Ben & Jerry's launches 'Lin-Sanity' flavor, takes out fortune cookie ingredient

Vermont-based ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s has begun selling a limited-release new flavor at its Harvard Square shop in honor of basketball’s sudden sensation, Jeremy Lin, a Harvard University graduate who was an Ivy League star during his time with the Crimson, but left the Cambridge campus undrafted and largely unknown.
Link

The Evolution of a Point Guard

ORLANDO, Fla. — The most captivating strand of the Jeremy Linmystique is that he came from nowhere, emerging overnight to become a star, after being underestimated and overlooked, disregarded by college coaches, ignored in the N.B.A. draft and waived twice in two weeks.

The narrative is well-established, factual in its broadest strokes and altogether flawed, or at least woefully incomplete.

Jeremy Lin’s rise did not begin, as the world perceived it, with a 25-point explosion at Madison Square Garden on Feb. 4. It began with lonely 9 a.m. workouts in downtown Oakland in the fall of 2010; with shooting drills last summer on a backyard court in Burlingame, Calif.; and with muscle-building sessions at a Menlo Park fitness center.

Link

Sprinter, 100, sets record and aims for marathon

Fauja Singh, a 100-year-old British man, has run his way to eight sprinting world records and is aiming to set another, when he takes part in the Toronto Marathon.
Mr Singh broke the records for 100-year-old men in all eight sprinting distances on Thursday. The Guinness Book of World Records will be on hand on Sunday to document his attempt at completing a full marathon distance.
Link

How Sports May Focus the Brain

Who can cross a busy road better, a varsity wrestler or a psychology major? That question, which seems to beg for a punch line, actually provided the motivation for an unusual and rather beguiling new experiment in which student athletes were pitted against regular collegians in a test of traffic-dodging skill.
The results were revelatory.

Jordan McCabe can handle a basketball!

Brazil Prepares for Match With North Korea

JOHANNESBURG — Soccer in Brazil resembles figure skating in that artistry is no less important than performance. 
(..)
In Brazil, the public frets that the national team’s once dazzling samba style has assumed a more martial beat. Dunga has been widely criticized for relying more on the imposing, muscular defense of a player like Lúcio, galloping counterattacks by right back Maicon, and the set-piece artistry of Dani Alves than the beautiful game of the days of Pelé.
Brazil, along with Spain, is favored to win the tournament. But many Brazilians lament that victory would be achieved with insufficient elegance and flamboyance. Socrates, a star on the country’s 1982 World Cup team, recently said that Dunga’s style was "an affront to our culture."

Want To Get Faster, Smarter? Sleep 10 Hours

As someone who used to limit myself to 3 hours of sleep/night and who now gets  7 hours a night , I can personally attest to numerous benefits of more zzzz's.

Uvealblues

New research adds to a growing body of evidence showing the perks of a good night's sleep.

A study from researchers at Stanford University finds that extra hours of sleep at night can help improve football players' performance on drills such as the 40-yard dash and the 20-yard shuttle.

World Cup Calendar

Nice way to keep track of the game schedule via a sundial image here.

Ronaldinho's Top 10 Goals

Soccer Freestyle!

Andrea Mead Lawrence, Skiing Champion, Dies at 76

A fitting tribute in the NY Times to one of my patients, Ms. Andrea Lawrence, who remained an absolute delight with beautiful, dancing blue eyes to the very end...
uvealblues

Andrea Mead Lawrence, who as a 19-year-old newlywed at the 1952 Olympics rocketed down the Norwegian slopes to win two gold medals in Alpine skiing, a feat unmatched by any American, died Tuesday at her home in Mammoth Lakes, Calif. She was 76.

Sullivan Voters Know a Star When They See One

Jackie Joyner-Kersee. Eric Heiden. Mark Spitz. Sarah Hughes. Bonnie Blair.

These are some of the names on the Sullivan Award, given for the past 76 years to the best American athlete in the traditionally amateur sports.

A new name is now going on that trophy, that of a young woman born in Russia, without bones in her lower legs, a double amputee at 18 months.

Jessica Long of Dundalk, Md., is the first Paralympic athlete to win the Sullivan Award, given by the Amateur Athletic Union rather quietly last Wednesday night in New York.

(..)

Long won three gold medals at the Paralympics in Athens in 2004, at age 12, and trains against able-bodied swimmers at home, beating most of them. Last year she won nine gold medals in world competition in South Africa. She also swam in a one-mile race across Chesapeake Bay. And for recreation, she climbs rocks.

“She’s basically fearless,” said Julie O’Neill, the manager of the Paralympic swim team, based in Colorado Springs.

Pole-Vaulter Keeps a Low Profile During Her Ambitious Ascent

In many ways, Isinbayeva already has the arc of her career mapped out. Already, the girl who grew up in Volgograd, Russia, the daughter of working-class parents, has broken 19 world records (both indoor and outdoor) and won a gold medal at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. By the 2012 Olympics in London, which she says will be her swan song as a pole-vaulter (at age 30), she would like to have eclipsed the 35 world records that her male pole-vaulting counterpart, Sergei Bubka, set during his career.

It’s an ambitious plan. But Isinbayeva, who has cleared 16 feet 5¼ inches outdoors, has become so dominant in recent years that her greatest competitor is often herself.

“When you achieve everything,” she said, “in that moment it starts to become more difficult.”

(..)

“I like that I can control my body,” she said. “I like to fly. I like those feelings when you’re over the bar. It’s more beautiful than other track and field events.”