Score a $5 or $10 Sports Authority Gift Card

August 29, 2010 by famdy
Filed under Sport

HHH on an entertaining course with concerts, consumer show

August 28, 2010 by famdy
Filed under Sport

If you go WHAT: Hotter’N Hell hundred Where: Headquartered at the Multi-Purpose Events Center When: Today through Sunday ADMISSION: Free INFORMATION: www.hh100.org HHH Schedule TODAY 10 a.m.-3:30 p.m.: HHH “Science of Cycling” seminar, MPEC seminar room 1-10 p.m.: Consumer show 2 p.m.: Wee-Chi-Tah Off-Road events registration begins in the MPEC Exhibit Hall 4 p.m.: Sports massage at the MPEC 5-8:30 p.m.: Beginning of the Ultra Criterium for USA Cycling Races at the Michelob Ultra finish Line Village 5 p.m.: The 11.5-mile Wee-Chi-Tah Off-Road Mountain Bike Trail race begins 5:30-9 p.m.: The famed carb-loading spaghetti dinner served by the North Texas Restaurant Association in Kay Yeager Coliseum 7-8 p.m.: “Start Smart and have your best Ride” presentation by Bikin’ Mike at the west end of the MPEC Exhibit Hall SATURDAY 5 a.m.: Breakfast by Monarch Catering at the west end of the MPEC Exhibit Hall 5:30 a.m.: Packet pickup and late registration in the Exhibit Hall. 6 a.m.: Morning praise and worship, third and Lamar streets 6:40 a.m.: Michelob Ultra USA Cycling Road Races begin at Scott and Lincoln streets 7 a.m.: Registration for the Ride closes, United States Air Force flyover begins 7:09 a.m.: Canon blast to start the HHH Endurance Ride 8 a.m.: Michelob finish Line Village and Food Court opens at second and Lamar streets 9 a.m.-3 p.m.: Consumer show opens 9 a.m.: Sports massage at the finish line 11 a.m.-3:30 p.m.: Outdoor concert at second and Lamar streets with the Covers Brothers Band from 11 a.m. to noon and 12:30 p.m.-1:30 p.m., and the Killdares from 2-3:30 p.m. 11 a.m.: Michelob Ultra Road Races finish. Awards start about noon on the finish Line Village concert stage SUNDAY 7 a.m.: Wee-Chi-Tah Off Road Trail run with 10K and half-marathon distances. also, the Michelob Ultra Criterium for USA Cycling Races begin in front of the MPEC.

Sometimes it takes a village.

In the case of the Hotter’N Hell hundred, it takes a village (think 4,000 volunteers, around 13,000 riders and 30,000 visitors) to help turn what might otherwise be a run-of-the-mill, same-ol’, same-ol’ bicycle ride and race into a bicycle event of epic proportions.

Of course, enduring 100 miles while soaking up the 100-degree weather also lends to the lore of the much ballyhooed HHH, the largest sanctioned one-day bicycle ride and race in the United States — an event that returns to the MPEC today to Sunday.

But much of its mystique and sense of community comes from auxiliary entertainment events, like what goes on at the Michelob Ultra finish Line Village.

This is where nonriders can find a little distraction and riders can cool down after the big event with a celebratory concert and some eats.

“Everything was just right last year. we got it just right,” said Danny Ahern, HHH Steering Committee member in charge of entertainment at finish Line Village, which has taken a few years to establish itself.

The inaugural years of the concerts saw HHH-goers communing on the concrete in the MPEC parking lot. But now everyone heads to the big tent on the grass at second and Lamar streets for a little shade, a little music and a little recuperating time.

“Last year for the Killdares, thousands of people showed up,” said Ahern. “We had to tweak it, had to get the sound right and the volume just right.”

Saturday’s finish Line Village festivities begin at 11 a.m. with an hourlong set by the Covers Brothers Band.

“They’re three members of Bigloo, except with a new drummer. They do ’80s and ’90s cover tunes, and they do them well,” said Ahern.

Bigloo gained popularity as a Texas rock ’n’ blues outfit, performing at places like the famed Antone’s in Austin. But now with drummer Matt Kellum, once of the group Chomsky, the band turns in a few old Bigloo tunes for good measure, along with solid cover songs.

After a 30-minute break at noon, the Covers Brothers will return to the stage at 12:30 p.m. for one more set before Dallas-based Texas Celtic alternative rock group the Killdares hits the stage. The band, which also rocked HHH in 2009, has become a mainstay at the Irish-themed Iron Horse Pub and has played events like downtown’s St. Patrick’s Day Downtown Street Festival.

