Blind Athletes, Blindness, & Gillard's Star Gazing

From yesterday's New York Times article "It’s Just Another Hurdle for Blind Athletes:"

Holding a fiberglass pole, Aria Ottmueller bent and touched the runway to locate her starting mark. A coach helped position her front foot. The foam vaulting pit at her high school appeared only as a blue smudge. The crossbar was invisible to her.

A thousand miles away, in East Texas, Charlotte Brown struggled to distinguish the runway from surrounding grass or artificial turf. So her coach placed a strip of carpet along the edge of the runway to provide a hazy visual contrast and guide her straight toward the bar.

This weekend, Ottmueller, 17, and Brown, 15, are competing in their state track and field meets in the pole vault, pioneers with severe visual impairment who are further redefining what is considered an able-bodied athlete and what is considered a disabled one. In the past, athletes with disabilities were not accommodated in mainstream high school sports. Now, athletes like Ottmueller and Brown are not only competing, but also succeeding against their able-bodied peers.

For a novel with a blind narrator, try Star Gazing by Linda Gillard:

Blind since birth, widowed in her twenties, now lonely in her forties, Marianne Fraser lives in Edinburgh in elegant, angry anonymity with her sister, Louisa, a successful novelist. Marianne's passionate nature finds solace and expression in music, a love she finds she shares with Keir, a man she encounters on her doorstep one winter's night. While Marianne has had her share of men attracted to her because they want to rescue her, Keir makes no concession to her condition. He is abrupt to the point of rudeness, and yet oddly kind. But can Marianne trust her feelings for this reclusive stranger who wants to take a blind woman to his island home on Skye, to "show" her the stars?

Giro d'Italia, Tour de France, & Krabbé's The Rider

From last week's New York Times article "Tour de France Champion to Headline the Giro d’Italia:"

With its systemic corruption, fractious leadership, an entrenched code of silence and some of its members recently embroiled in a high-profile drug trial, professional cycling these days often seems to resemble organized crime more than sport...

Fitting, then, that the cycling world will gather in Naples on Saturday — not for Camorra-like clandestine meetings, but to start the Giro d’Italia, the three-week Grand Tour that signals the start of the sport’s high season.

Recent editions of the Giro have been short on star power, but organizers have managed to up the wattage considerably this year by attracting Bradley Wiggins, the defending Tour de France champion, to headline the 21-stage race that will span 3,405 kilometers, or 2,116 miles...

The Giro is often considered the most grueling of the Grand Tours, which also include the Tour de France and the Vuelta a España. It is a physically demanding challenge that can be, at times, absurdly so. In 2009, the peloton staged a protest after a series of dangerous stages, including one where Spanish rider Pedro Horrillo ended up in a coma after a mountain crash.

For a novel about bicycle racing, try The Rider by Tim Krabbé:

At the start of this chronicle of a single bike race, the author glances up from his gear to assess the crowd of spectators. "Non-racers," he writes. "The emptiness of those lives shocks me."

In immediate, living prose, Krabbé, a novelist as well as a cyclist, takes us with him, inch by inch, as he rides the hundred-and-thirty-seven-kilometre Tour de Mont Aigoual, a course through the mountains that is better known as one of the cruellest stages of the Tour de France.

He imagines an official collecting his clothes "after I've died in the race" recalls a champion cyclist who suffocated to death while climbing one particularly nasty hill; and insists that "being a good loser is a despicable evasion."

Along the way, he lays bare the athlete's peculiar mixture of arrogance and terror, viciousness and camaraderie, and the result is one of the more convincing love stories of recent memory.

Another Tour de France novel is The Race by Dave Shields:

The white-knuckle pace of a bicycle race drives this novel about a young American's opportunity to compete in the Tour de France. Complex relationships with teammates, personal and professional obstacles, and a terrible disaster cause the young cyclist to redefine his limits.

An insider's perspective on the world of professional bicycle racing which reveals that the required tactics and skills create a culture in which pain is the ultimate currency and endurance is the most powerful force.

The Kentucky Derby & David Francis' Dead Cert

The Kentucky Derby, to be held on May 3rd, is little more than a week away. Here's the latest from the Washington Post article, "Top Kentucky derby contender Verrazano, Revolutionary post workouts at Churchill Downs:"

Verrazano and Revolutionary were among five Kentucky Derby contenders posting workouts at Churchill Downs on Sunday morning.

