The World of Sport: August 2015

Carrying on from my woefully unpopular, fantastically disastrous and viciously panned 'Is American Football the dullest sport in existence' blog from three years ago (a good friend of mine actually wrote a blog rebuttal as he was that incensed with it!), I have decided to give that garbage a run for its money with a brief rant.

Old JP

Last time I did one of these I was banned from the American Football section of several of the sport forums I frequent and received several death threats, with one particular nasty incident culminating in a horse's head being left at the bottom of my bed.
Lucky for me I don't have a horse, I think it was JP McAvoy's or Frankel's or Red Rum's?
Just throwing out my fluent horse knowledge there.

And now for something completely different...

'Boring'. 'Very boring'. 'Stabbing myself repeatedly with a pair of garden scissors was less painful'. 'Unwatchable' and 'I'd prefer to get the runs.'

Some of these are genuine quotes from genuine people like Sir Stirling Moss, two-time world champion Fernando Alonso and former world champion Jacques Villeneuve and a few unknowns like Sebastian Vettel, Daniel Ricciardo and Mr Jerry Halliwell, have said similar stuff. Others are from an unfunny, kooky blaggard...

The Grand Prix Drivers Association conducted a poll recently, with 215,000 petrol-heads in 194 countries taking part, and found that the sport was described as 'expensive, technological and boring.' 89% of participants said the sport should be more competitive. Somewhat of a scathing indictment.

Even F1 die hard fans admit the sport is in a rut. In 2014, the sport lost 25m TV viewers, the same year as the new engine rules began.
This certainly hasn't helped the chief executive of the Formula One Group, Bernie Ecclestone, sell this new era of formula one, something he describes as a 'crap product'. Ouch.

Helmut Marko, Red Bull's motorsport advisor, has bemoaned Mercedes' monopoly of the sport.
"If we are totally dissatisfied we could contemplate an F1 exit." A matter even Bernie sympathises with. One of the sport's biggest names leaving? Again not another glowing endorsement.
Even Lewis Hamilton admitted this lack of competition isn't healthy for the sport.

F1 is becoming a procession. Mercedes won 16 of 19 races last season, starting 18 on pole. Hamilton won 11 of those races and Mercedes set a record 11 first and second finishes in a season.

This year could be playing out in that very vein.
Mercedes' dominance is becoming as predictable as Jens Raitanen wearing this jumper on every occasion ever!

The racing community are crying out for putting an end to F1's dependence on downforce, the fact the driver's role is being cut down, a return to re-fuelling, a lack of overtaking and equalising engine performances.

"Let me just catch the start of the race," said Tenniscoachno1897650 (my old youtube name from when I was 14) senior.
This was his ploy to get out of washing the dishes after Sunday lunch; but he did do an absolute rip-snorter of one so no beef there. (Coincidentally beef was rarely on the menu.)
After the washing up was done, Papa Tenniscoachno1897650 would sure enough be snoring away after no more than four laps had been completed. Ahh good memories.

Kimi Raikkonen, a pretty cool mofo and voted the sport's favourite driver (obviously!), said this: "Racing itself should be more exciting again. I want more fights, wheel to wheel battles, but that isn't easy when you want to bring in sophisticated cars."