http://blog.washingtonpost.com/why-we-compete/ 15 en-us Copyright 2008 Fri, 28 Dec 2007 12:47:12 -0500 http://www.movabletype.org/?v=3.2 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss By Eli Saslow KIRKWALL, Scotland William Thomson's family had played this sport for centuries, so he understood that he needed to choose between two strategies for the annual Christmas day ba' game. The scrawny 17-year-old could fight for the ball in the center of the riotous scrum, where more than 300 men would function as a human juicer, turning his face red, then purple. He would be scratched, punched, kneed and bitten. His ribs might break. He could pass out unconscious. Or, Thomson could follow convention for players his size and stay near the edge of the scrum, pushing the pile. This would work well unless the ball popped out and the mob changed direction. Cars, gravestones, houses, strollers, hotel lobbies -- all had been kicked, shoved or trampled in pursuit of the ball during previous games. Anticipating such a stampede, business and homeowners in town had nailed wooden planks http://blog.washingtonpost.com/why-we-compete/2007/12/tradition.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/why-we-compete/2007/12/tradition.html Tradition Fri, 28 Dec 2007 12:47:12 -0500 By Eli Saslow SPARKS, Nevada Steve Fossett wanted to experiment with endurance, so he ran 100 miles through the Rocky Mountains and swam across the English Channel. He wanted to explore dangerous extremes, so he circumnavigated the globe in a sailboat, a jet-engine plane and a giant balloon. For the better part of 63 years, he sought out adventures that nobody ever had accomplished and then checked them off, building a legacy that included 115 world records and yet still left him wanting. Until he came here. In the months before his plane disappeared on a routine pleasure flight over western Nevada, Fossett often traveled to a corporate warehouse on the outskirts of Reno to prepare for an assault on a record more prominent than any he owned. He wanted to move faster than anyone ever had across land, but that was only the beginning of it. While visiting this http://blog.washingtonpost.com/why-we-compete/2007/12/identity.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/why-we-compete/2007/12/identity.html Identity Wed, 05 Dec 2007 18:03:16 -0500 By Eli Saslow FAYETTEVILLE, W.Va. Heather Loughlin had spent the last few months preparing for the possibility of dying here. Now, she worried instead about pain. The 36-year-old real estate developer from Vermont pressed her chest against the railing of the second-highest bridge in the United States, leaned forward and peered down. Almost 900 feet separated her from the bottom of the New River Gorge, where everything looked like a potential stage for disaster. Whitewater rushed through the bottom of the chasm, sweeping over rocks and fallen oaks and maples. Boulders -- or, wait a second, were those boats? -- cluttered the shoreline. A canopy of red and yellow leaves obscured Loughlin's view of the designated landing area, a patch of uneven dirt on the west bank of the river. Eight medics waited there with headboards to carry the injured into nearby ambulances. "Oh my God," Loughlin said, turning away http://blog.washingtonpost.com/why-we-compete/2007/11/adrenaline.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/why-we-compete/2007/11/adrenaline.html Adrenaline Fri, 02 Nov 2007 15:14:00 -0500 By Eli Saslow McALLEN, Texas The coaches had spent the previous two weeks teaching their players how to handle this moment -- how to cover their ears, or close their eyes, or pretend they were back on an empty field in Monterrey, Mexico -- but now that advice had been overwhelmed by a sensory overload. Thirty-nine kids from a private school in the Nuevo Leon province had spent four hours riding across the desert on a bus without air conditioning, blue shades pulled tight over the windows to block out the sun. The kids raised the curtains, looked through the glass and found themselves here. The concrete grandstands of 14,000-seat Memorial Stadium had filled with fans banging yellow ThunderStix. A 125-piece band played the McAllen High School fight song while girls twirled flags to the beat. Twenty cheerleaders clapped and tumbled across the FieldTurf, which had been installed for $725,000 http://blog.washingtonpost.com/why-we-compete/2007/10/community.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/why-we-compete/2007/10/community.html Community Thu, 04 Oct 2007 14:40:22 -0500 By Eli Saslow PAGO PAGO, American Samoa Ne'emia Vitale usually needs only a few minutes to walk home from football practice, following a one-lane street bordered by tin-roof huts and long trails of rotting litter. But today, he stalls. He kicks up loose gravel with his size 13 flip-flops and shoos the wild dogs and chickens that rove near his feet. After sprinting and tackling for three hours on a field dotted by lava rocks, Ne'emia's Oakland Athletics T-shirt is sodden with sweat and streaks of blood. He chugs tap water out of a used plastic Gatorade bottle, which he picked out of a trash heap a few minutes earlier and rinsed because he had no other container from which to drink. Ne'emia, 17, stops at a faded blue shack under a handwritten sign that reads "Convenience Mart." Doritos cost 50 cents, and Ne'emia fishes in his pocket. Damn. Only http://blog.washingtonpost.com/why-we-compete/2007/08/opportunity.