Have you hit the heights and lent more glory to the family name with a demonstration of sporting prowess recently, at all? And have you noticed nobody you mention it to really gives a fuck? Well, here's your chance to show off, and here on OTF you're bound to get some appreciative applause.

I'll modestly start the ball rolling by showing off about doing the Maratón de Asturias (Spain)in 3:12 last week. It was a really up-and-down leg-breaker of a circuit,and the weather was atrocious for the first 25 kms, but I dug in and felt pretty good right to the finish. I had been aiming for a sub-3:15 time, as that would get me a Good-For-Your-Age place for London next year. Hurrah!

Next objective is the San Sebastian Marathon in November, where hopefully I can go sub-3:05.

I haven't sailed in a few years, but I once did it to semi-pro level. I was visible on Sky Sports once, doing a sail-change at the front of our boat as we rounded the second mark in the final race of the 1720* European Championships ahead of the whole fleet, a serious number of Olympians among them.





* the class of boat, not the year

I have the T-Shirt to prove that my team won the 1995 College of William & Mary Intramural Men's "B" Division Floor Hockey Championship. I was the leading goal-scorer.

My U-12 basketball team won back-to-back league titles.

A couple of the summer lacrosse teams I was on finished top of the league (which only had four teams).


I've made a mockery of this thread, haven't I?

I came last in the shot putt on sports day in the second year of secondary school. Which might not initially seem like much of an achievement, but anyone who's seen me might wonder what someone with such a slight physique (and I was even scrawnier then than I am now) was doing in the shot putt in the first place.

Well, I'll tell you. I was only in the shot putt because our house (our school house, that is, not the place I lived) had to enter at least one competitor in every event, or be disqualified from the whole shebang. And since no fucker had the balls to put themselves forward for the shot putt, I gallantly (though a little reluctantly) stepped into the breech. And when I had my three goes, it was as much as i could to to heave that fucking canonball far enough to miss my own foot.

Three times I had to step into that circle and undergo the humiliation of trying desperately to get the shot to the floor without it crushing my own toes, three times, just so our house didn't get kicked out the fucking competition. And did I get so much as a single thank-you from any of my classmates for helping them out so selflessly and demeaning myself in such an acute manner? Not a fucking bit of it. They just stood at the side of the fucking shot zone or whatever it's called and barely concealed their insolent laughter.

Well, that was it. That was the last time I did anything out of the goodness of my own heart to help them out of a fucking hole.

I am a natural at lawn bowls, but am yet to take it up properly.

Sorry, re-reading my post, the mention of 'houses' makes it sound like I was on the rolling green playing fields of an exclusive public school. I wasn't, it was a fuck-hole of a comprehensive on the outskirts of Norwich.

Just to clarify, like.

You're still more of a sports star than I ever was...

I took two wickets in my first ever over of competitive cricket, aged 10.

It's been fairly consistently downhill ever since.

Had a u14 county trial for Shropshire (where I made the mistake of trying to bowl leg-spin, having never bowled it competitively before).

Was u14 South-Shropshire Tennis runner-up (this is much less impressive than it sounds).

After 14, I discovered girls and so my sporting career came to an abrupt end, at least until I started plaing korfball (highest honours, representing Glamorgan, being an unused sub for Wales - the closest I'll ever get to international glory, and being part of a team that won the South West and Wales league in successive seasons).

Key member of the pack that stormed unbeaten to the championship of a middle level University league when playing or Guildford College of Law.

Also hastened the demise of my playing days as my shoulder gave up the ghost shortly thereafter.

Won my school under16 cross country. This was a proper school too, not one where lefty teachers banned sport.

Some nice bits of feisty fast bowling too. Statistics are less important than the fact I hit a bloke playing for the old boys on the throat in a Speech Day game. He was batting out of his fucking crease, what was I supposed to do?

You did the only thing a gentleman could do in the circumstances: attempt to maim the cocky fucker.

King Mob, you can't fool us. "On the outskirts of Norwich", indeed. You went to Haileybury, and are undeniably, therefore, a posho.

Quite right.

I also scared Jack Davenport with my bowling. He didn't look much like the future star of a "Zeitgeisty show about the lives and loves of a group of twenty-something lawyers" when he was backing away to square leg, I can tell you.

I'd forgotten I won a junior golf tournament where I had 48 shots. I made a par on the last to win it, which was quite something.

Ah but the character Jack Davenport played, Miles, would have been similarly rubbish against the short-pitched stuff I reckon, so you probably helped prepare him for the role. Egg would have been a better cricketer, though I reckon bamboozled by spin a bit.

Egg was surely too obsessed with football to make a proper cricketer. Frankly I don't think there was anyone in either series of This Life who'd make a decent player.

toro toro wrote:

QUOTE:
I haven't sailed in a few years, but I once did it to semi-pro level. I was visible on Sky Sports once, doing a sail-change at the front of our boat as we rounded the second mark in the final race of the 1720* European Championships ahead of the whole fleet, a serious number of Olympians among them.

Does this story finish "I screwed up the sail change and we finished last"?

It seems like very-much a half of a story.