard Waters Wed at 6:45 PM
  Gravity is not your opponent. Gravity is the whole point. Your opponent is the part of your brain that knows better. Let's begin with the basic proposition. You are on a mountain. The mountain is steep. You have two narrow planks attached to your feet and poles in your hands that are approximate...

• FORMULA 1: THE SPORT WHERE TECHNOLOGY AND HUMAN NERVE TRAVEL TW

  by Richard Waters Wed at 6:41 PM
  A machine built by a thousand engineers. One person who has to drive it. The car accelerates from zero to sixty miles per hour in 2.4 seconds. Not in a straight line where the only variable is how hard you can press the throttle. In a straight line between two corners on a circuit you have learn...

• WRESTLING: THE OLDEST SPORT ALIVE AND THE ONE THAT NEVER NEEDED

  by Richard Waters Apr 20
  Two bodies. One mat. The most fundamental athletic contest humans ever invented, still going, still unsettled. Before the ball. Before the net. Before the field and the court and the track and the pool and every piece of organized athletic infrastructure humans have built around the impulse to co...

• VOLLEYBALL: THE SPORT THAT LOOKS SIMPLE UNTIL YOU TRY IT AND TH

  by Richard Waters Apr 20
  Three touches. That's all you get. Three touches to do something with a ball that wasn't yours a second ago and won't be yours a second from now. Three touches. That's the rule. Each team gets three contacts with the ball before it has to cross the net. Not four. Not five. Three — and with...