Crazy happenings from another week on Planet Sport...
Dude, there's your car: I
Many of us know how easy it is to lose your car keys in the rush to get to the airport. Jermaine Pennant - who was once Britain's most expensive teenage soccer player - has gone one step further.
In his rush to leave
Real Zaragoza (where he was earning $167,000 a week) and move to Stoke City, Pennant parked his Porsche outside a Spanish railway station, hopped on a train and headed to the airport.
Problem: he forgot about the Porsche.
The loaded winger, who collects sports cars, plumb forgot the tasty ride gathering dust outside the Spanish station. After the expensive wheels (numberplate "P33NNT") sat at the station for six months, railway officials tracked him down through the soccer club.
Dude, there's your car: II
Our previous favourite Jermaine Pennant automotive story came back in 2005, when the luckless driver smashed his Mercedes into a lamp-post in Buckinghamshire.
When the cops arrived on the scene, the great man did what any sensible drunk should do after crashing a Merc and identified himself as Ashley Cole. Cue a jail sentence for drink-driving and an entry in the history books as the first player in Premier League history to play while wearing an electronic tag after an early release.
Lance's myth
"I am sick of the myth of widespread doping." So said Lance Armstrong in 2000 after Tour de France win number two. The case is closed about his drug-addled sport, the Feds are crawling all over his team and allegations against him mount by the month - the latest from Sports Illustrated, the mag that once named him its athlete of the year.
Get the feeling Lance is urinating into a gathering hurricane?
Bradman's baby
Last Sunday's ODI between England and Australia marked 40 years since the birth of the format. The man who launched the whole thing? Nope, not Kerry Packer. Take a bow, Don Bradman.
The Don was boss of the Australian Cricket Board in January 1971 and saw the organisation $52,000 short in ticket sales after two days of rain in a Melbourne test. With more rain expected on the third and fourth days and a final loss of $145,000 looming, the Don made a big call to get bums on seats with a shortened match on what would have been the fifth day.
"It was no big deal," recalled Rod Marsh. "It was an exhibition game. There was no sense of history-making."
Greg Chappell agreed."I don't think anyone really had any idea of what might grow out of it."
Actually, the players may have been oblivious, but the bean-counters had an idea of what might grow. A crowd of 46,000 went to see the match - 4000 more than had gone along to all five days of the first test in Brisbane - and the coffers swelled.
The ACB had $33,000 in the bank and a new game was born. On Australia's tour of England 18 months later, the sixth test was replaced with three ODIs.
And the rest, as they say, is pyjama game history.
Urine trouble, lads
West Bromwich Albion fan Jon Brookes - who also happens to play the drums for the Charlatans - had a brainwave while helping out with some DIY at his brother's house.
The pair needed some bricks to put into the house extension, and with redevelopment work going on at The Hawthorns ground they knew where they could steal a pile of them.
Jon jumped the fence at night and chucked the bricks over to his brother. But the bricks smelled a bit funny.
"What we'd done was get the bricks from the old toilet block. Sixty years of Brew XI was on those bricks from blokes moaning about Bobby Robson and Jeff Astle. They still ended up in the extension, though it took a few months before it started smelling normal."
Excuse watch
Brazilian soccer player Paulo da Silvaa, a midfielder at Botafogo in Rio de Janeiro, had a good excuse for being late to training. Facing a 40 per cent pay cut for being late, he told the coach he'd been kidnapped on the way to the ground. The carjacker drove him around the city before nicking all his jewellery and money and dumping him in the street.
CCTV footage from his apartment building said otherwise. A security camera captured the fibber coming home at 4am after a night on the town and then leaving for training late.
Police have charged him over the fake carjacking story and a six-month jail sentence is being threatened.
On the plus side, da Silvaa has been turning up to training early eversince.
They Said It
"I use skin creams, perfumes and conditioners, and I will shave every hair off my body. I will look fantastic."
Lazio smooth striker Mauro Zarate on his upcoming nuptials with model Natalie Weber. She says: "He is every woman's dream. The day will beso special for us."
"My whole life in rugby has been a gift. To be paid for my passion, for 20 years, is incredible. To wake up this morning and to know that I would have a chance to run outside, to play, when I'm 36 years old? How can that not be fantastic? My whole life in rugby has been happiness."
Ex-France flanker Serge Betsen on what he has got from the great game.
"In April, Oceania must vote for Sepp Blatter to lead Fifa for four more years, without any hesitation. I support Mr Blatter for his vision, and for the way he takes the game to the world!"
Oceania's former man in Fifa HQ (before that pesky bribery thing came up), Reynald Temarii, endorses Sepp - in the same week that he appealed to Fifa to overturn his 12-month ban.
"I don't think it is for me to say but at the end of the day I don't think there is anyone playing better than me in this country. That's an honest answer, not a big-headed answer."
Newcastle midfield Joey Barton is determined that his modesty will hold him back no more.
"You've got to legalise doping. [The testers] are so far behind in the testing organisations that there's no way to change it now. Just accept that it's here, that it's not going away and that it's just going to get more complicated. You can't stop it and you can't fix it. Monitor it and make sure people don't hurt themselves, but you have to accept it."
Disgraced Tour de France winner Floyd Landis says legalise doping.
"Our relationship with Lance remains as strong as ever. We are proud to work with him in cycling and to support his foundation. Nike does not condone the use of banned substances and Lance has been unwavering on that position as well."
Sports goods manufacturer Nike takes a break from running sweatshops and standing by prolific philanderer Tiger Woods to stand by Lance Armstrong - with a caveat.
Good week
Jamie How
He hasn't worn the gloves since puberty and has hardly fired a shot with the bat in national colours this season, but the Manawatu opener is in the World Cup squad as backup keeper.
Bad week
James McOnie
Maria Sharapova seemed to take it all in fairly good humour, but in the realm of Google the Crowd Goes Wild big man will forever be associated with the word "stalker".
The number
100,000
The expected crowd for the Super Bowl - the biggest in
24 years - when US$1.3 billion ($1.7 billion) Cowboys Stadium makes its debut on February 7.
