No LeBron, but ESPYs attendees abuzz about newest Laker

LOS ANGELES — LeBron James was absent from the ESPYs, but was still the talk of the town on the red carpet under a sizzling sun in Los Angeles.

“There’s a buzz around this city,” Lakers teammate Josh Hart said.

James was nominated for Best NBA player for the 14th straight year at the ESPYs on Wednesday night.


“I think he’s going to do great things,” soon-to-be NFL Hall of Famer Terrell Owens said. “I can see everywhere he’s gone they’ve increased their wins. I expect nothing less.”

Athletes and celebrities offered suggestions on how James can settle into life as a new Angeleno. He has yet to speak publicly about his new team since leaving Cleveland for the West Coast.

“It’s limitless,” rapper G-Eazy said. “This is Los Angeles. There’s everything you could ever dream of here.”

Olympic figure skater Adam Rippon suggested the two do a beach day.

“He’s probably going to be training around where I live so we’ve got to go to Manhattan Beach, obviously,” the bronze medalist said.

Rippon, who recently skated nude for a photo shoot, offered to teach James how to soar on the ice if it’s of interest to the newest Lakers superstar.

“LeBron should know that if he ever needs a lesson, I’ll help him out,” Rippon said.

source: sports.inquirer.net

200 NFL players protest in defiance of Trump

WASHINGTON — US President Donald Trump’s criticism of players who kneel during the national anthem sparked angry protests around the National Football League (NFL) on Sunday, as about 200 players sat, knelt or raised their fists in defiance. A week ago, just six players protested.

Most NFL players on Sunday locked arms with their teammates — some standing, others kneeling — in a show of solidarity. A handful of teams stayed off the field until after “The Star-Spangled Banner” to avoid the issue altogether.

As he prepared to board Air Force One to return to Washington from New Jersey, Trump said the players protesting the anthem were “very disrespectful to our country” and called again on NFL owners to stop what he considered unpatriotic displays in America’s most popular sport.

“This has nothing to do with race,” Trump said. “This has to do with respect for our country.”

The president’s attack on athletes turned the anthems—usually sung during commercials—into must-watch television shown live by the networks and Yahoo!, which streamed the game in London.

In NFL stadiums, spectators either applauded or booed at the protesting players.

‘Deep disappointment’

The NFL owners and its players, often at odds, used Sunday’s anthems to show unity. One of Trump’s biggest supporters in the NFL, Patriots owner Robert Kraft, joined the chorus when he expressed “deep disappointment” with Trump.

The dissent started more than a year ago when former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick refused to stand during the anthem to denounce police violence against minorities. This season, no team has signed Kaepernick, and some believe NFL owners are avoiding him because of the controversy.

A handful of white players joined the vast majority of black players who actively protested on Sunday.

Defensive star Von Miller was among the large group of Denver Broncos who took a knee in Buffalo, where Bills running back LeSean McCoy stretched during the anthem.

“We felt like President Trump’s speech was an assault on our most cherished right, freedom of speech,” said Miller, who normally steers clear of politics and social issues.

Dozens of more players protested before the Raiders-Redskins game in Landover, Maryland. All but a handful of Raiders sat on their bench, and seven Redskins took a knee while their teammates stood arm-in-arm along with the owner.

In Chicago, the Pittsburgh Steelers stayed in the tunnel except for one player, Army veteran Alejandro Villanueva, who stood outside with a hand over his heart.

In Nashville, both the Seahawks and Titans stayed inside until after the national anthem was over.

Protests surge

A handful of NFL players had been continuing Kaepernick’s protest this season, but that ballooned on Sunday following Trump’s two-day weekend rant.

It began on Friday when he called for NFL protesters to be fired and continued on Saturday when he rescinded a White House invitation for the NBA champion Golden State Warriors over criticism from two-time MVP Stephen Curry.

The president’s delving into the NFL protests further angered many players who took one insult as a personal attack on their mothers.

“Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, you’d say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out! He’s fired,’” Trump said to loud applause on Friday night at a rally in Huntsville, Alabama.

Locked arms in solidarity

“I’m a son of a queen,” retorted Falcons defensive lineman Grady Jarrett.

