They Came To Reign in Spain

Isn’t it always the way? You wait for a major sporting competition to come along, and three show up at the same time. At least they did last week in Spain. In the space of a few days the World Cup in athletics got off the blocks in Madrid, the World Equestrian Games went to the starting gate in Jerez and the World Rowing Championships were launched in Seville.

At the athletics track the crowd had hoped to see U.S. sprinter Tim Montgomery, fresh from setting a new 100-m world record at the season’s last Grand Prix event in Paris. Montgomery had clipped .01 seconds off Maurice Greene’s three-year-old record of 9.79, but so drained was he by the record-breaking effort that the World Cup 100 m became a race too far. He did turn up in Seville though, to watch girlfriend Marion Jones, already crowned the International Association of Athletics Federation’s 2002 overall women’s grand prix winner, triumph in the 100 m.

In Jerez the Maktoums, rulers of Dubai and world-renowned owners and breeders of race horses, celebrated an equestrian victory of a different sort when Sheik Ahmed bin Mohammed al Maktoum, son of the crown prince, Sheik Mohammed, became the family’s first winning jockey. The 16-year-old prince rode his American-bred Bowman to first place in the endurance championship at the World Equestrian Games. Horse and rider overcame 160 km of difficult country — made so treacherous by torrential rain that dozens of horses pulled up and two died of exhaustion — to take the prize ahead of Italy’s Antonio Rosi and Sunny Demedy from France.

On the water in Seville, various permutations of extremely muscular rowers combined to send extremely slight boats skittering over the surface of the Guadalquivir River. In the final of the men’s coxless pair, the British team of Matthew Pinsent and James Cracknell avenged the defeat they suffered in the World Cup regatta in Lucerne in July at the hands of Australians James Tomkins and Drew Ginn. The British crew — who until that defeat had been virtually unchallenged, winning a string of 24 world-class races — overcame the Aussies’ smoother technique with raw power. All in all, a good week’s sport in Spain.

FOOTBALL
Boring, Boring Arsenal
Time was that opposing fans would taunt Arsenal as boring. That was when the north London side played a dour, defensive game. Today it is the team’s own fans who chant, “Boring, boring Arsenal,” with irony. The side is in severe danger of being responsible for playing the most skillful and colorful football in England’s Premier League.

Under manager Arsène Wenger, Arsenal has become a team combining technique, speed and flair that not only plays dazzling football but wins too. Having won the League Championship and Football Association Cup last season, they are now on a run of 27 unbeaten league games.

Frenchman Wenger has an enviable ability to spot talent, get it cheaply and nurture it. His buys of French players like Thierry Henry, Sylvain Wiltord and Robert Pires, Swedish star Freddie Ljungberg and Brazilians Edu and Gilberto Silva have fashioned a side that has supplanted Manchester United as the most exciting team to watch, and at a fraction of the cost. Where United paid nearly $47 million for one defender, Rio Ferdinand, Wenger snapped up Henry, Pires, Ljungberg and captain Patrick Vieira for less than $36 million.

The task for Wenger this season is to take home form into the European club competition, the Champions’ League. Success there could make Arsenal very, very boring.