Smoke On!

Smoke On!

Several years ago I went to an unusual sporting event, an aerial race around New York Harbor.  These were air races of souped-up single-prop planes that were reminiscent of WWII fighter planes (I am reminded of that scene from Empire of the Sun when a young war-torn Christian Bale points at a passing American fighter-bomber and says, “P-51, Cadillac of the sky!”).  Red Bull was promoting the event and it involved taking a ferry to New Jersey’s Liberty State Park, where they had a stadium seating array set-up facing out at the harbor.  I don’t know what airport was servicing the racing planes, but the path they took started somewhere down in Bayonne, flew out into the lower harbor near Staten Island, cut north in front of the Statue of Liberty and then banked hard left over Ellis Island and over the stadium seats back into the swamplands of New Jersey.

The racing announcer would describe the course and the plane that was next taking its run.  You could hear it approaching in the distance to the south.  Then you could see it getting closer.  Then the announcer, with all the gusto he could muster would shout “Smoke on!” and the plane would turn on its smoke generator (I presume it was some harmless concoction) and would trail smoke around the course making it more visible and much more dramatic.  It was a great event that I remember vividly.  I don’t believe there has been another one of these since, but if there were, I would make sure to attend.

Given my current perch with both an office that directly faces the Harbor at approximately air race height (19^th floor), I might watch it from my office rather than schlep out to Liberty State Park, but I would have to be able to tune in on the radio because the whole “Smoke on!” war-cry was a big part of the experience.

Among the sporting events I have witnessed first-hand, two stick out with opposite effect.  On the unimpressive side was the Olympic bobsled run.  In 2002 I owned a big house in Park City, Utah and was perfectly positioned to go to the entire Winter Olympic Games.  I spent a fortune eighteen months in advance to buy enough tickets to almost every event for both me and my presumed house guests to see the entire spectacular.  The opening and closing events (which were massively expensive and cold as could be to attend) were amazing and horrendous all at once.  Imagine sitting in the freezing cold night air of a Utah canyon for what amounts to fivc hours.  Nuts.

The Olympic bobsled event was equally nuts.  The bobsled run is on the mountain to the west of the Snyderville Basin outside of Park City.  It is a remote location you would only go to for viewing a ski jump or a bobsled run. You get the pleasure of parking at the base of the mountain and boarding a bus to the venue.  While the ski jump can be viewed in its entirety from the stands below and you can see much of what you can see on TV of the event, this is not so for the bobsled.  With the bobsled you get to pick a spot where you get the briefest of glimpses of the track.  You get to hear a loudspeaker announce that a run has begun.  Then you wait with baited breath as you hear something wooshing towards you.  Then its over.  You wonder if you actually saw anything go past you.  You watch again and realize that the wonder is to be expected since it literally takes a split second for the bobsled to go past the small field of view you have to capture the moment.  What a bust…and a freezing cold bust at that.

The Olympic venues was where I saw a most interesting and unusual sporting event.  It was at the Nordic Park at Soldiers Hollow, where the Biathlon and other Nordic skiing events take place.  It is a big, wide-open venue at the base of a gradual hillside with stadium seating facing the hill.  Watching Nordic events during the Olympics was like a slow-motion version of the bobsled, less because of speed and more because the skiers are only within sight for brief periods of time as they spend their time out on the course.  But I saw a summertime event at that venue that was far more interesting.

It was a sheep dog contest that I stumbled upon one summer day.  I didn’t even know there were sheepdog events.  What they do is put a herd of sheep way up on the hillside (say a quarter mile away).  You can see them up there from the stands.  They then have a trained sheep dog with the whistling instructions of its owner, run up the hill and bring the sheep down through a series of gates to the center ring.  That is so much more interesting than you can imagine.  The dogs go up wide and sneak up on the herd, so they don’t scatter.  They then pounce and keep the herd together as they push them towards the first gate.  Watching the dogs work the herd is amazing and more complicated than you can imagine.

Then, when the sheep have been successfully herded downhill, they get handled up close in a ring by being “cut” into various permutations to show that the dog can separate out one, two or three sheep as needed by the sheep farmer.  It’s particularly interesting to see an experienced dog work the sheep versus a younger less-experienced dog work.  You really get a view of the benefits of patience and experience versus high energy and rambunctiousness.  Good lessons for life, but an intriguing and great spectator sport to spend an afternoon watching.  Who knew?

I’m not sure I would have ever gone to either a Red Bull air race or a sheepdog handling competition, but in both cases I found that the pleasure of in-person spectator sports still has a place in our lives.  TV coverage does a much better job on many sports, bobsledding certainly being one. But others are more interesting to see up close and in person.  Sometimes its because you get the subtlety of different dogs and the dog/handler interaction and in others you can’t replace the announcer admonition of “Smoke on!”