I expect everyone has seen the Zidane headbutt incident from the World Cup. And we can all tut tut about these emotional soccer players, and how sailors would never lose their temper and do something disgraceful like this. But is that true? I can think of two incidents, one on the water and one off, where dinghy racing sailors have committed outrageous incidents at least as crazy as this one.
Have you seem anything like this in sailing? A prize of a duct tape cup-holder for the best story.
Image copied from montevino's photos on Flickr.
6 comments:
I remember a junior sailor jumping off his boat, swimming over to another racer's boat, climbing on board and finally capsizing the other racer's boat.
While the reponse was unjustified, I'm sure that just as Materazzi did, the victim provoked the incident.
it's all in the eye of the beholder:
http://firsttube.com/read.php/1152823758/world_cup_headbutting_madness.html
Most of the disabled men in my big race were VERY rude and bossy to their able bodied team mates. It was ugly and that's why they lost.
I heard about this but had not seen it. Very ugly!
Materazzi did admit that he insulted Zidane just before the incident. While neither player will tell exactly what the insult was, they do say it was NOT an accusation that Zidane was a terrorist, nor an insult to Zidane's mother.
Not that either of those would justify Zidane's actions, but apparently he over-reacted to something milder than that.
The BSDRA rules simply stated that you had to acknowledge a boat on starboard tack calling for water. One team in particular was exceedingly frustrated with us. We would shout "larboard" in response to their "starboard". The rules were amended the following year. That was the closest we came to blows at the post-race tea.
Then there was the time at a match against City of London School at Canary Wharf when (in wayfarers!) we were rammed by one of the grossly incompetent opponents. We won that match 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3. Bizarre wind pattern among the skyscrapers. The only time I've ever sailed a triangular course without tacking! I was crew at the time we were rammed, and my helm and good friend got me through the race and kept me away from the post-race tea so I wouldn't deck our opponents. I don't fly into rages quite like I used to.
Yeah, there was that Brodie Cobb incident at the Laser PCCs at Cabrillo Beach 7/06. That was a classic case of "losing it". The old man was lucky Mark Spector Jr didn't throw some punches back - turns out he's a black belt and has a lot of restrain.
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