Unbeaten Verrazano worked five furlongs in 1:00.20, while Louisiana Derby winner Revolutionary breezed four furlongs in 48:80 with three-time Derby winner Calvin Borel aboard for the first time since being chosen to ride the colt.

Both 3-year-olds are trained by Todd Pletcher, who could have as many as six of the 20 horses in the Derby on May 4.

For a novel about horse racing, try Dead Cert by Dick Francis:

A jockey-hero ... realizes that a horse against which he was racing (at Maidenhead) is put at a disadvantage when the champion jockey who is riding it is murdered before the winning post. He must turn detective. (From the BBC review.)

Cricket in Pakistan & Hall's The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken

From yesterday’s BBC article, “Salman Butt & Mohammad Asif: Pakistan cricketers lose appeals:”

Salman Butt and Mohammad Asif have lost their appeals at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (Cas) to have their bans from cricket overturned.

Ex-Pakistan captain Butt, bowler Asif and team-mate Mohammad Amir were found guilty of "spot-fixing" in 2011. Butt, 28, is said to be "bitterly disappointed" and his legal team plan to continue to fight the ban.

"In the coming days and weeks, we will be exploring every other available avenue," said one of his legal team.

Butt is banned for 10 years by the International Cricket Council (ICC), with five years suspended, while swing bowler Asif is banned for seven years, two of which are suspended.

For novels about cricket, try the following:

• Want cricket-lit set in Pakistan/India? Try The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken by Tarquin Hall:

Vish Puri is as fond of butter chicken as the next Punjabi. So when it’s served at the Delhi Durbar hotel at an India Premier League cricket match dinner, he’s the first to tuck in. Faheem Khan, father of Pakistani star cricketer Kamran Khan, can’t resist either. But the creamy dish proves his undoing. After a few mouthfuls, he collapses on the floor, dead...

• Prefer some cricket action in Afghanistan? You might like The Taliban Cricket Club by Timeri N. Murari:

A harrowing yet tender novel — Bend It Like Beckham in a burka — The Taliban Cricket Club is a moving and unforgettable tale of one woman’s courage and guile in the face of terror and tyranny. Set in war-torn Kabul, Afghanistan, this extraordinary new fiction by Timeri N. Murari, acclaimed author of the international bestseller, Taj, is a sweeping story of love, family, resilience, and survival, featuring an unforgettable heroine determined to help her loved ones win their freedom with a bat and a ball.

• Or maybe some cricket in New York? Try Netherland by Joseph O'Neill:

In a New York City made phantasmagorical by the events of 9/11, Hans--a banker originally from the Netherlands--finds himself marooned among the strange occupants of the Chelsea Hotel after his English wife and son return to London. Alone and untethered, feeling lost in the country he had come to regard as home, Hans stumbles upon the vibrant New York subculture of cricket, where he revisits his lost childhood and, thanks to a friendship with a charismatic and charming Trinidadian named Chuck Ramkissoon, begins to reconnect with his life and his adopted country.

Mike Rice, Abusive Coaches, & Walters' Power Play

From yesterday's New York Times article "Rutgers Fires Coach Over Abuse and Slurs:"

Rutgers fired Mike Rice, the coach of its men’s basketball team, on Wednesday, a day after a video surfaced showing him berating his players during practices, throwing balls at them, kicking them and taunting them with slurs. Rice’s termination comes nearly four months after the university’s athletic director, Tim Pernetti, suspended him for three games and fined him $50,000, with little elaboration. On Wednesday, Pernetti said that he erred in not taking stronger action and that he would “work to regain the trust of the Rutgers community.”

For a novel about an abusive coach, try Power Play by Eric Walters. While there are large differences between Rice's use of physical and verbal abuse and the sexual abuse depicted in the book, it's well-written and is the best novel on abusive coaching I could find. Here's the summary:

This gripping new novel by bestselling children’s/YA author Eric Walters explores the complex and disturbing relationship between a talented young hockey star and his predatory coach as it descends into sexual abuse.

Jay-Z, Sports Agents, & Coben's Deal Breaker

From yesterday's New York Times article "With New Move, Jay-Z Enters a Sports Agent State of Mind:"

Jay-Z has long been in the inner circle of A-listers like Alex Rodriguez and LeBron James, using their names in his lyrics and their star wattage to enhance his own. Now, he is making a move to turn those relationships into big business in a more formal way. 

