I have spent very little time in five-star hotels. Actually, I can’t remember the last time I slept in one, before getting to the Grandhotel Lienz, here in Austria. Part of what five-star hotels do, to justify the prices they charge, is to kill you with little kindnesses and services.

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I know that the William Tell Overture, the introduction to Giaochino Rossini‘s opera on the Swiss hero … is set in Switzerland. But after a few days here with the UAE Olympic team, in Austria, also in the Alps, I have been reminded of the William Tell Overture … and feel as if I am […]

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I am in the city of Lienz, Austria. Not Linz, Austria, which is a fairly big town near the German border. This is Lienz, a skiing village of about 10,000 people here in the Tyrol region of the country. Just north of the border with Italy, actually. I am here to do some stories on […]

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Sharjah is the San Bernardino of the UAE. Lots of hard-working people there, but many of them without much money, and if a really goofy story happens in the UAE, it’s a fairly safe bet to suggest: “And it happened in Sharjah, right?” Just as in San Bernardino or, maybe, Vernon or even Compton in […]

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About halfway through Wimbledon, a Yank who sits near me in the offices of The National, a guy who is not a tennis fan, asked: “Why do the women play only best of three?” That is a very good question. Yes. Why. In an era where women run the same distances as men do, and […]

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Andy Murray is in the final at Wimbledon. This is news, in the queen’s country. Mainly because Liz the Deuce is 86 and seems to have been alive for ever … but even she was only a girl of 11 when Britain last put a man in the Wimby final, that being the wonderfully named […]

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Athletes need to give some thought to how they celebrate. Things are getting out of control.Winners are losing all sense of decorum, all sense of style and proportionality. So, a list of things I will not do when I win a big event:

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Let’s review the State of the Los Angeles Lakers at the end of the 2011-12 season: An old, slow team, with no No. 1 draft pick, a shallow bench and all sorts of money tied up in a handful of guys. Their star, Kobe Bryant, would turn 34 before the coming season, their power forward, […]

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In the quarterfinals at Wimbledon tomorrow, I would like to see David Ferrer defeat Andy Murray. For two very good reasons. 1. I like David Ferrer. He is the Energizer Bunny of the men’s tour, forever chasing down balls, keeping rallies alive. He is not big, and he doesn’t have a monster serve, and almost […]

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The National opened for business in April of 2008, and the newspaper had a website from the start. Of course. But in the past year or so, efforts to get readers to the site have intensified, and more people are involved on the web side of things, and page views have gone up dramatically. So, […]

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