Suitcase of Courage

SofC and Manchester United at the Cavilieri Hotel Roma

    Your SofC contributer was in Rome for the last week staying in the lap of luxury in the five star Cavilieri Hotel, located high on a hill above the eternal city. It seemed like exactly the kind of place you might find a world class sports team staying. As luck would have it, Sunday afternoon I was chilling in the lobby when Manchester United Football Club rolled off their bus and into the hotel. Turns out they'd be sharing the place with the Goldman Sachs European Hedge Fund Symposium that I was there with. As you can imagine, combining a hotel of high rolling, London based hedge funders and their high rolling, football playing idols was a combination that brought camera phones out of pockets faster than you can say "buy that man a pint!"
    Later that night amid a dizzying array of high priced cocktails and outfits it was hard to figure out if the men in the room or the women were more star struck with the footballers, but in hindsight I can say it was probably the men. Such is the effect of the world's biggest sports team that their mere presence changed the entire atmosphere of the place, turning it from merely ridiculous to over the top glamorous. The Caribinieri had what seemed like a full battalion of poice officers watching the place while they were there and come game time they rolled out 45 five minutes before the coin toss in two buses with full escort worthy of a head of state. Motos, Alfa "squadra volante" cop cars and a Police helicopter in the sky above.
    I managed to pull out the camera and get a few shots when the team came back from a jog. Enjoy.

all photos property of Mat Barlow

The team bus rolls up Sunday afternoon.

Cops posted up at the hotel entrance.

Arriving back from an evening jog. Boots off boys, no cleats on the marble floors.

Here the blond jumps in the elevator to pose for a picture, but when she tries to get out Mr. Christiano Rinaldo holds her back as if taking her up to the room. Its safe to say she was disappointed when they were only joking.

Anderson in the elevators

The glamorous life of the staff, on the mobile with someone else's shoes around your neck.

Players first, staff and gear wait for the next round of elevators.

View from the world famous, triple Michelin starred La Pergula rooftop restaurant where Man U readied for their beating of Roma.

Lance is doing all right

Lance Armstrong looks to be enjoying some of his celebrity. He split with Sheryl Crow a few years ago, and he was recently running around with some other cougar-ish socialite, and er, Mathew McConaughey. But apparently he has decided to start dating girls on the other end of the age spectrum. Page Six is reporting (and could the Post ever be wrong?) that Lance is currently hooking up with one Ashley Olsen. Says the Post:

November 1, 2007 -- LANCE Armstrong, 36, and Ashley Olsen, 21, are turning the heat up on their unlikely relationship. Page Six's ever-alert observers spotted the duo enjoying a romantic dinner at Graydon Carter's Waverly Inn on Tuesday night. The night before, Armstrong was seen "making out" with the tiny actress perched on his lap at the Gramercy Park Hotel's Rose Bar.

For those of you who are lucky to not live on the concrete island, Wavery Inn is the current "in" spot for celebs. So going there with your new (kitten-ish) fuckbuddy is pretty much an invitation to be splashed across the tabloids.   

Mika's booze cruise

I'm sure that sometime you, like your bon vivante SofC editors, have found yourself in a cab late at night where the driver seems hell bent on making you toss the wine you just imbibed right out the window. New York is especially famous for taxi drivers who seem to think they're lining up on the grid at Talladega each and every time they take you to the next bar. Now imagine for a second the terror you would feel if you stepped outside after a night of boozing at La Rascasse and Mika Hakkinen was waiting for you behind the wheel of a tipsy London cab sponsered by Johnnie Walker. Presented with that ride back up the hill to the Casino I'd just Keep Walking.

Seriously Ralf, Take A Hint...

Avid Suitcase of Courage readers are well aware of our continuing disapproval of all things Ralf Schumacher. Despite the paycheck evidence of being the 3rd highest paid F1 driver on the grid (behind Kimi and Fernando), on every race weekend Ralf floats in midfield expecting viewers somehow to go out of their way and witness his shameless mediocrity solely because of his “Schumacher” label. Why shameless? Of the 20 drivers in F1, he is now amongst the few that shouldn’t be in the sport.

Granted, Ralf has won races but so did real-estate mogul Eddie Irvine. And at least Eddie had character and did Ralf ever get punched in the face by Aryrton Senna? No, But I digress. Back in the mid-90’s, a financially minded team owner, Eddie Jordan, knew that he could ring up serious sponsorship dough by bringing another wonderkind Schumacher prodigy. “Two time Champ Michael? He’s got NOTHING on his brother, Ralf”. The reality was, Ralfie was an empty business ploy, a marketing gimmick to be passed around team by team, each outfit realizing his in-cockpit ineptitude only after serving up him vicious sums of money. A sort of paddock pathogen only to be realized after the damage was done.