With a double-barreled announcement Tuesday that he was opening his own sports agency, and that he was stealing the Yankees star Robinson Cano from the most powerful agent in baseball, Jay-Z stands poised to shake up the sports world by offering athletes something they cannot find anywhere else: himself. 

Roc Nation Sports is the newest arm of Roc Nation, Jay-Z’s “full-service entertainment company” that has quickly built a strong reputation representing artists like Rihanna, Shakira and M.I.A.

For a book with a sports agent protagonist, try Harlan Coben's crime novel Deal Breaker:

Sports agent Myron Bolitar is poised on the edge of the big time. So is Christian Steele, a rookie quarterback and Myron's prized client. But when Christian gets a phone call from a former girlfriend, a woman who everyone, including the police, believes is dead, the deal starts to go sour. Trying to unravel the truth about a family's tragedy, a woman's secret, and a man's lies, Myron is up against the dark side of his business--where image and talent make you rich, but the truth can get you killed.

Baseball's Opening Day & Grisham's Calico Joe

I've already posted about college baseball.  Now how about some Major League action, especially since opening day is this weekend? Give it to me, Bleacher Report: what's on tap for the very first game of the season?

Major League Baseball will open its season with a battle of Texan teams, as the perennially contending Texas Rangers travel to face the perennially cellar-dwelling Houston Astros on Sunday night. Both teams come into 2013 with a lot of questions. Can the Rangers overcome major losses in their lineup in the tough AL West with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim and Oakland Athletics nipping at their heels? Can the Astros win 60 games?

Can the Astros win 60 games? Could a worse opening match-up have been made? Is there a reason the opening game doesn't feature headline teams like the Tigers, Yankees, or World Champion San Francisco Giants?

To escape from reality (highly recommended for any Astros fans) into the pages of a good book, try Calico Joe by John Grisham:

In the summer of 1973 Joe Castle was the boy wonder of baseball, the greatest rookie anyone had ever seen. The kid from Calico Rock, Arkansas dazzled Cub fans as he hit home run after home run, politely tipping his hat to the crowd as he shattered all rookie records. Calico Joe quickly became the idol of every baseball fan in America, including Paul Tracey, the young son of a hard-partying and hard-throwing Mets pitcher. On the day that Warren Tracey finally faced Calico Joe, Paul was in the stands, rooting for his idol but also for his Dad. Then Warren threw a fastball that would change their lives forever…

If you prefer a classic, you might like The Natural by Bernard Malamud:

The Natural, Bernard Malamud’s first novel, published in 1952, is also the first—and some would say still the best—novel ever written about baseball. In it Malamud, usually appreciated for his unerring portrayals of postwar Jewish life, took on very different material—the story of a superbly gifted “natural” at play in the fields of the old daylight baseball era—and invested it with the hardscrabble poetry, at once grand and altogether believable, that runs through all his best work.

I'm going to take a break from posting for a few days.  I'm thinking of drawing up a "best of" list of the books mentioned in the March posts.  I'll be back on Monday.

Tiger Woods' Comeback & Pressfield's The Legend of Bagger Vance

From yesterday's BBC article "Tiger Woods back as world number one after Bay Hill win:"

Tiger Woods returned to the top of the world rankings for the first time since October 2010 after winning the Arnold Palmer Invitational by two strokes. The 37-year-old...first became world number one in June 1997 following his maiden major victory at the Masters, aged 22. He topped the rankings for 264 weeks from August 1999 to September 2004 and 281 weeks from June 2005 to October 2010. But a five-month lay-off in late 2009 after an infamous scandal in his private life, a string of injuries, including four knee operations and an Achilles problem, and problems getting to grips with a new swing all contributed to his fall down the rankings.

Want a good golf novel? Try The Legend of Bagger Vance by Steven Pressfield:

In the Depression year of 1931, on the golf links at Krewe Island off Savannah's windswept shore, two legends of the game, Bobby Jones and Walter Hagen, meet for a mesmerizing thirty-six-hole showdown. Another golfer will also compete -- a troubled local war hero, once a champion, who comes with his mentor and caddie, the mysterious Bagger Vance. And he alone can show his protege the way back to glory.

