Spanning the Globe: $460 Million Horses and More

By Dave “Large” Larzelere
Because, believe it or not, there are sporting events going on in the month of March that don’t involve Davidson College ...
Sydney, Australia
Who is the world’s biggest owner of thoroughbred horses, you ask? The Sultan of Brunei? The President of Zaire? No. It’s Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai, and his worldwide stable just got a little bigger after he bought the immense Woodlands Stud from Australian horse-racing magnate, Bob Ingham. The price? $460 mill and then some. Man could have bought himself a nice condo in Chelsea for that.
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Eindhoven, Netherlands
French swimmer Alain Bernard continued his astonishing performance at the European Championships yesterday, setting his third world record in as many days with a time of 21.5 seconds in the semi-finals of the 50m free, a mark which broke the record set by Aussie Eamon Sullivan last month. On Friday, Bernard broke a long-standing record held by a swimming legend, the 100m free mark set by Dutchman Pieter van den Hoogenband at the Sydney Olympics. Bernard bested Hoogie’s record with a 47.6 in the semis on Friday and then sliced off another tenth of a second to 47.5 in Saturday’s final. Evidently, Bernard has added a lot of new muscle in the past year, which is certain to prompt whispers of you-know-what, although this article in the London Times Online suggests that it might be his suit, and not the juice, that is fueling his emergence.
Athens, Greece
The march to the Beijing Olympics officially has begun, and so has the ugliness. Activists disrupted the Olympic flame-lighting ceremony today in Athens, protesting a Chinese crackdown of protests in Tibet that reportedly has resulted in 130 deaths. The ceremony was being televised live in China, but when the disruption began Chinese TV cut away to stock footage. Note that the China Daily’s report about the ceremony makes no mention of the incident. Protest? What protest?↵