The Killdares put their own twist on Celtic music by adding Texas rock backbone to it. Drummer and lead vocalist Tim Smith has said the group’s sound has been described as Celtic alternative rock — a fusion of Texas, rock and Celtic sounds that has included such innovative performances as a bagpipe rendition of “Blitzkrieg Bop” in the past.

The group, which has been around since 1996, has released five CDs and is known for members like Roberta Rast, who turns in some mean fiddling skills. She’s been named a national fiddle champion multiple times. and the Killdares’ bagpipe player, Matt Willis, is nothing to sneeze at, either.

Besides the band performances, finish Line Village is where a number of food vendors will offer a few temptations, many of them healthy (for those cyclists watching their waistlines). and new vendors just seek to please the palate, like Tropical Cowboy Steak of Lake Jackson, Genghis Grill and Kolander’s Kitchen of Oklahoma City.

Finish Line Village is the place, by the way, to hear results from the day’s cycling triumphs and see awards presented.

By the way, finish Line Village is just one of the more entertaining things about the otherwise grueling 100-mile HHH Road race and Endurance Ride that help put Wichita Falls on the map.

Here are a few other entertaining things to check out:

n THE FAMED CARB-LOADING SPAGHETTI DINNER. Yes, riding and racing involve thinking of your body as a machine that needs to be powered up for ultimate sporting performance, and thus the reason for the HHH Spaghetti Dinner. Load up on carbs for the next day’s ride and race — via the spaghetti (with meat sauce or vegetarian sauce) and breadsticks — courtesy of the North Texas Restaurant Association. Salad is involved, as well, and offered in a convenient all-you-can-eat manner.

About 200 cooks and servers will be whipping up 600 gallons of sauce and three-quarters of a ton of pasta. more than 3,000 people loaded up in 2009.

The dinner starts at 5:30 p.m. today at a new location, Kay Yeager Coliseum, and runs until about 9 p.m. It’s $8 per meal.

And you don’t have to actually ride or race. Go for the love of carbs alone.

n ZIPPY CRITERIUM RACES. If you happen to be at the coliseum imbibing in spaghetti and breadsticks, you may be drawn to the rather exciting Criterium Races outside the MPEC around the same time. The Ultra Criterium for USA Cycling racers begins at 5 p.m. today at the aforementioned finish Line Village. It’s a fun bit of action to watch, considering racers are whipping along at top speed (yes, you hear the whoosh of the bikes as they zing by) on a closed-circuit track. so the action is fast and furious. The races go on until 8 p.m. today, and then continue at 7 a.m. Sunday in front of the MPEC.

n THE CONSUMER SHOW. Nothing is quite as entertaining as shopping, and so the HHH Consumer Show offers a bit of that. About 100 vendors will occupy the MPEC today and Saturday, offering everything bicycle-related imaginable, from bicycles and jerseys to pickle juice (yes, Pickle Juice Sport will attend), jewelry, artwork, lemonade and sunglasses.

n THE RIDE. of course, the Hotter’N Hell hundred is well known among competitive and professional racers, in this case USA Cycling racers. The top winner in the men’s professional division in 2009, Josh Carter, a Midwestern State University cyclist, finished the 100-mile course in 3 hours and 45 minutes.

But if you’re not in one of the competitive divisions and don’t have your eye on the HHH Road race, no worries. You can still participate in the HHH’s Endurance Ride Saturday. even in-line skaters and tandem bicycle riders get into the action after the professionals and competitive racers for various shorter distances than the dreaded 100 miles, such as the 10K, 25-mile, 50-mile and 100K.

Those aiming for 100-mile glory must make it to the infamous Hell’s Gate at the 60.3-mile mark by 12:30 p.m., when the 100-mile course closes. If you don’t make it to the gate by then, you’ll get rerouted to a shorter 84-mile course.

n GOING OFF-ROAD. If you’re the competitive sort who likes to challenge yourself, you may consider a jaunt on the Wee-Chi-Tah Trail, an off-road route that will taunt anyone up for a physical challenge. The trail — voted the best urban off-road trail in Texas — is the site of the 11.5-mile Wee-Chi-Tah Off-Road Mountain Bike Trail Ride, which starts at 5 p.m. today, and the site of a 10K on Sunday and half-marathon trail run for those who prefer to race in two-legged rather than two-wheeled fashion.

In fact, the HHH offers something called the Triple Threat challenge, which involves not only completing the HHH 100-mile course, but adding the 11.5-mile mountain bike ride and the half-marathon run (that’s 13 miles, by the way).

By the end of it all, you may need a village to help you recuperate.

HHH on an entertaining course with concerts, consumer show

Tags: road races, sports massage

Are Britain’s Olympic hopefuls on track for 2012?

August 25, 2010 by famdy
Filed under Sport

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How do top GB athletes feel with two years to go?