The following two golf novels can be safely avoided:

• Missing Links by Rick Reilly: too many cheap gags, not enough substance. 

• Miracle on the 17th Green by James Patterson: reads like a cross between a Hallmark card and a story told by Grandpa Simpson. Excerpt:

Our kids, to use one of Noah's current favorite words, are "the bomb." That's good, by the way. They are also sensitive, caring, beautiful, and brilliant."

College Baseball & Harbach's The Art of Fielding

Thus far in Division I baseball, University of South Carolina looks like they may well go to the College World Series for the fourth year in a row.

In more controversial news, University of Southern California's team -- which has won the College World Series a record twelve times -- lost their coach last month. Here's the LA Times article "USC fires baseball coach Frank Cruz, citing NCAA rules violations:"

USC fired baseball coach Frank Cruz for knowingly violating NCAA rules that limit the number of hours athletes can spend in activities directed or supervised by the coaching staff, Athletic Director Pat Haden said... According to NCAA bylaws, athletes are limited to four hours per day and 20 hours per week of countable athletically related activities during their seasons. In the off-season, they are limited to eight hours per week with not more than two hours per week spent on skill-related workouts. 

Back when I was in college, a good friend of mine played on our university's Division I baseball team and regularly had to attend "voluntary" workouts that exceeded the NCAA's limitations. I didn't realize the NCAA had begun cracking down on that type of thing.

Anyway: for a novel about college baseball, try Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding:

At Westish College, a small school on the shore of Lake Michigan, baseball star Henry Skrimshander seems destined for big league stardom. But when a routine throw goes disastrously off course, the fates of five people are upended. Henry’s fight against self-doubt threatens to ruin his future. College president Guert Affenlight, a longtime bachelor, has fallen unexpectedly and helplessly in love. Owen Dunne, Henry’s gay roommate and teammate, becomes caught up in a dangerous affair. Mike Schwartz, the Harpooners’ team captain and Henry’ best friend, realizes he has guided Henry’s career at the expense of his own. And Pella Affenlight, Guert’s daughter, returns to Westish after escaping an ill-fated marriage, determined to start a new life. As the season counts down to its climactic final game, these five are forced to confront their deepest hopes, anxieties, and secrets.

Women's Boxing & Toole's Million Dollar Baby

We've been a little light on sports news/books here at Newsworthy Novels:  we had our Iditarod post earlier this month and then our Rwandan track star post in February.  That's about it.  But thankfully, a couple of weeks ago the Guardian ran a story about female boxers in Afghanistan and the UK, giving us the perfect excuse for another sports read.

Here are some of the article highlights:

Sadaf Rahimi, Fahima Mohammad and Shabnam Rahman have overcome a host of cultural and financial barriers to pursue their sport in Kabul... Rahimi, Mohammad and Rahman are due to train and attend a charity auction in London to raise money for their gym in Kabul, then travel to Bristol to be coached by Britain's first officially licensed female boxer, Jane Couch MBE. Couch is no stranger to struggles with authorities – in 1998 she persuaded an industrial tribunal to overturn a British Boxing Board of Control ruling that had denied her a licence. The BBBC had argued that premenstrual syndrome made women too unstable to box. After years of lobbying from British women fighters, women's boxing was officially recognised as an Olympic sport on 14 August 2009. At London 2012 there were women boxers from Kazakhstan, North Korea and Turkey, while British boxer Nicola Adams became the first woman to win an Olympic boxing gold.

What's a great book about boxers? Try the heartbreaking novella Million Dollar Baby by the late boxing manager F. X. Toole:

A boxing cut man uses swabs, pressure, ice, and home-mixed salve to stop his fighter's bleeding between rounds. Toole, 70, whose experience as a cut man inspired this hard-boiled debut...writes with blunt authority about this world. His strongest tales feature old trainers or cut men like himself, wisely noble holdovers from boxing's Hibernian age...  His coldly plotted novella "Million $$$ Baby" begins like the most familiar old pulp story of the grumpy veteran trainer and the eager would-be student; then Toole freshens the clich by making the boxer an innocent young woman from the Ozarks.

The Iditarod & Henry's Murder on the Iditarod Trail

For those who enjoyed the Retirement Homes Are Murder recommendation from our retirement home post, we have another murder mystery for you.  But first, the news. 

