weird sports
Dreaming In Context With USA Basketball: David Roth's Weak In Review
The U.S. has done a great deal of winning since it started sending dream teams of NBA stars to the Olympics. The fun of the team in Rio isn't the winning, it's the work.
Strange Summer Olympic Sports: Are They Good? An Investigation
An evidence-based look into whether the weirder sports on offer at the Summer Olympics—your horse-dancing and skeet shooting and so on—are actually good to watch.
Indoor Skydiving Is Real, Painful, And Definitely Sports
Indoor Skydiving, or "Body Flight" to aficionados, is intense, difficult, humbling, expensive, and weird. But is it sports? Spoiler: hell yeah it's sports.
It Is Time to Appropriate Pasola, Indonesian Sport of Kings
Pasola is half ultraviolent rock-and-spear polo and half religious ritual. It's the perfect sport for America.
Meet WhirlyBall, The Goofy Lacrosse-In-Golf-Carts Sport That Wants To Take Over The World
WhirlyBall is a silly sport that sticks players in goofy little vehicles and whose rules combine polo, lacrosse, and basketball. It is fun, but also ambitious.
Drones Over Dallas: My Day at the Drone Wars
Drones have earned a pretty bad reputation, but drone enthusiasts want to show the other side of their unmanned aerial hobby. Also some of them want you to stop calling them drones.
The Man Who Won And Lost "American Ninja Warrior"
On "American Ninja Warrior," Geoff Britten did something no one's ever done. Then another ninja did it faster, and won a million dollars. What comes next? Life, mostly.
Carter Capps Might Be Too Weird For Major League Baseball
No one in baseball pitches the way Carter Capps does, and few relievers have pitched as well. But his bizarre leaping motion might be too weird to be legal.
Azerbaijan On Two Wheels: The Distance Between Here And There
The Tour of Azerbaijan is a long way from the Tour de France, and Airgas-Safeway's riders know it. But it means a lot to know it's possible to get from here to there.
Azerbaijan On Two Wheels: Making A Break
Every team at the Tour of Azerbaijan is there to win. But winning a stage isn't just about riding faster. It's about teamwork, luck, and opportunity, and it's hard.
Los Angeles' Forgotten Jewish Soccer Dynasty
Maccabi Los Angeles was a team comprised of soap stars, ringers, and random Jewish dudes. By one measure, it remains the most successful team in U.S. soccer history.
We Made Alex Rodriguez Who He Is
Alex Rodriguez has been the future personified and a ghost of the past, a hero and a villain. Now he is just a baseball player again, and it's on us to deal with it.