Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Sports highlights: Fedor, F1, NASCAR, World Cup

What was the biggest upset of the week? I would say it was the top ranked MMA fighter Fedor losing to Werdum in their StrikeForce fight, not to mention, in the first round, by submission. It seems to me that Fedor was caught off guard and made a bad mistake. And he summed it up the best: "The one who doesn't fall, doesn't stand up." This perfectly described another fighter on the same card, Cung Le: he rebounded from his first loss in MMA, by beating the same opponent Scott Smith. He looked to be in a much better shape than the last time, when he just came back from a hiatus to acting in movies. His kicks were as spectacular as ever. I guess StrikeForce would be especially happy to see Cung Le back to his form after their biggest star Fedor fell.

Not much of an upset in F1. It was shown after the England vs Germany WC match so I almost missed it (and it's on FOX, a channel available at home!) When I tuned in, Webber has crashed already. Vettel had a good lead on Hamilton while Kobayashi was hogging up the traffic. I also saw Hamilton got "penalized" for passing the safety car. His was a pit drive-through penalty. How much position did he lose after he took the penalty? None! That was actually quite amazing and showed how far ahead he was in front of Kobayashi. Another highlight of the race was Kobayashi delayed the mandatory pit stop (for tire changing) until the last few laps of the race. When he came out of the pit, he was behind former champ Alonzo and the move he made to pass Alonzo was a pretty good one. That's Asian power on display!

Talking about Asian power, we saw Japan and South Korea advanced to the round of 16 in WC while traditional power houses (and recent champs) France and Italy went home. Although no one predicted either France and Italy would did great in the tournament, the way they went down could be considered as minor upsets too.

Finally, the upset I was rooting for in NASCAR didn't happen. It seems like Kyle Busch and Jimmie Johnson win every weekend (the Nationwide and Sprint Cup series, respectively) Danica finally returned to the Nationwide series but has yet another dissappointing finish. Looking forward to her next race in 2 weeks!