From today's NPR article "Winning Musher Is Oldest Champion In Iditarod History:"

"Mitch Seavey scored one for the AARP-eligible crowd Tuesday night by becoming the oldest champion in Iditarod history," the Anchorage Daily News writes this morning. According to Alaska Public Telecommunications, the 53-year-old Seavey crossed the finish line at 10:39 p.m. local time on Tuesday — 2:39 a.m. ET Wednesday. It has "checkpoint to checkpoint" coverage of the race posted here. The Daily News says Seavey and his team of sled dogs finished the 1,000-mile race in "9 days, 7 hours, 39 minutes, 56 seconds." His team was led by "Tanner, a 6-year-old, orange-brown husky." Before this, the oldest musher to have led his team to victory was Jeff King. He was 50 when he won the race in 2006, the Daily News says. Seavey and his son Dallas are now the oldest and youngest winning mushers in Iditarod history. Dallas Seavey was 25 when he won the race in 2012. Mitch Seavey has won the Iditarod twice.

Want some Iditarod fiction? Try Sue Henry's Murder on the Iditarod Trail:

The winner of Alaska's world-famous Iditarod -- a grueling, eleven-hundred-mile dog sled race across a frigid Arctic wilderness---takes home a $250,000 purse. But this year, the prize is survival. Only the toughest and the most able come to compete in this annual torturous test of endurance, skill, and courage. Now, suddenly and inexplicably, the top Iditarod contestants are dying one by one in bizarre and gruesome ways. Jessie Arnold, Alaska's premier female "musher," fears she may be the next intended victim, but nothing is going to prevent her from aggressively pursuing the glory and the rewards that victory brings.

Oh yeah. Agatha Christie meets Jack London.

 If you're not into mysteries, you could try something by Hatchet-man Gary Paulsen. His dog-sledding books include both Winderdance, a non-fiction account of his Iditarod experiences, and Dogsong, a young adult novel about an Eskimo boy's epic sled journey:

Something is bothering Russel Susskit. He hates waking up to the sound of his father's coughing, the smell of diesel oil, the noise of snow machines starting up. Only Oogruk, the shaman who owns the last team of dogs in the village, understands Russel's longing for the old ways and the songs that celebrated them. But Oogruk cannot give Russel the answers he seeks; the old man can only prepare him for what he must do alone. Driven by a strange, powerful dream of a long-ago self and by a burning desire to find his own song, Russel takes Oogruk's dogs on an epic journey of self-discovery that will change his life forever.

And while there's no Iditarod in Jack London's The Call of the Wild, there is a lot of dog sledding action, so you might want to give that a shot as well:

The story takes place in the extreme conditions of the Yukon during the 19th-century Klondike Gold Rush, where strong sled dogs were in high demand. After Buck, a domesticated dog, is snatched from a pastoral ranch in California, he is sold into a brutal life as a sled dog.

UPDATE:  there's a good review of Murder on the Iditarod Trail on the St. Thomas Dog Blog.

Rwandan Genocide Asylum Case & Benaron's Running the Rift

Continuing the blog's recent Africa theme (we touched on Zimbabwe and South Africa earlier this week), here's Friday's BBC story "Rwandan woman stripped of US citizenship after lying about genocide:"

A Rwandan woman who won political asylum in the US after hiding her family's role in the 1994 genocide has been convicted in a New Hampshire court of lying about her own part in the mass killings. Beatrice Munyenyezi, 43, was immediately stripped of the US citizenship she had gained a decade earlier in the same courthouse where she was found guilty on Thursday of making false statements to officials in order to cover up how she selected Tutsis to be raped and murdered. She faces up to 10 years in prison and then likely deportation to face a trial in Rwanda for genocide.

For a novel based on the Rwandan genocide, try Naomi Benaron's award-winning Running the Rift:

Having worked extensively with genocide survivor groups in Rwanda, Benaron clearly acquired a very lucid sense of her characters' lives and of the horrors they endured. Her story tells, with compelling clarity, of Rwandan Tutsi youth, Jean Patrick Nkuba—who dreams of becoming Rwanda's first Olympic medalist. It's a dream he must postpone for more than a decade as the internecine savagery, Hutu vs.Tutsi, slaughters millions and derails the lives of countless others. While it would be counterintuitive to pronounce this a winning, feel-good story, there is something to be said for hope restored. (Review from Daily Beast.)