Compiled by JOHNNY WATTERSON
Scaling the mountain of rubbish
Seemingly the queue to use the Hillary Step on Mount Everest even surpasses that for the Mná in Kielys after a Leinster European Cup win. Talk about demystifying a sacred mountain.
A holy rock for the Himalayan people has been transformed into the highest graveyard on the planet with its own grotesque pieces of installation art.
Frozen corpses lie half peeping out of the ice in various shapes and angles.
But there was a poignant tragedy this week that reinforces the feeling the 29,029 ft peak has been turned into little more than a latter day Vegas Strip for adventurers.
One of the German climbers to die was 61-year-old Eberhard Schaaf.
Mr Schaaf had been climbing with the Eco Everest Expedition to remove decades-old rubbish left behind on the mountain.
As well as mountaineers’ litter, which includes over 3,000kg of old tents, ropes, oxygen cylinders, food packaging and camping stoves, they expected to bring back the bodies of at least two climbers, including American Scott Fischer, who died in 1996, and Swiss mountaineer Gianni Goltz, who died in 2008.
Some of the ropes and bodies have been there since 1953.
Slugger Carruth more than ready to hold a torch for Jedward
FORMER OLYMPIC champion, Michael Carruth is likely to hear screaming the likes of which he hasn’t heard since he won his gold medal in 1992. The Barcelona welterweight has been chosen for the O’Connell Street leg of the Olympic Torch relay next month and the celebrities he will be passing the flame to is no other than John and Edward Grimes, aka Jedward.
Carruth will be running from the north end of O’Connell Street towards the Spire in the middle of the stretch. There, the ever-teenage 20 something twin brothers will take the hand-over from the venerable slugger and cavort their way towards Trinity College, doubtlessly to some hysterical approval.
The Garda have advised the Olympic Council of Ireland (OCI), who are the organisers of the event, that O’Connell Street was the safest part of the run for Jedward to carry out their relay as they could provide the tightest security on that part of the route.
Concerns centred around the number of enthusiastic young people who may turn out to watch them with the widest boulevard in the land deemed the safest arena.
The torch relay for Beijing, which went around the world, was disrupted by various groups seeking publicity and the London organisers hope to avoid similar stunts.
World champion lightweight boxer Katie Taylor will not be carrying the torch but her mother Brigid has been elected by the family to take part in one of the stages on behalf of the world champion.
“He’s thrilled skinny,” said OCI president Pat Hickey about Carruth handing over to Ireland’s Eurovision Song contest candidates.
“What I love about Jedward – and we’ve got criticised on radio here – is those guys were in an athletics club from eight years of age and they ran the LA Marathon.
“Amazing. They don’t drink. They don’t smoke.
“They are as fit as fiddles. Michael Carruth is really looking forward to it. We’ve given him the real goody.”
It was Taylor made for a diplomatic visit
AS Katie Taylor has become the valid voice of women’s boxing everyone now wants a piece of her.
But only up to a point. Our former taoiseach, Charlie Haughey, made extravagant efforts and flew to Paris in 1987to proudly stand on the Tour de France winning podium shoulder to shoulder with winner Stephen Roche, despite the fact that he barely received as much than a bicycle pump in government funding.
Alas nobody from the Irish Embassy was able to make the short trip from Beijing by Bullet train to see the Bray lightweight win her fourth World Championship in succession in China. Taylor is, rightfully, on the top Irish Sports Council award of €40,000 a year plus the occasional win bonus.
The blizzard of congratulations that arrived on Taylor’s return last Sunday, including a private audience with Sports Minister Leo Varadkar, were well received but isn’t it a pity no one from the Irish Embassy could skip down on the day as they were informed about it by a number of Irish people who did make the effort to get to Qinhuangdao.
Serving up the next tennis generation in Temple Bar
WITH THE French Open about to commence in Roland Garros, Temple Bar will be suitably attired for the occasion. The Meeting House Square will undergo a tennis transformation on Tuesday afternoon, May 29th (1pm-2.30pm) as Wimbledon 2011 contestant and Irish Davis Cup player Conor Niland hosts the launch of the first BNP Paribas National Tennis Day.
