Hold the back page

Compiled by MARY HANNIGAN

Tiger just can't win these days with the bloggers

TIGER WOODS, it seems, just can't win these days. No, not in golfing terms (although . . .), rather, when it comes to the business of media relations. Or blogger relations, at least. "Almost press conference time. I'll donate one million dollars to The Tiger Woods Foundation if no one asks me about the leg," he tweeted on Tuesday ahead of his scheduled chat with the press to promote next month's AT and T National.

“Wow. Thats taking media manipulation to a whole new level,” wrote one outraged blogger, while another accused him of “trying to buy the media’s silence”.

While Woods has, eh, hardly helped his cause over the years, the often hysterical reaction to some of his more innocuous utterances can be a sight to behold. If John Daly or Ian Poulter had written a similar tweet, the response would largely have been: “What a cad!”

And, after all, he wasn’t threatening to withhold a million dollars from sick babies if anyone dared ask him about, say, his nocturnal activities. He was joking about how bored he is with questions about his injury.

He was always going to be asked about his fitness – in fact, as it proved, it was the first question in the press conference, and he gave a detailed enough response to the query. “Bet was over after first question but of course I’m going to give the money to the TWFoundation,” he tweeted later. Media manipulation!

Omens and stats point to a United victory

THE SPORTS department’s resident statto has been hard at work dusting down the history books ahead of tonight’s Champions League final between Barcelona and Manchester United, noting that both teams have won three titles each with their first being picked up at Wembley, the venue for tonight’s game. And both also played Benfica in their first final and each other in their most recent.

The Spanish champions have, though, lost two finals, in 1961 and 1986 when beaten by Benfica and Steaua Bucharest, whereas United have been beaten just once, two years ago when playing Barcelona.

Wembley is the first venue to host six of these finals and, encouragingly for Manchester United, the record of host countries is strong.

Seven clubs have lifted the trophy on home soil, including two – Real Madrid and Inter Milan – in their own stadium. Three clubs have lost finals when playing in their own country, with Roma managing to do on their own ground. The most recent casualty was Barcelona, beaten 2-0 on penalties in Seville by Steaua, in possibly the direst final ever in 1986.

The only previous example of two finalists making it back to play each other two years later is Milan and Liverpool in 2005 and 2007. Again, the omens are positive for United – the first result was reversed the second time around. Mind you, Milan were up against Jermaine Pennant, not Lionel.

Francis comments draw mixed forum reaction

THERE WAS a bit of a to-do earlier this week when former international Neil Francis revealed that he’d spotted “three or four groupings of Munster fans” at the Heineken Cup final wearing Northampton colours, describing them as “a disgrace”.

Its hard to explain how an Irishman would support an English team when there is an Irish team there,” he wrote in the Evening Herald, “itll tell you a lot about the internal workings of what they think.

As you can imagine, those comments drew a flowery enough response on the Munster Fans’ internet forum, although many agreed with Francis.

“It’s hard to argue with him,” wrote one. “Pretty pathetic to buy a Saints scarf while wearing a Munster jersey at a final where Munster arent even playing! Would you not stay at home and keep the head down? All this will be fed back into the Leinster players ahead of the Magners final.”

But others took a different view. “The all-inclusive, lovey dovey, PC nonsense that we all must support Leinster is fairly grating, they are our biggest rivals. Rivalry within reason is all part of sport. You wont see many Kerry lads supporting Cork in the football.”

Your heart had to go out to this Munster fan, though. “I didnt even get to see the bloody match. A communion in a house of five boys and no Sky! What is the world coming to? I thought Id choke when I heard the half-time score. I nearly did choke when told the full-time score.

All is well, I recovered.”

You cannot be serious about porn jibes

WHEN THE New York TimesMagazine commissioned Dewey Nicks last year to photograph nine of the world's leading female tennis players for a series entitled 'Women Who Hit Hard', there was, to put it mildly, a mixed reaction to his work.

Many lauded Nicks, reckoning he had brilliantly fulfilled his brief “to truly capture the power and grace of these athletes”, but the University of Minnesota’s Nicole LaVoi, who teaches sport psychology and has a particular interest in how sportswomen are portrayed in the media, was representative of the opposing view – the photos and accompanying videos were, she argued, “soft core porn that has nothing to do with tennis”.

LaVoi took particular exception to two of the nine photos, “the most sexualizing”, as she described them, one a sultry close-up of Kim Clijsters sprinkled in gold dust with divil a sign of a racquet.

“It has nothing to do with tennis,” she said, “you can’t even tell she is a tennis player from looking at the picture.” Nor was she impressed by the shot of Sam Stosur “playing in a nude tube top, a piece of equipment she would never play a match in”.

“Females athletes get so little coverage from sport and regular media, that when they are covered and it is in sexualized ways, it undermines their athletic achievements,” she argued, noting that the videos in the series featured “elongated shot time on the buttocks, crotch and chest areas”.

