Action/Adventure: April 24, 2024 Issue [#12519]
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 This week: You and Your Sports Team
  Edited by: NaNoKit Author IconMail Icon
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Table of Contents

1. About this Newsletter
2. A Word from our Sponsor
3. Letter from the Editor
4. Editor's Picks
5. A Word from Writing.Com
6. Ask & Answer
7. Removal instructions

About This Newsletter

Who is your favourite athlete or sports team? Why did you choose to support them?

It's not always obvious why we root for the people we do. Some people support their local team; others cheer for a team on the opposite end of the country, or even one from abroad.

This week's Action/Adventure Newsletter, then, is all about the sports and athletes we love.

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Word from our sponsor

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Letter from the editor

I confess that I am not a sportsy person. I was terrible at most sports I have ever attempted. Later on in life I’d learn that the dyspraxia is probably a big factor there, but I’ve never really been interested in running around, nor in jumping on or over things. I’m more of the laid-back type.

That said, I did fine at Judo and Aikido and, for reasons beyond even my comprehension, I was really good at throwing the javelin! Not ball sports, though. Never ball sports. After the so-manieth visit to the emergency department with the so-manieth fracture or tear my school banned me from participation and I can’t say that I was sad about it.

I did love to watch the WWF back in the day. I know that I am aging myself here, but those were the years of Hulk Hogan, and André the Giant, and Ricky "the Dragon" Steamboat. Of course, in those days I actually thought that the matches were real rather than pure entertainment, and those were some tense matches for little me! I also, like many Dutch people, cheered on our national football team, and I did support Ajax for a good while – I even watched a match in person.

The sport I was most into, though, for a good while, was Formula 1. I was a big Mika Häkkinen supporter. After some years, however, when the sport became too predictable with Schumacher winning everything but the kitchen sink I drifted away from F1. Football was full of guys rolling around the field with fake injuries, and anyway, I’d moved to the UK and didn’t know how to pick a team here. What followed were quite a few years when I didn’t watch any sport at all.

So, how do you begin – or in my case, restart? How do people pick teams and athletes to root for? When it comes to football teams I know that many people like to support their local team. This isn’t necessarily the case, however – my husband and his brothers each have a different favourite team and like to rib on the other when they’re in direct competition. Perhaps football isn’t for me anymore, because I haven’t looked too hard for a British team. I’m back into Formula 1, though.

If you want to learn about Formula 1, the Netflix series Formula 1: Drive to Survive is a good starting point. It teaches you about the current teams and the different drivers and the way that the sport works in general. It does dramatise the sport and some drivers are barely featured, but it does have some nice behind-the-scenes insights and it’s enough to get you started. It helped me catch up on who’s who and what’s what and got me back into watching races, where I ended up cheering some of the drivers on, mainly because I like their driving style. It’s not strictly necessary to have favourites, I know, but I do find events more interesting to watch if there’s someone who I want to win.

Unfortunately for them, and for me, that was the year when Max Verstappen won his first championship, and he’s been winning ever since, meaning that I landed right back into predictability. I’m hanging in there but am not getting up for 4 AM races, that’s for sure.

I don’t think I’ve ever had a huge passion for any sport. I know people who live and breathe their teams, and who get really upset when their favourites lose. Their team is a part of their identity and I can’t – and won’t - criticise that, it’s just something that I have never felt. Or, perhaps I did on a rare occasion, like a world championship final or some other major event – you’ve followed the team throughout and they’re so close to winning, and then it’s a penalty shoot-out and they lose at the last moment. That is disappointing. On the whole, though, the height of my involvement in sport was those years of being glued to WWF matches, willing on whoever I was supporting at the time. It was tense, but good fun. I still have a signed Ricky "the Dragon" Steamboat photograph.

Who do you support? How and why did you end up choosing them?

I hope that whoever you cheer for will win their next event. Unless they’re Max Verstappen. I must admit that he’s an excellent driver, no doubt one of the greats, but I’d like a little more competition! He can handle coming second for once.

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Editor's Picks

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Ask & Answer

The Action/Adventure Newsletter Team welcomes any and all questions, suggestions, thoughts and feedback, so please don't hesitate to write in! *Smile*

Wishing you a week filled with inspiration,

The Action/Adventure Newsletter Team



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