You could say Jake Shannon’s big break — his biggest so far, anyway — came when he got the call from the people in California who told him the gig was his if he wanted it, and could he fly out right away? Jake hemmed and hawed. His work troubleshooting…
Remember Caine? Not the biblical guy, but Kwai Chang Caine, the half-Chinese, half-American Shaolin priest who wandered the old American West in the 1970s television series Kung Fu. Played to subtle perfection by David Carradine — he didn’t look Chinese, exactly, but you knew he was, because he spoke really…
So, kid, you want to be a ballplayer, play a part in the Show? Then step out here onto the real field of dreams. Oh, not what you expected? A diamond of green velvet, sure — but next to a highway heading south out of Parker to nowhere? Probably only…
It’s just after 7 a.m. in late July, but at 9,500 feet the early morning air already has an autumn slap. Aaron Brill, chief executive officer of Core Mountain Enterprises, the first company to build a new ski area in Colorado in twenty years, skids into work in his 1974…
On May 25, Erik Weihenmayer was sitting on top of the world. Well, technically speaking, he was lying near the top of the world. With his stomach convulsing. He’d just yanked himself over the 39-foot rock face called the Hillary Step, the last technical hurdle on the way to the…
When I hear Kenny Dubois is going to be in town, there is no question about getting with him. After all, the guy is a national champ, maybe one of the best in the world. Luckily, I am able to track him down after a couple of phone calls, and…
But the one thing that O’Neal cannot do to save his life is shoot foul shots. While most professional players can make around 80 percent of their free throws — and some sink 90 percent or more — O’Neal is lucky to make half of his chances. This lousy record…
It began, as all marriages must, with trust and hope, and ended, as all too many do, in resentment and suspicion. Their story begins in 1983, when Ron and Anne met through a mutual friend in college and agreed to go out on a date. “We didn’t see eye to…
Every year, the Colorado ski industry looks forward to the three-day Martin Luther King Jr. weekend in January as one of the busiest times of the year. But this past winter, on the Sunday of that holiday-enhanced weekend, the number of skiers on Vail Mountain exceeded even those eager expectations…
In the beginning, there were no BushMaster 2000s, no Redz Comfort Gear, no 32 Degrees Defender Goggle systems, but rather loggers and ranchers, rough men of the forests and the plains, and they needed a modern tool to identify their interests from inside a pickup or astride a horse. So…
On a recent evening at Archery Adventures, a bow-hunting store in an Aurora strip mall, Bob Cook was setting up his slide projector for a seminar on turkey calling. It was still a couple of weeks before the start of the spring turkey- hunting season, but that didn’t matter: Bob…
National Basketball Association players visiting town to abuse the Nuggets prefer to stay at the Westin Hotel downtown, from which they can easily walk to dinner at clubby restaurants such as Morton’s and the Denver ChopHouse & Brewery. Professional golfers on tour through Colorado usually pass time between rounds lounging…
You want the love? Here is the love. On Monday and Wednesday nights, the forty or so players of the Gentlemen of Aspen Rugby Football Club show up at the Cory Point Riding Arena, a few miles down the Roaring Fork Valley. They wait while the horses are led away…
With baseball starting, March Madness on deck and the NBA and NHL playoffs in the hole, one can be forgiven for not having contemplated the dire state of competitive distance swimming in this country. Fortunately, the towel wringers at USA Swimming are there to do it for you. Recently, the…
There are plenty of people in Colorado who, it is now clear, should not ever have had guns. It’s hard to argue that the world would not have been better off if Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold and Matthaeus Jaehnig and many, many others had not been able to get…
Time was, sports and recreation were something you did in your off-hours. Sure, there was always the company softball team. But at least you could choose who was on the squad. No geeks allowed — and that guy in sales and marketing who showers once every pay period? Forget it…
Want to make your high-powered colleagues down at the club think you’ve lost your competitive edge and corporate marbles? Try out this pitch the next time you run into a couple of venture capitalists while sweating over your “friendly” game of lunchtime squash: “Boys, I’ve been an athlete all my…
Turn on the television, open the paper or click on the radio, and you’d be hard pressed to avoid seeing/reading about/listening to some athlete selling something. Companies will use jocks to hawk just about anything these days (Ed McCaffrey is an expert on mattresses why?), no matter their age (Dick…
College admissions directors are well aware of a phenomenon known as the “Flutie Effect.” The Flutie in question, of course, is Doug Flutie, the slippery bantam quarterback for the Buffalo Bills. (He also has his own breakfast cereal, Flutie Flakes, sold regionally, whose digestive “Flutie Effect” is another story.) The…
As Denver’s economy finally gained momentum after the deep slump of the ’80s, a group of hardy entrepreneurs set to work building an empire. The budding capitalists were all young women. For the most part, they were also foreigners, having only recently immigrated to this country from Korea; a few…
In épée, the most duel-like of the three events that make up fencing, the foot touch serves two purposes. The first, of course, is that it counts as a score. Unlike foil, in which a combatant must contact an opponent’s torso with his blade to score, or saber, for which…
The good news was that the Pumpkin Satellite Project had just launched a one-gallon jug of water approximately twenty yards through the air — not a winning distance, certainly, but respectable for an early simulation of what might happen if you put a pumpkin in its place. The bad news,…
