It’s cold out there, too
There are dreamers, and then there is Kwame Nkrumah-Acheampong. Forget for a moment that the man dubbed “the Snow Leopard” was born in Scotland but wants to represent Ghana, the land of his ancestry, in the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy.
Forget, also, that as a skier his experience is limited to three years of “skiing” on an indoor slope at something called Xscape Snowzone in Milton Keynes near London, where he works as a receptionist.
What needs to be remembered about Nkrumah-Acheampong, 30, is that he has only recently been introduced to mountains, which are likely to be much in evidence in Turin in 2006.
“I’m trying to get my head around mountains,” Nkrumah-Acheampong told England’s Guardian newspaper. “They are so different from the narrow slope in the indoor center. The mountains are huge and high, and there are trees and shadows and lumps of ice and everything.
“And there are so many different directions to go in, you can’t decide. You can go left, right or straight on. In Milton Keynes, you just ski down.”
An interesting spin
Sen. John McCain, who is sponsoring a bill to ban legalized gambling on college sports, told ESPN.com that he isn’t against putting down a bet.
“When I go to Las Vegas to see a fight … I contribute a couple of hundred dollars to the ailing Las Vegas economy at the gambling table,” he said.
Finding their audience
To reach college athletes, the NCAA is planning to launch an anti-gambling campaign on the Cartoon Network.
“You know what’s sad about this?” Jay Leno said. “Not the gambling, but the best way to reach college athletes is the Cartoon Network.”
Just a ‘trophy receiver’
Deion Sanders, as a guest on James Brown’s Sporting News network radio show, had this to say about Randy Moss: “He’s like a beautiful woman who can’t cook, doesn’t want to clean and doesn’t want to take care of kids. You really don’t want her, but she’s so beautiful that you can’t let her go.”
Struck out with him
South African golfer Retief Goosen prefers rugby, cricket and soccer to baseball, football and basketball. According to the Associated Press, he has been to only one baseball game.
“Forty-five minutes,” he said. “Nothing happened. I went home.”
And they smell funny
Asked why American golfers fare poorly playing overseas, Australia’s Stuart Appleby told the Associated Press: “They’re like a bag of prawns on a hot Sunday. They don’t travel well.”
How about Vanderwrong?
Indianapolis Colts kicker Mike Vanderjagt said last week that the New England Patriots would be “ripe for the taking” Sunday, prompting Patriots safety Rodney Harrison to call him “Vanderjerk.”
Now there’s real motivation
New York Mets executive Jeff Wilpon, asked if the team’s new regional sports network was a factor in signing Carlos Beltran, was quoted in The New York Times saying, “I think the biggest factor is we were tired of losing.”
Getting the skinny on him
After TNT’s Kenny Smith said that the Indiana Pacers’ Jermaine O’Neal believes that he is the best forward in the NBA, Charles Barkley said, “Well, I think I am skinny, but that doesn’t mean I am.”