Sport Quotes - page 21
O the one who is playful with a row of locks of wavering hair (lolālālīlala); O the one who never changes (alola); O the one whose mouth is full of saliva in the pastimes [as a child] (līlālālālalālala); O the one who accepts the wealth of earth (Sītā) in the sport [of breaking the bow of Śiva] (lelelela); O the one who destroys the multitude of worldly desires of mortals (lalālīla); O the child [form of Rāma] (lāla); O the one who destroys the fickle-minded nature of the being (lolīla); [may you ever] delight [in my mind] (lālala). ॥ 20.94 ॥.
Rāmabhadrācārya
Ultrarunners - even the fiercest competitors - grow to love each other because we all love the same exercise in self-sacrifice and pursuit of transcendence. Because that's what we're all chasing - that "zone” where we are performing at the peak of our abilities. That instant when we think we can't go on but do go on. We all know the way that moment feels, how rarely it occurs, and the pain we have to endure to grab it back again. The longer an ultrarunner competes, I believe, the more he grows to love not only the sport, not only his fellow ultrarunners, but people in general. We all struggle to find meaning in a sometimes painful world. Ultrarunners do it in a very distilled version.
Scott Jurek
In a paper belonging to the Spectator there is a short description of a country wake. "I found," says the author, "a ring of cudgel-players, who were breaking one another's heads in order to make some impression on their mistresses' hearts."...to this he adds another curious pastime, as a kind of Christmas gambol, which he had seen also; that is, a yawning match for a Cheshire cheese; the sport began about midnight, when the whole company were disposed to be drowsy; and he that yawned the widest, and at the same time most naturally, so as to produce the greatest number of yawns from the spectators, obtained the cheese.
Joseph Strutt
If the opposing of one cock to fight with another may be justly esteemed a national barbarism, what shall be said of a custom more inhuman, which authorised the throwing at them with sticks, and ferociously putting them to a painful and lingering death? I know not at what time this unfortunate animal became the object of such wicked and wanton abuse: the sport, if such a denomination may be given to it, is certainly no recent invention, and perhaps is alluded to by Chaucer...If the poor bird by chance had its legs broken, or was otherwise so lamed as not to be able to stand, the barbarous owners were wont to support it with sticks, in order to prolong the pleasure received from the reiteration of its torment.
Joseph Strutt
More important, something decisive in my life, he [Guy Moore] taught me to feel affection for tribesmen. Ever since then it has been people that have mattered to me, rather than places. I have never craved magnificent scenery or opportunities for sport in the way that I have longed to be with certain tribes and, above all, certain individuals among them.
Wilfred Thesiger