Four mini tennis courts will be constructed in the square and school kids and members of the public will be invited to step up and try their luck against Niland and other tennis personalities such as emerging players Sam Barry and Greystones teenager Amy Bowtell, who won her first senior tournament on tour this year.
The National Tennis Day is scheduled for July 7th and will become an annual event, supporting clubs across the country to host open days and other events designed to draw in new members.
The Ladies Final at Wimbledon also takes place on Saturday, July 7th.
“Tennis is a rising star in Irish sport and we have great infrastructure for players at all levels,” said Des Allen, CEO of Tennis Ireland.
“Maybe the next Roger or Sharapova will walk through the doors of their local club on July 7th!”.
Niland, who also qualified for last summer’s US Open but retired recently because of a hip injury, is currently involved in some coaching with Tennis Ireland.
“This is the first time that tennis has been played in Temple Bar and we hope that it will remind people across Ireland to go to their local club on July 7th and pick up a racquet for the first time,” said Niland.
“Although tennis has taken me all over the world, some of my best memories are of summertime at my local club in Limerick.”
Sweet science gets sour taste of future
YOU MAY remember the sublime dignity with which David Haye and Dereck Chisora conducted their meeting in Munich three months ago following Chisora’s world heavyweight defeat to Vitali Klitschko. Granted the footage was a little chaotic and unclear as to who did what to whom but the plaintive cry of “he glassed me” clearly rang out.
Who glassed who is academic as the two will soon meet in Upton Park, East London, in a fight that threatens to further undermine British boxing in particular and the sport in general.
After the unscheduled German fray the boxers are still being investigated by Munich police, but the two revealed they had seen each other in London recently, with Chisora accusing Haye of having “pulled a knife” on him.
“I was eating a steak. It was in a restaurant,” reasoned Haye, who had a few more choice words for his opponent.
“This fight is about eradicating boxing of an idiot. I will give him a nice, slow, concussive beating.” Sweet.
The meeting has entirely unsettled the British Boxing Board of Control, who refused Chisora a licence to fight after a series of indiscretions, including slapping his opponent Klitschko on the face at the weigh-in and spitting water at his brother Vladimir, while Haye relinquished his licence when he retired in October of last year.
But who needs a licence these days?
The boys simply went to Luxembourg and got the appropriate paperwork there because European Union freedom of trade laws permit the fight to be held in the Britain while being licensed by the Luxembourg Boxing Federation. The British board have been left as much ashen-faced as red-faced. As it stands now they wouldn’t mind going 12 rounds with the Luxembourg facilitators.
“It is a way of dancing around the regulations,” said BBC boxing commentator Mike Costello. Frank Maloney, manager of the late Irish Olympic medal winner, Darren Sutherland, also weighed in and compared it to an unlikely football scenario.
“Would we see the Luxembourg FA coming over to the UK and starting their own league?” he asked referring to the upcoming fight at West Ham on July 14th.
In some sports the opprobrium facing the two boxers might make the fight a difficult sell for punters but not in professional boxing where stomachs appear to be cast iron and well able for the really pungent material.
Chisora even had an Alex Higgins-type episode when he threatened to shoot Haye, not an intelligent threat to issue from a man previously convicted of possession of an offensive weapon as well as assault on an ex-girlfriend and a police officer.
Germany’s biggest selling daily tabloid newspaper Bild held a survey on its website and asked its readers if they supported ARD’s (German Television) decision to withdraw from the heavyweight showdown.
Seventy two per cent of the 24,366 that voted said no.
That mirrors a recent poll held by the Daily Mail online which revealed that 71 per cent wanted to see it. Another poll held by boxing trade newspaper Boxing News had the figure at 75 per cent.
It is an unholy mess and indicates that anyone can fight anybody else once they get a licence from, well, anywhere. In this instance the licensing authority in Britain has been bypassed and has been made irrelevant in terms of controlling and sanctioning bouts in the sport.
Chisora’s trainer Don Charles sees it as no bad thing.
“I would take a licence from whoever lets me make a living,” he said.
“At the end of the day, it’s what I do for a living, so [it’s about] whoever will give me a licence and let me carry out my job as a boxing trainer.”
A glimpse of the future?
