Three years ago, Jack Le of Denver took what he anticipated was a giant step toward realizing a part of the American dream. It has become a goal so crucial to success in this country that it is said to shape personalities, enhance romance, elevate career paths and promote excellent…
Most Nuggets fans can’t read tea leaves, but they’re pretty good with injury reports. Either way, universal health care will be critical to the immediate fortunes of a team that leaped into the season full of newfound hopes and dreams but quickly found its baby-blue ass in a 2-5 sling…
Initial reports pegged Rick Bobbitt’s stunt at last month’s Santa Fe Air Show as a relatively easy maneuver called a hammerhead. A former Navy aviator, current United Airlines flight officer and experienced aerobatic competitor, the 46-year-old Parker resident was certainly qualified to perform the trick. The International Aerobatic Club gave…
That pointy brown thing that turns up in the U.S. of A. every autumn is a football — a fact that has escaped most of Colorado’s major colleges and universities this year and has dawned only occasionally on the Emperor of Invesco, Mike Shanahan. Herewith five ways of looking at…
Carmelo Anthony received a summons Oct. 15 at Denver International Airport after a small amount of marijuana was found in his bag as the team prepared to travel to Milwaukee for an exhibition game. Anthony’s lawyer, Daniel Recht, said the marijuana belonged to James Cunningham, who often stays with Anthony…
The good thing about the hockey lockout? Todd Bertuzzi is looking for work. The bad thing? Nobody gets to drive the Zamboni, big lovable galoot of a vehicle that it is. Otherwise, who the hell cares? Not many. Except for the good citizens of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, the people who…
Voters have had plenty of opportunities to gather information and pass judgment on President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry. Most, however, are unsatisfying — staged debates, advertising swill, convention hoo-ha, editorial folderol. It makes you wonder: Is there really a way to measure the cut of a man’s…
Where is everybody, baseball fans? Well, let’s have a look: Larry Walker is in St. Louis, suddenly in the pink and belting playoff home runs. The Montreal Expos are in oblivion, waiting to be revived next spring as — what? Let’s say, the Washington Lobbyists. Most of the Cubs faithful…
October 5 marked the one-year anniversary of the death of Dwain Weston. Weston was known in extreme-sports circles as a star BASE jumper; the abbreviation stands for building, antenna, span and earth — which participants leap from with parachutes. Last year at this time, Weston was a featured performer in…
Before it’s over, maybe they could match him up against a ’58 Edsel. Or the Hindenburg. Or Michael Dukakis. Something. Because Zippy Chippy, whose papers say he is a thoroughbred racehorse, has never won versus his own kind. In eleven long years of trying (and sometimes not trying), the thirteen-year-old…
Next time you’re in the market for a pair of guinea pigs, a Ford pickup or a bag of jalapeño peppers, tune in to radio station KFKA in Greeley for Saturday morning’s Swap Shop show. You might even wind up buying something on a whim — like the black faux-fur…
Dreamers live in a fantasy world. So what do you call a person who dreams of impossible things and then does them? Tom “Chico” Chicovsky. When Chico and his twin brother were nineteen, they and a friend decided to sail across the ocean after their freshman year of college –…
Since going dark-blue-with-white-horse from the neck up, the Denver Broncos no longer sport that big orange “D” on their helmets. But if Mike Shanahan wins big in the biggest gamble of his coaching career, it is “D” that will be inside his players’ heads this year. It will be “D”…
On a recent afternoon that threatens rain, Thomas and Anthony are already waiting when the black and yellow Compass truck rolls up to Argo Park. The two boys race their BMX-style bikes along 47th Street parallel to the truck, skidding to an impressive, rubber-laying halt as the big vehicle noses…
Tony Dispense grew up small, which is how he gained the lifelong habit of trying harder than just about anyone else. This was especially true in sports. When he played tennis, he’d stay out late practicing his strokes. While mountain biking, he seemed to push just a little more than…
The slightly crooked basketball hoop in his family’s Congress Park back yard holds many memories and meanings for Kevin Fletcher. Dribbling a ball under that basket one hot afternoon last week, Kevin thought about the times his driveway suddenly turned into the gleaming floor of the L.A. Forum. About the…
Only a handful of newsworthy memories survive from my early teens. But out of the momentous headlines of that time — Vietnam, Watergate — one of the clearest is of a child’s contest: The Soap Box Derby scandal from the summer of 1973, 31 years ago this week. Jimmy Gronen,…
Once upon a time, not long ago, the Denver Nuggets were the sorriest franchise in the National Basketball Association. The laughingstock of the league. A garbage can for discontented, used-up and incompetent players. They were objects of scorn in their own city — like Brian Griese and the Denver boot…
Fifty years ago, the athletic director of Gunnison’s Western State College, a 950-student school in south-central Colorado, made history when he convinced the National Collegiate Athletic Association to add skiing as an official intercollegiate sport. The idea stuck, and a few months ago, skiers from more than three dozen colleges…
Only a devoted masochist — a guy with a thing for hairshirts and moonlight strolls in Fallujah — would envy Bob Apodaca. As pitching coach for the Colorado Rockies, Apodaca is asked to piece together some kind of credibility in a ballpark where earned runs, home runs and pitcher anxiety…
In 1973, high school athlete Julian Nabozny was playing goalkeeper for his Winnetka, Illinois, soccer team when he collided with a boy on the opposing side. As Nabozny knelt down to receive a pass, David Barnhill came hurtling toward him, kicking him in the head. Many agreed that Barnhill could…
Rulon Gardner, the playful Wyoming giant who pulled off the biggest upset of the 2000 Sydney Olympics, will be leaving the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs for Athens next month, hoping to win a second gold medal in Greco-Roman wrestling. The Greeks might do better to station Rulon…
