Bond breaks: Is legend about to put down his oar?
PLUS: An absolute knob, a Hall of Fame s***fight and some BYC goodness
It’s a pointless yet diverting barroom argument: who is the country’s greatest sportsman or woman? It’s the ultimate apples, oranges and quinoa comparison.
Pointless, yes, but nevertheless Hamish Bond would belong near the head of the conversation, having compiled an extraordinary record on flat water and two wheels.
The Bounce understands that the 35 year old might be about to call time on his incredible rowing career, possibly as early as the end of the week.
Bond has won three Olympic rowing gold medals - two with powerhouse pairs legend Eric Murray and a staggering third with an underdog men’s eight last year - and a Commonwealth Games bronze in the cycling time trial. His second gold in the pair at Rio de Janeiro came after a brutal split with the most alpha coach in New Zealand rowing history, Dick Tonks.
When you throw in eight rowing world championships and a couple more medals in Oceania cycling, you can see why I rate him as a modern marvel, a bit of a freak actually. I read his book The Kiwi Pair, a skilfully spliced together duet with Eric Murray and started to understand, from an outsider-looking-in perspective, what it took to go from bloody good to bloody unbeatable.
The dedication and, in many respects, self flagellation required to be as dominant as Bond is surely addictive. If I have heard the jungle drums right and he steps out of the boat for good, it will be interesting to see what he replaces that high with.
If it’s the last we’ve seen of him on the elite stage, let this be said: it’s been good - very, very good indeed. We may not see the likes of him again.
It’s easy to despair at the level of ad hominem insults traded these days but full marks to Michael Venus for bringing back the use of “absolute knob”.
The knob in question is Nick Kyrgios and it’s probably best to make your own mind up as to whether Venus has hit an unimpeachable winner or committed a foot-in-mouth fault.
The National Baseball Hall of Fame, better known simply as Cooperstown, announced the results of voting today. David Ortiz, Big Papi, my favourite ball player, made it on his first ballot, becoming the only person elected to the hall in the past two years by the Baseball Writers Association of America.
The big story wasn’t who made it, though, it was who didn’t. Specifically, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, arguably the greatest hitter and power pitcher of all time respectively, and Curt Schilling. Bonds and Clemens have missed because they are seen as poster children for the “steroid era”, while big-time pitcher Schilling has missed out because he is noxious.
Both have been on the ballots for 10 years and haven’t reached the 75 percent vote required, so are no longer eligible.
This created a firestorm in the US, with ESPN’s Jeff Passan moved to say that “today is nothing less than an abject failure” as far as the storied hall is concerned.
“It’s difficult to pinpoint what's most frustrating,” Passan shouts. “Perhaps it’s that there already are players in the Hall accused of using PEDs. Or that the commissioner whose tenure encompassed the entirety of the steroid era, Bud Selig, is himself enshrined. Or that generations of players before Bonds, including manifold Hall of Famers, popped amphetamines as part of their pregame routine. Or that others honored with bronze renderings include multiple racists, domestic abusers and even a player who last year resigned from the Hall's board of directors after a woman levied credible sexual misconduct allegations.”
I think he’s wrong; Bonds and Clemens cheated the sport that it then expects to immortalise them, but I can't fault the passion of his argument.
From the pod
Another episode of The BYC has dropped and if cricket’s your thing you’ll love it. We talk aborted tours, the Black Clash v the Super Smash and broken jaws, while news or ruse is an absolute doozy.
