Last weekend I drove to KwaZulu-Natal to watch the 98th Comrades Marathon, a.k.a. The Ultimate Human Race. The Comrades was a “down race” this year, meaning it started in Pietermaritzburg and proceeded “down” to [...]
I have never had any interest in motorsports. I’ve probably watched less than five minutes of Formula 1 and NASCAR (combined) over the course of my entire life. I haven’t watched a single Fast [...]
I know nothing about rugby. In 13 years of living in South Africa I've attended only one live rugby match. But I know a lot about sports and I know a lot about people. [...]
Last Saturday afternoon I stood on Mbolekwa Street in Dlamini, Soweto, with a couple of hundred other spectators, watching teenage boys spinning around on super-long, low-slung bicycles. Most of the bikes didn't have brakes, [...]
Welcome to Week 24 of my #Gauteng52 challenge, for which I will visit and blog about a new place in Gauteng Province every week for 52 straight weeks. This week I visit Turffontein Racecourse in [...]
The Commonwealth Games, an Olympics-like sporting competition involving athletes from the Commonwealth of Nations, are headed to Durban in 2022. The 2022 host city won't be officially announced until September 2015, but it turns out that [...]
I recently had a Twitter argument with a guy who said he thinks Joburg “lacks authenticity”. I never got to the root of what he meant (Twitter isn’t the place for complex debate), but [...]
On Tuesday evening I received this text message from George Khosi, coach of the Hillbrow Boxing Club: there is an accident at the gym the ring is damaged by a tax coach It took [...]
Part 2 in a series about professional female boxing. Read Part 1 and Part 3. In my previous post, I showed you photos from the early fights of last weekend’s “Power to the Women” professional boxing tournament. Those [...]
Part 1 in a series about professional female boxing. Read Part 2 and Part 3. I knew I would write a blog post about women this weekend. Initially I planned to attend yesterday’s Slutwalk [...]
A few years ago, I wandered into a sports arena in Virginia’s D.C. suburbs and discovered roller derby. The Cherry Blossom Bombshells and Scare Force One — the top two teams in the DC Rollergirls league [...]
Last week I went to my first-ever professional boxing match, in a ballroom at the ritzy Sandton Convention Centre. The evening included six fights with boxers from around South Africa. The ring was set [...]