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March 3, 2001
Hello
Folks! I'm here to share with you the exciting world of Badminton.
It's a spectacular sport full of excitement and surprises.
It's popularity has taken a bit of a dive since it's peak
year in 1976 when I won the Gold medal in The Olympics, but
I sense it's on the upswing. I'll be keeping you up to date
on the important breakthroughs as well as the "must knows"
of the sport, as I hear about them. Stay tuned as I teach
you about my revolutionary(20 years ago) techniques such as
"Slam the Birdie", "Birdie English" and
how to mentally prepare yourself to hit a birdie into overtime.
March 4, 2001
I'm very excited! ESPN is looking to pick up 4 new sports
that represent the American Spirit of sport and competition.
As you know the most popular sports in America are baseball,
football, basketball and maybe bowling. Next comes Badminton.
The National Badminton Association believes that a lucrative
ESPN contract will be just what it needs to catapault it into
the top 5 sports in Ameica. I can't think of a more deserviing
sport that exudes so much excitement from the participant
athletes and it's fans. I think we're there...
March 5, 2001
ESPN released it's list of the new Sports that will be
given time slots in the coming years and will be dividing
100 billion in revenue...Are you ready for this?
!. NASCAR-
That's a given...big American cars using an incredible amount
of gasoline and spewing out massive amounts of Carbon Monoxide
and Carbon Dioxide. I don't think any sport gets more American
than that!
2. Poker-
I think there was some under the table dealings here. Poker?
I didn't even know that was a sport played by athletes. Can
you imagine a poker player competing in the World's Greatest
Athlete contest?
3. Dominoes-
See Poker above. Same thing, except a lot of these guys come
from Caribbean and Latin American countries and consume massive
amounts of rum while playing their "sport". I can't
imagine them entering the World's Greatest Athelete contest
and even if they did, they'd never pass the required Alcohol/Abuse
substance pre-event screening.
4. Hot Dog Eating
Contest- ESPN has to be kidding, this is not even close
to a sport. Watching 20 people of all nationalities, sexes
and weights(believe it or not, the 300 pound American guy
is rarely a match for the 150 pound Japanese Hot Dog Eaters)
eating hot dogs, dipping the buns in water and stuffing them
down their throats in front of 200 screaming fans hardly represents
sport to me(but it is a very American concept of dining!).
I'd like to see these guys enter the World's Greatest Athelete
contest.
So there you have
it folks, we were snubbed by ESPN, or maybe we were outbid.
From the looks of it, I don't think we had the financial resources
these other groups had to "help influence" the judging
committee. We grossly underestimated the fact that ESPN was
looking for something more than just a sport that was representative
of America.
In 2012, ESPN will
be adding another 4 sports and we want to be ready. Please
send contibutions to Tomas Krukoski/Jack Abramson in care
of The Carrboro News so that we can even the playing field
next time(Please make a note on your check that it's part
of The Badminton Influence Peddling Fund). More coming in
the future....
Aug 4, 2006- It's been a disappointing five years in the
world of Badminton. Tomas has been diligently searching for
that earth shattering badminton news that we've all been waiting
for, but it looks like the return of Badminton didn't happen
as we at The Carrboro News predicted. We have to take risks
in order to retain our position as the leader of Carrboro
newspapers, but in this case we choked on the birdie. We apologize
to all our badminton lovers who have been loyally following
Tomas' column and have been religiously checking back the
past five years for that first article. If you send us an
email we'll be happy to notify you when the first article
is published....thanks...The Editor
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