Super Bowl MVP Tom Brady was among the New England Patriots who locked arms in solidarity in Foxborough, Massachusetts. Aaron Rodgers did the same with his teammates in Green Bay.

“Standing with locked arms is good, kneeling is not acceptable. Bad ratings!” Trump tweeted on Sunday.

In Detroit, anthem singer Rico Lavelle took a knee at the word “brave,” lowering his head and raising his right fist. In Nashville, anthem singer Meghan Linsey took a knee as she finished singing.

Jets chair/CEO Christopher Johnson, one of Trump’s most ardent supporters, called it “an honor and a privilege to stand arm-in-arm unified with our players during today’s national anthem” in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Johnson’s brother, Woody, is the ambassador to England.

The mass action reverberated across the Atlantic, where about two dozen players took a knee during the playing of the US anthem at Wembley Stadium.

“We stand with our brothers,” Ravens linebacker Terrell Suggs said. “They have the right and we knelt with them today. To protest, nonviolent protest, is as American as it gets, so we knelt with them today to let them know that we’re a unified front.”

Jaguars owner Shad Khan and players on both teams who were not kneeling remained locked arm-in-arm throughout the playing of the anthem and “God Save The Queen.” No player knelt during the British anthem.

“Me taking a knee doesn’t change the fact that I support our military, I’m a patriot and I love my country,” Bills linebacker Lorenzo Alexander said.

“But I also recognize there are some social injustices in this country and today I wanted to take a knee in support of my brothers who have been doing it,” he added.

Alexander said he would go back to standing for the anthem next week.

“I just wanted to show them that I was with them today, especially in the backdrop of our president making the comments about our players, about their mothers,” he said. “And then you put that in conjunction with how he tried to gray-area Nazism and KKK members as being fine people, I had to take a knee.”

Invitation accepted

The National Hockey League’s reigning champion Pittsburgh Penguins announced on Sunday that they had accepted a White House invitation from Trump.

The Penguins said they respected the Office of the President and “the long tradition of championship team visiting the White House.”

Before Game 1 of the WNBA Finals in Minneapolis on Sunday, the Los Angeles Sparks left the floor while the Minnesota Lynx stood arm-in-arm. The Sparks returned to a chorus of boos when the song was finished.

Kahn, who was among the NFL owners who chipped in $1 million to the Trump inauguration committee, said he met with his team captains before kickoff in London “to express my support for them, all NFL players and the league following the divisive and contentious remarks made by President Trump.”

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Trump says protesting players in NFL should be fired

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama — President Donald Trump has a suggestion for National Football League owners whose players decide to take a knee during the national anthem: fire them.

And the president has a similar suggestion for fans of the sport: walk out of the stadium in protest.

Quarterback Colin Kaepernick started the trend last year when he played for the San Francisco 49ers. He hasn’t been signed by an NFL team this season.

Trump’s hard-nosed reaction to protests by several athletes over treatment of blacks by police came Friday night during a freewheeling rally in Alabama. He says such players are disrespecting the flag and deserve to lose their jobs.

Trump also bemoaned that football has become less violent. That view comes amid growing concerns over repeated head blows and a brain disease.

source: sports.inquirer.net

PSA: Female Olympians Wear Makeup for Self-Expression

Two commentators Mark Simone and Bo Dietl debated about the looks of female Olympians like Simone Biles and Simone Manuel instead of talking about their success and achievements. You totally missed the mark, Fox News.

Every second of that video made me cringe as I watched two men talk about women’s physical appearance and they even asked the male Olympians like Michael Phelps to do the same—look good when you accept that medal.

“The whole point of the Olympics, the whole reason for this training, for this work to get there, is product endorsements,” said Mark. It did not stop there, Bo added fuel to the flame by talking about zits on their faces and saying, “I like to see a person who wins that gold medal go up there and look beautiful.” As if their medals and record-breaking performance are not enough.

To clarify, female athletes who choose to wear makeup do it because they want to, because they are empowered and they feel much more confident—and there is nothing wrong with that. But if one chooses not to do it, do not give them flak.

