Chicago’s United Center, an indoor sports arena, can host separate games of ice hockey and basketball, on the exact same floor space, within hours of each other.

I’ve rarely ever watched a game of rugby in its entirety, but this recent match between Super 15 teams the Highlanders and Chiefs, should have been an exception, if this snippet of play was indicative of the excitement of the rest of the game.

Both teams, by the way, are from New Zealand, and their players would go on to form the ranks of the All Blacks, which would be, historically/statistically, the best rugby team in the world. I suspect though plenty of people would disagree with such a statement.

If you want to run, run a marathon. If you want to experience a different life, run a… Spartathlon.

The Spartathlon, run each September in Greece, is an ultramarathon based on the jaunt made by Ancient Greek messenger Pheidippides from the town of Marathon to Sparta, some 250 kilometres apart, in 490 BC, seeking help after the Persians had laid siege to Marathon.

While Pheidippides’ dash went onto become the basis for the Olympic marathon, that clocks in at some 42 kilometres, since 1983 runners have been taking on the extended 246 kilometre course, that extends from Athens to Sparta.

And while athletes in peak form could complete the run in about 35 hours (yes, 35 hours), some, including current Spartathlon record holder, Yiannis Kouros, have breezed through in just over 20 hours. Whatever your level of fitness though, the endeavour sure isn’t for the faint of heart:

The drama lies not in the competition between them but in their personal struggles. Many douse themselves repeatedly in cold water. Some briefly rest, grimacing as they rise to their feet again. One disoriented Japanese runner heads off in the wrong direction, and needs to be overhauled and turned around. James Adams, a British runner, arrives after about ten hours on the road, a great muddy stain of blood on his shirt, courtesy of unlubricated nipples. A couple of tourists sit in a nearby taverna watching the runners head off again. “Isn’t it amazing?” says one. “Or stupid,” responds the other. Her scepticism is understandable.

British mountain bike trials rider Martyn Ashton puts a carbon bike, valued at some £10,000, through its paces in a variety of locations across the UK. I don’t know how many takes went into this clip, but some of these stunts are nothing short of breathtaking.

We’re surrounded by lakes, or if I were to be pedantic, lagoons on the Central Coast, so skimming stones across the surface of the water is a popular past time around here. Well, at least for me it is.

I was actually thinking I wasn’t half bad at it either, with the six to eight skips I can sometimes get out of a stone, until I heard the world record was 51 skips.

I can’t imagine getting anywhere near that number of skips out of a stone, but if you’re also a stone skipper, and looking to improve your technique, then the tips the team at the Brigham Young University Splash Lab have to offer may be helpful.

British football club Manchester United has recently joined the ranks of other well known entities – such as Facebook – to incorporate as a public entity, and offer fans and followers an even greater piece of the action by allowing them to buy and own shares in the team.

Despite Man U’s popularity (in some quarters at least), their initial public offering was not all that well received, when shares traded for the first time on Wall Street last week, selling for US$14 a piece, somewhat less than the US$20 some analysts had expected:

Manchester United has made a disappointing debut on the New York Stock Exchange, even after opening at a discounted price, with enthusiasm for the celebrated team overshadowed by its debt load and financial track record. Many had expected that fans of most famous soccer club in the world would snap up shares, leading to a pop in early trading, but that didn’t materialise. Some analysts had warned that the initial public offering was overvalued, particularly since the club is debt ridden and the family that owns them, the Glazers, retained almost total voting control over the team.

All in all too much like the recent Facebook share float (and I hope no one here bought FB shares), though that left some investors a lot more disappointed.

* here of course I refer to Chelsea.

Population, wealth, and talent, these are some of the factors that hold sway over the number of medals a country’s Olympians are likely to win every four years.

Another way though to boost the medal tally is to play host to the games. Not only does the host country’s Olympic team tend to win events more often, the prospect of holding the games is also enough to lift said country’s medal count in the Olympiad immediately prior as well:

It is well known that countries who are hosting the games tend to earn significantly more medals than their respective incomes and populations predict. Interestingly, the host country also does better in the Olympiad immediately before it hosts (but after it knows it will be hosting). Host countries, many years in advance, ramp up their athletic investments to have a good showing when the eyes of the world are focused on them, and generally those investments succeed even before the host games.

The view from silly point? I’m sure cricket would be just as interesting – and really it’s a little like playing chess on a field – if it were played this way.

Could soccer, or football as it known in some parts, be the only truly universal sport? If the fervour that the FIFA World Cup generates globally each time it comes around, every four years, is anything to go by, then yes, perhaps so.

Football is universal in every way. Unlike basketball or weightlifting, it can be played to a high standard by people of every shape and size. It appeals to both sexes (notably in the United States) and does not rely, like golf or tennis or equestrianism or most other sports, on pricey equipment or particular terrain. A scrap of wasteland and a ball fashioned from rags will do; with these basics, any child can aspire to the artistry of Lionel Messi. This is not romantic twaddle but the actual origin of some great players of the past, including the supreme figure of Pelé.

Though players lack the ability to fly around on their brooms, their enthusiasm for Quidditch, the sports game enjoyed by Harry Potter and his Hogwarts’ friends, appears to be no less diminished, if the reasonably popular “Muggle” version of the game is anything to go by.

Some 2,000 chipper, ethnically diverse, and not wholly fit competitors, mostly high school and college students, mill around the bleachers, the Porta-Potties, the team tent area. The line for the waffle cart stretches nearly to the East River. One infield retailer does a brisk business selling championship lapel pins, while another is on its way to liquidating the Quidditch players’ “broom of choice,” according to the brochure, a $55 handmade model dubbed the Shadow Chaser. Everywhere there are fans – dads wearing shirts that read PROUD PARENT OF A MCGILL QUIDDITCH PLAYER, alongside teens in capes and the crimson-and-gold scarves of Hogwarts. Only five years old, this grand tournathaddment of nonfantasy Quidditch will draw some 10,000 paying spectators. A Fox newscaster once called it “a cross between the Super Bowl and a medieval fair.”

(Photo by Natalie Mattison)