People Dropping Dead or Trying To

Listened to the Mighty 'Ding overcome the stoical (but thankfully goal-shy) Swansea yesterday in the League Cup ... and also heard across the radio waves that the Nottingham Forest v. Leicester match was abandoned at half time, due to one of Leicester's players (Clive Clark) suffering two heart failures during the break (he's still alive thank goodness). This comes on the back of a 22-year-old Sevilla player collapsing during a match and dying shortly afterwards (again from heart failure), along with a 16-year-old Walsall youth player suffering the same fate during training but a few weeks back. What is going on? Is this proof that being uber-fit is actually bad for you???

I find the Tour de France pretty grotesque for this reason. When you watch a 20-something cyclist ascending the Pyranees, literally foaming at the mouth from the effort, I'm not so much impressed as freaked out. Why put your body through that? And marathon runners??? How is pushing your body so hard, that you morph from a normal person into a string bean, actually good? It seems like a weird kind of masochism to me. Now I know football is not quite on the same level but these days footballers do seem to be pushing themselves ever harder. Is this the payback??

On a similar note I heard that Owen Wilson (a former favourite of your truly) is currently hospitalised, having tried to kill himself. Oh lordi. Money and talent and fame don't get you nothing but heartache. Getting super-fit just gets you dead. Suddenly being a slightly chubby nobody seems a very cosy thing indeed!