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Re:Americans may be unsophisticated



Hey, we've got a world to conquer.  We don't have time to be good at sports!

Cheers,
Lawrence


"The Formula One circus left the US because US cannot supply enough fans to
make it pay, except for the very interesting recent development at Indy,
which was my point I think. Watkins Glen may have been a fine race track in
the 60's but I doubt it could be brought up to modern F1 standards. Any
other US location tried for F1 has been a joke. NASCAR may appeal to some
but the idea of more or less identical cars circulating an oval track while
large crowds wait for something interesting to happen (i.e. death or injury)
reminds me more of the coliseum of ancient Rome than any modern sporting
event outside the US (well maybe bull fighting). Now I concede that NASCAR
builds awfully fast cars that are difficult to drive, but really...so what.
Like the space shuttle, with enough money and enough horsepower, you can do
just about anything (how the heck did the US space program get into this, it
isn't a spectator sport, last I heard anyway) As for the lack of competent
US racing drivers well, there aren't any at the moment who can compete at
the level required in Formula One. Mario Andretti (just barely an American
BTW) was and is an immensely skilled driver who can race anything and do
well and let us not forget that truly brilliant American Phil Hill, or Dan
Gurney for that matter. There are quite a few Canadian drivers who succeed
in US racing (it's the icy winter roads that give us the edge) out of all
proportion to our population (around 15% of US total) Apart from that the
best current "US" drivers are furriners. Any F1 driver who comes over
automatically does well. The real 
F1 champions just clean up. Plus it was a European car design that
transformed US open wheel racing. Sorry, but US football, US baseball, and
now US style ice hockey ( how the US has ruined that game is criminal, any
takers? I'll explain how exciting 
it used to be compared to the boring pap now served up by US dominated
hockey) has the entire world yawning and wondering just why Americans turn
out in droves and spend huge sums of money to watch. Baseball is like
watching paint dry, it even makes cricket look somehow cerebral. US (and
Canadian) football where players rarely kick the ball, let alone do anything
interesting with it, is equally dull. US auto racing is dull as dishwater
(and passing is NOT an indicator of excitement, rather of artificially
induced equality. A bit like chaining equal weights to the legs of  all the
Christians before unleashing the lions, so as to give everyone a fair
chance!)"

Lawrence Gowin
Level (3) Communications
lawrence.gowin@domain.elided
Office:	(720) 888-1234
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