SUSO

Winter Biking

"The woodland rush."

Come winter, there's only one place to ride - off road, through the wet and cold.  But why wait for winter if you have the foresight and imagination to build something like this on your doostep. Check out this exquisitely crafted, beautifully ridden and cleverly shot piece.

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Categories Sport Tags Endeavour

By Sammy on 2/12/11

It's All In Your Head

"... all of it."

Filmed in Madison, Wisconsin on 16 mm film in 1981 by Joel Fletcher, set to the iconic orchestral score by Wagner and Holst, welcome to the surreal but highly athletic upside down world chosen by Mark Daniel..

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Categories Culture Tags Sport Endeavour

By Sammy on 16/8/11

Slow Yourself Down....

... and you'll see so much more."

If there is another way to live, this is it - introducing the Goodwin Project - beautifully captured by the team at 'Avocados & Coconuts'.

Risk yes. Reward, hell yes.

... for now, I for one intend to live it vicariously. 

For now.

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Categories Tags Endeavour

By Sammy on 9/8/11

Downhill From Here

"... literally."

A course you would only find in Latin America.  A level of skill honed over many years of practice...

... and some enormous cojones. Check it.

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Categories Sport Tags Endeavour

By Sammy on 19/2/11

The Best Of The Best

"Matthew Burrows moment of magic almost topped the lot."

Almost but not quite.  His goal for Glentoran against Portadown back in October last year made the top 10 (if not ultimately the winners spot) for Goal Of the Year 2010.  Not bad for a little known Irishman from the celtic outback.

Some might call his extravagant back heel simply luck.  Us, we see pure imagination and spot on execution (....and ok maybe a little sprinkling of good fortune from the leprachauns in the crowd!)

Check out the full list of top goals from 2010 as compiled by Fifa and then you decide whether Turkish international Hamit Altintop's spectacular volley in a EURO qualifier in Kazakhstan was worth the title of 2010's very best.

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Categories Sport Tags Endeavour

By Sammy on 26/12/10

Inspired By Travis?

"... but landed by Aaron."

... aka Aaron "Wheelz" Fotheringham to be precise.  This the world's first double backflip on a wheelchair as at August 26, 2010. Pure No Can't Do and an inspiration to us all.

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Categories Sport Tags Endeavour

By Sammy on 6/9/10

Piece By Piece

"... we can achieve our goals..."

Olympic Swimmer John Naber is a living breathing example of this truth.

Back in the 70s, Naber had missed out on medals at the 1972 Munich Olympics - he had found himself the forgotten man of the US team as he performed a support role in getting the US relay teams through to the finals, only for the great Mark Spitz to step in and power the team to glory. Naber finished the games promising himself if he was to return to the Olympics it would be as a gold medal winner.

He did his homework and set his sights on winning gold in the 100m backstroke at the next Games in Montreal and in doing so calculated that, based on the progression of times, he would need to swim the distance in 55.5seconds – a four full seconds faster than his best. Four seconds is a lot in swimming, enough to leave a simmer disillusioned, but not Naber.

He broke it down and then he trained. He trained for ten months a year, so he would only need to improve by one tenth of a second over the space of a month. There are roughly thirty days in a month, so he would only need to improve by one three-hundredths of a second every day. He trained for four hours every day, so he only needed to improve by one twelve-hundredth of a second every hour.

Naber won his gold – in 55.49sec. If you want it, you can work out a way to achieve it. A truly great athlete, but as the video below shows he was no match for Stains' best!...

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Categories Sport Tags Endeavour Humour

By Juan on 9/7/10

It's All In The Head

"...according to young freerunner Ali..."

Ever wondered what goes through the mind of the nations up and coming Parkour specialists? What are they thinking when they do what they do...

'Mental Block' from Director Karen Palmer, provides us with a strong insight.  This short depicts the journey of Ali, a young freerunner striving to find his own personal route through life using the discipline of parkour.  It shows how the mental blocks he and other artists inevitably encounter are addressed and ultimately overcome.

Set within london inner-city estates the freerunner discovers that the hardest obstacles to overcome are infact those that exist in the mind.  It takes imagination (the idea of being chased by a man with an axe?) and shere determination to overcome them. See it here.

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Categories Sport Tags culture Endeavour

By Juan on 24/6/10

Freebasing The Eiger

"...freeclimber, base jumper, now acclaimed 'freeBaser' ... meet Mr Dean Potter."

Climbing shoes - check.  Shorts - check.  Tub of talc - check.  Parachute - check.  Gigantic cojones - check.  All you need for a quick trip up the Eiger for arguably the world's most imaginative and determined spiritual daredevil.

After several months training on limestone cliffs in Lauterbrunnen, Potter recently made his ascent on the 3960m Eiger, via the hugely challenging Deep Blue Sea route.  Parachute or no parachute this a hazardous climb with the blue limestone rock prone to coming loose at any time.  The prize waiting at the summit?... the opportunity to hurl himself landward in freefall rapture. 

FreeBasing the Eiger would appear to be just another comparably small journey for a man who has been driven to risk his life and push the boundaries of human possibility since childhood.  For those of you that might have missed it, Dean Potter is the only person in the world who does extreme slacklining. This is quite simply tight rope walking at its limit - high up... very high up, on a bouncy stretch of one inch wide rope, no pole, no harness, nature all around.  Death defying, artistic, or plain crazy ... you decide for yourself from this short clip. 

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Categories Sport Tags Endeavour

By Juan on 18/4/10

One Team, One Nation

"Sport's most iconic image and the story behind it..."

To quote John Carlin, author of the book Playing With The Enemy, the basis for the film Invictus that breaks in UK cinemas this month;

"By far the most fabulous and memorable political event I've ever witnesses was the Rugby World Cup Final of 1995."

That Carlin would refer to a World Cup final thus, as a'political event', points to the the power sport genuinely exerts over politics.  And Nelson Mandela, as intelligent a politician as ever there has ever been, was the man to recognise this.  The man to recognise that sport can move people emotionally to such an extent that it could and did unite a once fundamentally fractured nation. The man to move against this opportunity and challenge.  For those familiar with the turmoil of post-apartheid South Africa, the scale of this achievement was and remains breathtaking.

Morgan Freeman has gone on record as saying he had wanted to play Nelson Mandela in a film for many years but it was always about waiting for the right story and formula.  Carlin's tale offered him the formula and angle he was looking for.  And early critique suggest Freeman delivers a masterful performance in the role he was perhaps born to play (so says Mandela's own daughter..).  And while Matt Damon's involvement in the production is an inevitable point of controversy the same critics suggest he delivers a solid performance (with a worthy accent) allowing the focus to reside where it should, on Mandela as portrayed by Freeman.

Ahead of the realease of the film, and in Morgan Freeman's words, here is the opportunity to familiarise yourself with the story behind the image.

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Categories Film Tags Sport Politics Endeavour suso Film General

By Juan on 23/1/10