Earlier this season, Ralf went to say that he was the “third best driver in F1”. I don’t know if “George Bush says he is best President” would have been more desperate self-legitimizing delusion. On our end, its hilarious.

So, resigning from our soapbox, does Ralf have the $20m Schumacher talent? Yesterday in practice, Ralf ran for 38 laps back in 19th place. The Greater of Schumacher’s would have spent two laps and realized the car was crap, returned to the garage, fiddled the data, put in a blinder while hoisting himself to the front end of the grid. Great drivers can drive terrifyingly horrible cars. His brother did spectacularly and without much distress. It makes me wonder how good the current Toyota is when Ralf’s teammate was in 4th.  Ralf doesn’t have the God given talent to transcend the abilities of machinery to achieve greatness. He languished and just dealt with a slow car then crashed into the barriers. Adding insult to injury, it was at the chicane, which is a fairly straightforward part on the track. Case in point: He’s the faux Schumacher, a pretentious display of celebrity worship to a greater family icon.

What do we expect here? Obviously, Ralf is only after fat checks from Japan in order to buy his darling platonic wife some garish garments and jewelry. Toyota would be happy to get a cheaper replacement this season and even use a new driver to give Trulli some motivation. He needs to jump ship like Monty for he only diminishes the Ralf Schumacher name yet the benefit is that he adds justification to lauds of his brother’s natural talent. In essence, look what a Schumacher could have been? YIKES! Grow a mullet, jump to some tin tops or perhaps go back to Kerpen and quietly fade away.

for comic relief see: Ralf Not Worried About F1 Future by "I'm Number 3 look at me!"

This ends our Friday Rant of Douchebagery™. Send complaits to someone who cares.

Lance: Pro cycling is a "total disaster"

Road Bike Action, a new cycling rag from California, scored an interview with Big Tex for their debut issue. The interview, which takes place at Lance's new "Texas-meets-Tuscany" villa (and features an encounter with Lance's new "autobahn bomber" A8 L W12) . The most interesting part is Lance's take on the shambolic state of pro cycling and how Johann Bruyneel and him were able to use American-style corporate professionalism at Postal-now-Disco to take advantage of the Euro farm boys:

"Its a total disaster, but I'm happy to be involved. I'll go back ten years- the reason that Johan and I were able to be so successful was that we were racing against a bunch of imbeciles. So, we came in with a slightly modern, aggressive approach. We looked at everything and analyzed everything, and obsessed about everything. And there were a bunch of farm boys runnin' around. We came in like we were Intel or something and it worked. It's still the same situation in cycling - you still have the farm boys runnin' around; you have the organizers, the teams, the athletes, the media, the fans and the governing body. None of them agree with any of the others. It's become a total circus. And even among the teams that "own" the athletes, they don't necessarily agree with each other, either.

Of course the Euros would argue that Lance's method of complete focus on the Tour to the detriment of other races means that will never regarded as an equal to Merckx. At the end of the interview, the writer even refers to Lance not as the greatest cyclist ever, but as the greatest "Tour de France rider" of all time. The entire interview is worth a read, as Lance touches on Basso (doesn't like to knock back the booze during training camp), Levi (should be happy to be 5th overall as long as a Disco  rider wins), and why he plans to spend a lot more time in Iowa (RAGBRAI bro brah). Although the writer forgot to ask Lance for tips on chest waxing and how to act like a frat boy in one's mid 30s. There is also some amusing work from Bob Roll towards the back of the book. 

Rooney terrorizes Roma defenders, roadside hedges

Wayne Rooney, fresh of scoring a goal in Manchester United's 7-1 Champions League demolition of Roma on Tuesday, wrecked his Aston Martin yesterday. According to the Guardian, Wayne was on his way to visit his chavtastic family, and he lost control of his DB9, plate number "WAZ 8," and fell off the road. This is the third or fourth car that he has written off since signing a mega bucks deal with United a couple of seasons ago. Maybe Wayne should consider having someone named Jeeves drive him around in a Rolls Royce Phantom.

British press goes gaga for Lewis

Young Lewis Hamilton's very impressive start to the season has, as we alluded to earlier, caused great excitement in the British press. After spending about five years hoping that Jenson Button would turn into a star, the Brit F1 hack pack has now latched onto Lewis as the next great revelation. But after two races, the hype may be getting a little outrageous. Joe Saward of Grandprix, normally among the less hyperbolic of the press pack, has been sipping the Kool Aid:

In the two races thus far we have seen two extraordinary performances. In Australia he impressed us but in Malaysia he amazed us. He has not made the mistakes of youth that other drivers - even great drivers - made early in their careers. At least not yet. He has been able to soak up the pressures as though he has been doing it all his life.