The Fox News segment was based on the piece published on USA Today and I suggest you read that instead of listening to those two men.

[Nylon]

 Photo by Ben Stansall for AFP

source: preen.inquirer.net

LOOK: Conor McGregor bares it all on ESPN’s Body Issue

Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) featherweight champion Conor McGregor leads the top athletes who have gone nude for the 2016 edition of ESPN magazine’s Body Issue.

McGregor took to social media to share a photo of his shoot, where he was seen naked while training with a punching bag.

“If I only had to focus on boxing, hell, I’d be neck and neck with Floyd [Mayweather Jr.] right now,” McGregor was quoted as saying by ESPN on Instagram.

McGregor is set to have a rematch against Nate Diaz in August, after falling short in their last outing.

McGregor is the sixth mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter to grace in the special edition magazine, following the appearances of former UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey; current champion Miesha Tate; interim UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones; Invicta featherweight champion Cristiane Justino; and her one-time husband, Cyborg Santos.

ESPN’s Body Issue is an annual collection of famous athlete’s nude bodies and the stories behind them that aim to serve as an inspiration to others.

The other athletes that grace this year’s edition are Nathan Adrian (swimming), Jake Arrieta (MLB), Antonio Brown (NFL), Emma Coburn (Steeplechase), Courtney Conlogue (surfing), Elena Delle Donne (WNBA), Ryan Dungey (motocross), Adeline Gray (wrestling), Greg Louganis (diving), Von Miller (NFL), Chris Mosier (triathelete), Nzinga Prescod (fencing), Christen Press (soccer), April Ross (beach volleyball), Allysa Seely (paratriathlete), Claressa Shields (boxing), Dwyane Wade (NBA), and Vince Wilfork (NFL). YG

source: sports.inquirer.net

Athlete anxiety no excuse to skip heart test – study

NEW YORK - After finding that student-athletes felt no more distress about heart screening with electrocardiograms, or ECGs, than they did with physical exams, a new study concludes that anxiety should not be considered a reason to avoid giving the test.

An ECG measures the electrical activity of the heart and can detect disturbances that could predispose people to rare but dangerous cardiac arrests. Sudden cardiac death is the most common cause of death during exercise, researchers note.

Italy and Israel mandate ECG screening as part of sports pre-participation examinations, while the debate over whether to require athletes to get the test has become increasingly contentious in the United States.

One of the downsides of ECGs is that they sometimes suggest a heart problem that turns out to be a false alarm upon further testing. In the interim, athletes may fear for their health or their future in sports.

“This is the first study to look at the psychological impact to athletes when they get screened,” lead author Dr. Irfan Asif told Reuters Health. “There’s nothing to indicate you shouldn’t get an ECG because of stress.”

Asif, from the University of Tennessee Graduate School of Medicine in Knoxville, and his team studied 952 high school athletes who participated in a range of sports. The students all received a medical history and physical examination to screen for underlying heart problems. All but 150, who served as a comparison group, also received an ECG.

Of the 802 participants who were screened with ECG, 220 had an abnormal finding at some point during the screening process. Six of those represented serious heart conditions, and the rest were false positives.

Reviews of a student’s medical history led to 127 of the false positives. An additional 50 false positives were a result of physical exams, 14 were from ECG readings and 29 were due to multiple indications.

The researchers found no difference in students’ distress levels immediately after screening based on whether their testing had included an ECG.

A 2007 American Heart Association statement on cardiovascular screening warns that false-positive results from ECGs could lead to unnecessary anxiety, the authors write in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

But the current investigation showed no differences in distress levels based on the reason for the false-positive evaluation - the vast majority of which resulted from a review of a student’s personal and family medical history.

“The athletes we’ve interviewed are actually very grateful that someone’s tried to save their lives,” Asif said. “We’re not really seeing negative consequences. We’re seeing very positive benefits.”

But pediatric cardiologist Dr. Peter Fischbach from Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta told Reuters Health the study protocol limited its generalizability. Fischbach, who is also affiliated with Emory University School of Medicine, was not involved with the new study.

Students whose ECGs showed possible problems in the current investigation had follow-up tests on the same day at the same location. Most student-athletes have to wait for follow-up appointments with cardiologists, Fischbach said.

