Culture & Lifestyle | GlobalPost

Look out for Lindsey Vonn

Mark StarrFebruary 10, 2010 10:50Updated May 30, 2010 13:20

BOSTON — It was one of those horrific and, at the same time, mesmerizing sports moments. You wanted to look away, yet you couldn’t take your eyes off Lindsey Vonn as she flew out of control, crash-landed on her back and went spinning helplessly down the mountain — until she finally lay there in the snow, barely moving and, quite possibly, broken.

Golf’s “cheating” controversy

Mark StarrFebruary 2, 2010 10:49Updated May 30, 2010 13:20

BOSTON — Recessionary woes have left no sport unscathed. But the pro golf tour, with its reliance on sponsorship from financial services companies and the automobile industry, has gazed headlong into a future that is potentially as rocky as the course at Pebble Beach. And just while the PGA was scrambling to replace sponsorship money as well as several suddenly defunct tournaments, Tiger Woods fled his house and drove into a hydrant and then a scandal that has temporarily sidelined golf’s supreme champion and singular drawing card.

In the African Cup of Nations, Egypt has God on its side

Mark StarrJanuary 27, 2010 08:45Updated May 30, 2010 13:19

BOSTON — It has been three weeks since the deadly terrorist attack in Angola on the bus carrying the Togo soccer team to the African Cup of Nations — an attack which sent shock waves through the continent.

Soweto's Vilakazi Street spruces up

Erin Conway-SmithJanuary 26, 2010 07:37Updated May 30, 2010 13:19

SOWETO, South Africa — When the World Cup kicks off in June, all eyes will be on Soweto, the famed Johannesburg township where the opening match will be played at a bright new soccer stadium shaped like a traditional African cooking pot.

Anti-Israel protests target young tennis star

Mark StarrJanuary 22, 2010 07:36Updated May 30, 2010 13:19

BOSTON — The weather at the Australian Open has been unusually damp this week, but the mood in Melbourne is sunny. After a few years in which its game seemed to flag almost as much as its economic underpinnings, women’s tennis appears poised — with a star-studded cast — for a revival season.

Angolan violence scars African soccer tournament

Mark StarrJanuary 11, 2010 17:58Updated May 30, 2010 13:18

BOSTON — European soccer clubs have always hated the African Cup of Nations and that distaste has only increased as more and more African stars play critical roles on teams in the elite leagues. Not only do key players disappear to the call of their countries for up to three weeks in the middle of the European season. But as is true of all continental championships, the tournament is a bruising, often brutal affair and many of those players return to their clubs injured as well as exhausted.

The uniquely scandalous nature of American college athletics

Mark StarrJanuary 7, 2010 11:12Updated May 30, 2010 13:18

BOSTON — It could only happen in America. On Thursday night two undefeated teams, the University of Alabama and the University of Texas, from two of the most storied American college football programs will meet for the national championship. The game is being contested at a time when public universities here are facing tuition hikes, scholarship shrinkage and wage freezes. Yet Texas football coach Mack Brown just got a pay hike to $5 million annually, tops in the nation's college football ranks, while Alabama's Nick Saban makes do on $4 million a year.

The top 10 sports figures who helped define a year

Mark StarrJanuary 1, 2010 10:08Updated May 30, 2010 13:17

BOSTON — Once upon a time, the odd year — without an Olympics or a World Cup — tended to be relatively uneventful. But in today’s high-stakes sports universe, nobody can afford a season off. The year 2009 was unquestionably an “on” year, filled with glory and, as is now always the case, plenty of the inglorious too. Below are the 10 people who helped define the year in global sports.

This Year with Global Post

cmsennott@globalpost.comDecember 30, 2009 14:59

GlobalPost invites you to listen to "This Year with Global Post," a special radio report in partnership with WGBH-Boston on how our correspondents have covered the big stories of 2009. I am hosting the radio show and will be talking with our correspondents around the world about the global economic crisis, the war in Afghanistan, climate change and the many challenges that lie ahead in 2010 and beyond. The show will air on the PBS flagship WGBH (89.7 FM) in Boston at noon on Thursday, Dec. 31. And will be rebroadcast on WGBH on Sunday at 8 p.m.

Can Elin go home again?

Marcus OscarssonDecember 13, 2009 13:50Updated May 30, 2010 13:16

STOCKHOLM, Sweden — Swedes like to say that Elin Nordegren Woods, 29, embodies everything Swedish: humble, shy, discrete, independent, sporty, down to earth and liberal. Nordegren’s marriage to Tiger Woods, however, has doomed her to a very un-Swedish fame. Here “Elin,” like Madonna, is known by one name only. And when Nordegren and Woods spent Christmas in northern Sweden several years ago, the Swedish press spent hours waiting in temperatures of -28 degrees Fahrenheit for a glimpse of them.