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/why-we-compete/2007/08/opportunity.html Opportunity Tue, 07 Aug 2007 17:33:25 -0500 By Eli Saslow HOMER CITY, Pa. When the screeching of claws against metal fences becomes too much to bear, when they no longer can tolerate the cacophony of howling and whining that rumbles across this former coal-mining town, Bob Alexander's neighbors have been known to march up his gravel driveway, past 70 hound dogs and their luxury kennels, and bang on his door. Alexander, very much an imposing family patriarch at 6 feet 4 and 350 pounds, rises from his leather chair and shuffles across the living room, slightly hunched from a bad back. He leans on the door frame and listens to his neighbors for about a minute, running calloused hands through his graying hair. Then he interrupts with the booming, gravelly baritone he often relies upon to holler above his dogs' barking. "Well, how much do you want for your house?" says Bob, 62. "Because our dogs ain't http://blog.washingtonpost.com/why-we-compete/2007/07/ego.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/why-we-compete/2007/07/ego.html Ego Sun, 01 Jul 2007 14:21:45 -0500 By Eli Saslow HENDERSON, Nev. Kevin Streelman arrived, as always, by car. He placed his Callaway golf clubs in the trunk of his Toyota Camry parked outside his condo in Scottsdale, Ariz., wasted two hours in Phoenix rush hour and then drove 300 miles northwest to Las Vegas. He stopped only once, for gas. Streelman already had logged almost 6,000 driving miles in May alone -- from South Carolina to Pennsylvania to Illinois to California. Bob Kahan arrived, as always, by private jet. He drove up to the runway at a small airport in Santa Rosa, Calif., and handed his car keys to a valet. Kahan and three friends climbed on board his $15 million Dassault Falcon, furnished with 13 leather seats and burled wood interior. They sipped bottled water and read newspapers. The flight to Vegas lasted 55 minutes. At 8 a.m. two days later, Kahan and Streelman met http://blog.washingtonpost.com/why-we-compete/2007/06/money.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/why-we-compete/2007/06/money.html Money Fri, 01 Jun 2007 16:10:36 -0500 By Eli Saslow WARTBURG, Tenn. Alone, running and hiking in the mountains for almost 50 hours, Brian Robinson's mind had slowly unraveled. He had run through two sleepless nights, through fog and sideways rain, through thornbushes and over rattlesnake dens. Now, with 80 miles finished and 20 left in the world's toughest footrace, Robinson no longer could differentiate between real and imaginary. Around each corner, he thought he heard picnickers laughing at him. At midnight. In the remote woodlands of Tennessee. Robinson stumbled into the Barkley Marathons' final aid station at 8 a.m., with black hollows surrounding his eyes. His hands trembled, a result of the five caffeine pills he had swallowed. Dozens of scratches covered his arms and legs. His dry-fit shirt was dingy and frayed. The slightest gust of wind knocked Robinson from side to side, so he leaned against a tree. A half-dozen friends and fellow runners http://blog.washingtonpost.com/why-we-compete/2007/04/curiosity_1.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/why-we-compete/2007/04/curiosity_1.html Curiosity Thu, 26 Apr 2007 17:53:57 -0500 During the last three months, the Washington Post asked experts to think about why sports endure, even as the number of diversions available to us continues to increase. Sports historians, psychologists, sociologists and anthropologists generally agreed on eight fundamental reasons that continue to entice us into competition: Because it thrills us. Because we're curious about our abilities. Because competition yields a social identity. Because, sometimes, it also yields acclaim. We compete, experts said, because doing so is essential to our community. Because it's part of a tradition. Because competition can elicit opportunities that otherwise would remain unattainable. And money. We compete for money. These reasons are hardly self-contained, experts said. They bleed together to create a diverse, complex motivational brew. Every athlete usually competes for a few of these reasons -- maybe even for bits and pieces of every one. But at the center of amateur competition, these eight basic http://blog.washingtonpost.com/why-we-compete/2007/04/about_the_series.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/why-we-compete/2007/04/about_the_series.html About Series Thu, 26 Apr 2007 16:04:50 -0500