“If you’re not allowed to practice until you get a note from a cardiologist, and you have to go home and stew on it for three weeks, I worry that kids would become a little more stressed out,” he said. “Maybe they’d get a little more anxious and wonder if they’re ever going to be able to play again.”

The authors acknowledge that on-site, same-day tests to evaluate the abnormal ECG findings could have minimized anxiety among students.

“I imagine people having to wait for additional testing might have anxiety,” Asif said.

He and Fischbach both said there should be ways to address delays in follow-up in the real world.

But even if expected delays between tests could be shortened, Fischbach said the problem of funding to screen all U.S. student-athletes would remain. “In this era of cost-containment, this has the potential to be an explosive cost,” he said.

Some doctors have called for regular testing of U.S. student-athletes to try to prevent sudden cardiac deaths. So far, though, data have failed to show that screening could reliably weed out only the most at-risk youth at an affordable price. Based on Italian data, British researchers have calculated that close to 800 athletes would have to be benched from their sports for every death prevented (see Reuters Health story of October 11, 2012 here: reut.rs/1oF5cHu).

Nevertheless, Asif believes in ECG screening. He noted that reviews of family history and physical examinations are substantially flawed in their ability to detect heart defects, yet schools require them for students to participate in sports.

“People are asking for evidence. Where’s the evidence for a history and physical?” he asked.

“My message is you should do all three,” he said. “With screening with an ECG, we can save lives. Your ability to detect disease is much higher, and it looks like it doesn’t cause additional anxiety in people.” — Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com

After Lance Armstrong's doping scandal, leading tennis players to get their way on doping controls

Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray and other leading tennis players calling for increased blood testing in tennis could get their wish in 2013 with the introduction of athlete biological passports to the sport.

In the aftermath of Lance Armstrong's admission last week that he was on drugs when he won each of his seven Tour de France titles, several top players at the Australian Open have revealed that they have received relatively few blood tests.





World number one Djokovic said last week that he had not been blood tested "in six or seven months".

The biological passport is a method of monitoring selected biological parameters over time, rather than trying to detect individual substances, and was considered one of the main reasons for the success in catching cheats in cycling.



"We're looking very, very closely at it and I think there's a reasonably good chance that will be operational probably towards the end of 2013," Dr Stuart Miller, the head of the International Tennis Federation (ITF)'s anti-doping effort, told BBC radio on Monday.



In 2011, the most recent set of figures available, the ITF conducted only 21 blood tests out of competition and 131 in total, a figure well outweighed by urine tests, which numbered 2,019.



At the Paris Masters last October, U.S. Open champion Murray led the calls for more blood tests in tennis, a view backed up in Melbourne by Roger Federer and Djokovic.



Blood tests are more expensive to administer than urine tests and Miller admitted that they were subject to financial constraints.



The Tennis Anti-Doping Program, which operates under the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) code is funded by the ITF along with the men's (ATP) and women's (WTA) tours and the grand slams.



On Tuesday, the ITF confirmed that the total investment in the anti-doping program was $2 million per year.

That included around $400,000 for the administration, paid for solely by the ITF, which covers staff, education, court costs and insurance.



Miller said tennis was doing everything it could to try to catch cheats.



"We are looking with our partners at the ATP, WTA and grand slams to identify areas we think we can improve," he said.



"We think we need to increase the proportion of blood testing we do under the program and we think we could also do with tending to increase the proportion of tests we do out of competition."



The ITF said it is committed to increasing its contribution in 2013 and former top-10 player Guy Forget, now the tournament director of the Paris Masters, said he believed drug taking was still happening in tennis.



"I don't think our sport is clean, I'm sure some guys are cheating," he told the BBC.



"I think it's a minority, probably, but that's why Roger and Andy are right to say we should put more money into blood tests and have more controls because we should fight this any way we can.



"I lost matches probably to guys who beat me with an unfair advantage because they were taking drugs.

"For sure it has happened. I can look in the mirror knowing I have never taken anything. But some guys might have done it.



"First of all some guys have tested positive, even if it's only a few, some have." - Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com