In the Race
Now, here, you see, it takes all the blogging I can do to keep in the same place.
If I want to get somewhere else, I must blog twice as fast as that!
You see, I'm in
the Red Queen's Race...
No Pain, No Gain
By Janet Evans
Monday, Jun 30 2008, 06:40 AM
My son and his wife are home visiting from Colorado, and yesterday we watched the Euro 2008 Soccer Championship match between Germany and Spain. It was a pretty cool match…Spain won, 1-0. It had been 44 years since their last significant title.
EuroTrecker: Spain claims its greatest-ever glory ×

Vincenzo Pinto/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Spain celebrates their victory over Germany to win the Euro 2008 final. Spain’s Fernando Torres scored the winning goal in the 33rd minute
Spain scored their goal about 30 minutes into the match. Germany got increasingly frustrated as time went on, and the match got more physical. There were bruised and bleeding eye sockets and blatant head butts going on, among many other injuries and fouls. The eye injury, as with other injuries, just got stitched right on field. Then the player headed back out to play.
I’m always amazed at the physical shape of soccer players. Their speed and stamina is unbelievable. And the crowd of fans was amazing. They never stopped cheering the entire time. All of this combined is what makes soccer the most popular sport in the world.
The kids pointed out to me that in the semi-final match between Germany and Turkey, a Turkish player, Ayhan Akman, had a collision with another player and was bleeding profusely from his scalp. Forget the stitches…this time, out comes the surgical stapler. No anesthetic…just pop in a staple or two and the player is sent back on the field.
No pain, no gain.
And most of you reading this probably say soccer is boring...

Turkey's Ayhan Akman, let trainers staple up gushing head wounds so that he can get back
into the gamesemi-final game against Germany. See a Video of Akman’s injury:
Soccer injuries Can Be Awesome ×