The best gauge of Britain’s Olympic readiness comes from funding body UK Sport. Understandably, it wants to know precisely how the 27 Olympic sports it funds are spending their money, and what Britain is going to get back in return.

Three times each year, UK Sport gets together with the people in charge of each sport to evaluate performance. it asks searching questions about the performances of athletes, the training arrangements in place, and the working environment in which athletes and coaches operate. is everything the best it can be? If not, why not? And if there are issues to be resolved, have solutions been identified or is more help needed?

The end product is called Mission 2012 and is manifested in enormous Olympic and Paralympic “tracker boards”, set into walls at either end of what is effectively a war room at UK Sport’s headquarters off London’s Russell Square. Each sport gets a green, amber or red rating on the board after each assessment, summarising its overall progress.

UK Sport asks each of the Olympic sports it funds to grade its progress three times each year. This is how they rate with two years until London 2012. Click ‘Next’ for more details about some of the results on the tracker board. Flagship sports rowing and cycling are green, having earned 20 of GB’s 47 medals at the Beijing Games, but athletics and swimming are amber. UK Sport says the latter simply have strong ambitions to improve for 2012 and are being honest in their assessments. Sports assess themselves and interpretations of the criteria may differ. Hockey and gymnastics are enjoying renewed success but, while hockey is green, gymnastics is amber. The simplified board hides a complicated system of 30 criteria used to evaluate sports. As well as one overall colour, the board at UK Sport’s HQ evaluates three key aspects – athletes, training systems, and climate. Taekwondo was amber earlier in 2010, but both its systems and climate were red. it has since resolved its problems and is on track for 2012. Handball was the last sport to receive a red rating, in mid-2009, because of budget cuts as a result of UK Sport’s own £50m budget shortfall. Boxing, shooting and weightlifting have all been red in the past over “governance issues” – i.e. the way their sports are managed. The latest reports show athletics progressing after time spent by head coach Charles van Commenee with “key athletes”. Badminton coaching changes have “had an effect on the programme”. Synchro swimming has downgraded its rating after injuries to top athletes. Volleyball reports that “prioritisation of budgets will be critical to maintaining progress”. Fencing announces 2010 as “the best ever season in performance terms”. Table tennis warns that “squad numbers are being reduced to match the capacity of the programme”. BACK {current} of {total} NEXT

“These are the sports’ own assessments of their progression,” explains Peter keen, who is UK Sport’s director of performance. “The whole process encapsulates one, simple question – are you on track to be where you want to be in London in 2012?

“Green means you’re on track. Amber means you’ve got issues but you’re working on them and know what the solutions are. Red is a cry for help: things need to be fixed to be where we need to be.”

Following a briefing keen and UK Sport gave last week, the headline in terms of preparations for 2012 has been: “Britain’s athletes are bang on track.”

But that statement and the simplified colour-coding mask an enormous amount of work being done across all sports to remain on target. only with a closer inspection do you get a sense of the urgency with which sports are working to achieve success in two years’ time.

So what do the tracker boards really tell us about how Britain’s Olympic sports are doing?

Firstly, there are fewer greens now than when the tracker boards started at the beginning of 2008, but keen insists this is no cause for concern.

“Bizarrely, it’s a cause for celebration for me,” he tells me. “It actually reflects the honesty of the dialogue now.

“When we introduced this, most sports quite understandably saw this as about funding. they thought the important part of the game was to look good in the eyes of the funding body. We’ve moved on a long way from that, sports have relaxed.

“The message now is: ‘Why would we invest if we didn’t think you could win? But we want to see how you’re going about it and, if we can help, we will do.’ so the increased number of ambers reflects a more honest appraisal now coming through.”

With that in mind, are the big amber lights next to athletics and swimming, two of the Games’ biggest draws, a worry? after all, rowing and cycling, who draw similarly large amounts from the funding pot, are green-lit and have been for some time.

“That says those two sports have greater ambitions than where they’re at,” explains keen. “Swimming and athletics clearly believe – and we believe equally – that they’re capable of more success and a better system than they currently have.

“They’re pretty hard on themselves, but that’s not uncommon among elite athletes and coaches. In our front-running sports like cycling and rowing, their greatest challenge is defending the incredible level of performance they’ve already reached. Simply remaining at that standard is a challenge in itself, but in their view, they’re on it.”

Since sports evaluate themselves, their interpretations of the criteria for green, amber and red differ. Some, like hockey and gymnastics, are performing to similarly high standards but award themselves different colours. As a result, amber is less a sign of trouble than a statement that work is not yet complete – but it will be.

Red is the one to watch out for, and the most heartening thing for Britain to draw from the latest assessments is its complete absence. The board at UK Sport’s headquarters awards smaller coloured boxes for three sections – athletes, systems and climate – and, for the first time, even those are entirely devoid of red.