The gist of the response to LaVoi’s comments was “lighten up”, that ‘Women Who Hit Hard’ was simply a visual homage to the athleticism and grace of the players, and that any action shot of a sportswoman could be deemed as ‘sexualizing’ – only if that’s the way you choose to view it.

In other words, it’s not the image that is the problem, it’s the person viewing it who really needs to admire the grace, skill and power, rather than fretting over an unconcealed buttock.

Writing on the Fair Game News website, Laura Pappano made a similar point in her response to LaVoi, with whom, she said, she usually agrees on the issue of “the sexualization of female athletes”. “There is a difference between titillation and celebration – and it matters that we see a distinction,” she said.

“We have to find a way to consider athletic female bodies without automatically finding that because they are fit they are sex objects.

“We must be able to celebrate women’s physical gifts without feeling that seeing is exploitation. The alternative – to consider women’s bodies as inherently pornographic – would have us all wearing floor-length skirts or – for the liberated – bloomers.”

Pappano loved the videos. “There are no come-on looks, bared privates, or pouty gestures. Instead, they feature intense expressions of focus and serious demonstration of muscles in action. Watching does not feel voyeuristic or arousing, but dramatic and arresting. It’s cool.”

Well, the Women’s Tennis Association wasn’t swayed by LaVoi’s objections either because they’ve hired Nicks for their ‘Strong is Beautiful’ advertising campaign, a series of photos and 30 second videos – with each player providing a voice-over for their own film – similar to the style of ‘Women Who Hit Hard’. Again, the campaign features many of the game’s female stars, among them Serena Williams, Clijsters, Ana Ivanovic and Li Na.

Echoing LaVoi’s objections to ‘Women Who Hit Hard’, the Huffington Post’s Laura Gottesdiener noted that the ‘Strong is Beautiful’ videos “sure do include a lot more glitter and grace than sweat or strength”, with “most of the players dressed for The Hotel de Crillon rather than Roland Garros”.

“Billowing smoke and flowing skirts rarely score points on the court, but whether they’ll reward the WTA with new viewers remains to be seen. If so, when the new WTA converts tune in they’ll have to relearn what their favourite stars look like without professional make-up.”

Again, the general tone of the response on the site to those views was “get a grip”, one of hundreds who responded to the article (there were 23 pages of comments at the last count) asking “would the people upset by this campaign prefer the women to be clad in burkas?”

Many pointed to the fact that Billie Jean King, the founder of the WTA, and hardly someone who would approve of female tennis players being ‘sexualised’, endorses the campaign in one of the videos, defining “beautiful” as the players’ “athleticism, grit and power”.

It’s all in the eye of the beholder, of course, as LaVoi and Pappano’s disagreement proved. Two like-minded commentators, both passionate about the issue of how sportswomen are portrayed in the media, drawing very different conclusions about Nicks’ work. But as one response put it on Huffington Post, compared to Sports Illustrated’s ‘swimsuit issue’, ‘Strong is Beautiful’ can probably be regarded as progress.

* You can see the videos on the WTA’s YouTube channel (just search for ‘WTA’).

Macho Man reunited with Hercules

YOU’D IMAGINE ‘Randy Savage’ would do just fine as a name for a professional wrestler, but the American opted for the moniker Macho Man during his career, during which he was a 10-time world champion.

The World Wrestling Federation named him as the sport’s “greatest champion of all time” and praised him for bringing “a higher level of credibility to the sport through his amazing in-ring performances”.

Sadly, Savage died in Florida last week, at the age of 58, when he lost control of his car and crashed into a tree. It is suspected that he may have had a heart attack.

His brother, ‘Leaping’ Lanny Poffo, also a former professional wrestler, told the website TMZ that Savage would be cremated and have his ashes “co-mingled” with those of “his loyal pooch, Hercules”.

“The dog’s ashes were spread around Randy’s favourite tree several years ago, and after Randy is cremated his ashes will be strewn there as well. Randy would always say, “If it’s good enough for Herc, it’s good enough for me!”

The Wrestling Observer was, naturally, in mourning following the news, prompting the website to embark on a rather curious bit of research: they set about comparing wrestler death statistics to similar sized samples in other fields of sports and entertainment.

Their findings? Of the 51 wrestlers who appeared at the 1991 WrestleMania, 14 have died prematurely – and that’s not including Gorilla Monsoon and Lord Alfred Hayes who died of natural causes.

In contrast, “of the 44 players who started on both offense and defense at Superbowl XXV between the Buffalo Bills and the New York Giants, all remain alive”.

Of the 44 boxers to hold world titles in 1991, two are dead. And of the 50 musicians who performed at the 1991 and 1992 Monsters of Rock festivals in England, “all remain alive”.

Wrestling, then, has a peculiar record of premature deaths. And wrestling writers have, it must be said, a peculiar fondness for marginally morbid stats.