We can only sit here and wonder if he will one day end up being better than all of them.

The one thing we know is that Lewis is a natural.

"His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings," Ernest Hemingway once wrote of F Scott Fitzgerald. "He understood it no more than the butterfly did."

How can one explain such things? How can one explain that John Stuart Mill could read Greek at the age of three or that William Sidis taught himself eight languages by the time he was eight and went to Harvard at 11? How can one explain that Korean Kim Ung-Yong was able to write and play chess at the age of seven months or that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart could play the piano brilliantly when blindfolded, with his hands crossed, when he was five year old? How was it that the singer Dido attended the Guildhall School of Music in London at the age of six when most students are in their late teens?

If Lewis does well in Bahrain, the press pack will be comparing him to Jesus. Although we would point out that a certain Jacques Villenueve, who couldn't even scrape together enough cash for a NASCAR drive this season, did just as well at the beginning of his career. He took pole in his very first race; Melbourne 1996. At the very least, Lewis's early season success should make tickets to Silverstone this summer a very a hot commodity. Considering that most the F1 teams are based in Britian, and a big chunk of worldwide media coverage in F1 comes out of London, a British superstar is a very good thing for the sport.

Wheeled sports and the next generation: pt. 1

This weekend was sports overload, and your SofC team is barely keeping up after a winter of writing about sports in their off-season. For our unique brand of soccer commentary, see below, but it was also an extremely interesting weekend in the world of cars and bikes, where a new generation stepped up and stole the spotlight.

First off, its the glamorous world of Formula 1. The richest motorsport series on earth spent the weekend in Melbourne for the season opener, and it was the first time in 15 years that a certain M. Schumacher was sitting at home disciplining der kinder instead of scheming some new way to under-handedly put a rival into the wall. This, along with all the off season shuffles among teams and a healthy dose of FIA rule tinkering, meant that this is the most radically changed grid I've seen, ever.

Kimi Raikkonen delivered on his promise for Scuderia Ferrari by dominating qualifying, the race, and the "blue steel" podium competition for aspiring Zoolander-ites. Beside him on the podium were two time world champ Fernando Alonso and 12 year old Lewis Hamilton, who will be bigger than the love child produced from a night of tequila, Tiger Woods, David Beckham and Kylie Minogue. No seriously, this kid is going to be huge, and he's really like 22 with one race and one podium in the bag, not to mention he de-pantsed Alonso on the first turn and then pulled away from him, it was spectacular.

All said and done it was a weekend worth watching in Australia; the racing was decent but the entirely new look of F1 combined with such impressive talent coming from a new generation was mesmorizing.

Red Bull Announces Just For Men and V-Neck Sweaters as new Sponsors

But in all seriousness, we love Elder Coulthard. And we hope that he rocks the new Red Bull-Renault next year.
Photo Reuters via autosport.com.

Montoya: Schumacher Is A Nobody in America

Does a bear shit in the woods? To the surprise of no one, Juan Pablo Montoya has spoken out to critisisms by Michael Schumacher concerning Montoya's mid-season switch to yank tin tops.

After retiring Schumacher said of Montoya's departure to NASCAR, "Personally, I wouldn't do it. What do you do in NASCAR? What is exciting there? I can't see that, running around on ovals." Simply put he doesn't understand the appeal of NASCAR. For a world famous German who only visits the states to dominate the USGP and vacation in relative obscurity, the draw of a spec-series like NASCAR should not interest him whatsoever. Given his accomplishments in F1 compared to Montoya's, it shouldn't.

In the Indy Star today, Montoya took a potshot at his iconic rival. "Schumacher in America is nobody," Montoya said testing for the Daytona 24 Hour race. He went on to say, "People don't understand what a big challenge this style of racing (NASCAR) is. Michael Schumacher, just take him to Homestead (Fla.) and tell him to stay half a second off the pace. He would have a heart attack."

A little unfair? Yes. That said, Montoya has never been one for sidesteping his opinion in the name of good taste. Schumacher was just expressing how he personally would feel if he switched to NASCAR. Seems like racing in America is more appealing to Bogota bruiser than F1 ever was. And as far as Schu being a "nobody" in America? As far as I can remember, the amount of Ferrari flags to Columbian flags at this years USGP was about 10-1...