“From that, I take considerable heart that the process itself is having value. behind most of those stories is change,” says keen. “Things have been done, things have been resolved, and it’s evidence that this process works.”

Taekwondo spoilt things last time around by receiving red blotches against its training systems and climate (i.e. working environment). The tracker boards tell us these were down to a “need to act” around the way the sport was run and “uncertainties around a permanent training facility”.

According to keen, the sport has since “changed its willingness to ask difficult questions and make tough calls” and has performed a “massive turnaround” by creating and sustaining a training base in Manchester. A green light and clean bill of health this time are evidence, he argues, that “things can change remarkably quickly if you want them to”.

However, staring at the tracker board represents one extreme of Olympic sport in this country, the conceptual end at which governing bodies and funding organisations pore through results, budgets and documents to decide how happy they should be.

At the other end is the coalface, the day-to-day existence of each Olympic hopeful, and in many cases it is far from glamorous. Nobody at this end of the spectrum is sitting back and posting a big, green light on a board. two years to go is an exciting moment for them, but most are aware it means two years of blindingly hard work remain.

To take just one example, I know of handball players who spent the last year cleaning Danish toilets for a living in order to support their Olympic ambitions.

UK Sport suffered a budget shortfall of £50m last year, which had to be passed on to some sports, and that has meant a real struggle to find the cash to make those sports competitive. Because nobody wants to just turn up and get thrashed in front of their own fans in 2012. it would be heartbreaking.

That is why the British women’s volleyball team are marking two years to go by completing a four-day fundraising cycle ride from their base in Sheffield to London. Lacking the funds to operate as they would like, they are doing all they can to find more money, even if it means going an extra 250 miles.

Volleyball team tell me why they’re getting on their bikes

“This trip is absolutely essential,” the women’s head coach, Audrey Cooper, told me in Sheffield as they prepared to set out.

“We don’t have enough money in our pot to go through to 2012 with a high-performance programme, and we don’t want to go to 2012 just for the t-shirt, that’s not what this is about.”

The extra cash – if it comes in – will go towards setting up international matches against top opponents, like top-six nation Japan, with whom the British have a good relationship but who happen to be based a long distance, and large amount of money, away.

Meanwhile, having seen their winter training programme collapse through financial difficulty, the women who make up the team are desperately trying to find European pro teams to take them on.

Despite their amber light – “work needed but solutions identified” – the team will scarcely merit the word throughout the winter, barely seeing each other. they will instead use Skype to catch up every couple of weeks.

“We’re all seeking employment in Europe, hopefully in countries like France, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands,” said British player Rachel Laybourne.

“Last year I was playing in France but my place to stay was released because of the uncertainty around the British plans this summer. there have been a few interesting offers since, but nothing that ticks the right boxes.”

These are the battles many of Britain’s Olympic sports face to reach 2012 in good shape. it isn’t just training until you’re really good – it’s working out how to train, how to fund it, and how to scrape together the time, talent and mental toughness needed to compete on the most fearsome stage of your life.

Two years may pass in a blink, and Team GB looks set to be a formidable force on home soil, but there is a long, hard road ahead.

Behind the boards of destinyExcerpts from sports’ latest entries on UK Sport’s Mission 2012 boards

Athletics: A heavy-throws coach (e.g. hammer, discus) has been appointed, while head coach Charles van Commenee has “spent time with key athletes challenging ways of working”.

Badminton: Recent coaching changes “have had an effect on the programme” – and that was before the recent changes at performance director level, where Ian Moss has been replaced by a new Head of GB Performance and a separate head coach.

Fencing: The latest entry crows over what is “already the best-ever season in performance terms” for the sport. Since then Richard Kruse has won bronze at the European Championships, as did the men’s foil team.

Gymnastics: “The men’s juniors are now ready for transition to the seniors” – indicative of the sport’s current strength in depth.

Handball: “The programme remains subject to tight financial pressures,” 18 months after being hit hard as a consequence of UK Sport’s own budget shortfall.

Table tennis: “Squad numbers are being reduced to match the capacity of the programme,” suggesting the sport is cutting back to maximise its funding. Identifying the main medal contenders and diverting the focus to them is a theme across several sports at this stage.

Triathlon: The sport is operating with an “increased sense of urgency” ahead of London 2012.

Volleyball: “Prioritisation of budgets to individual programmes will be a critical factor in maintaining progress,” reads the latest (amber-coloured) card. By which it means: our players need more money, stat.

Weightlifting: “There are fewer host nation places (at London 2012) available than expected,” the sport reports, which is sure to have livened up internal competition. However, “some senior athletes have exited the programme after performance targets were missed”.