Solving the Wor(l)d Games Mess

Which games are these really?

A surfer in flight. 

The World Games, going on right now in Cali, seem to be going pretty well sports-wise. At the games, held every four years, athletes from around the world compete in some 30 sports not included in the Olympics, including artistic roller skating, aerobic gymnastics, martial arts, ultimate frisbee, squash, rugby and bodybuilding.

It looks like fun, and is a great thing for the city of Cali - which can use positive press.

Unfortunately, the event has been marred, even overshadowed, by a ridiculous oversight. When winners examined their medals they discovered that the 'L' was missing, meaning they'd won honors not in the World Games, but the Word Games.

Games organizers are scrambling to deal with the silly error. Today, they promised to reissue all the medals.

Here, however, are my modest suggestions for making the best of this difficult situation.

1) Partner with world Scrabble, hangman and crossword puzzle competitions and give them the defective metals in exchange for any medals they may have mistakenly made with an extra 'L'.

The ultimate agony and ecstacy. 

2) Change the games' competition to Scrabble, hangman, crossword puzzles and spelling bees, to make the medals useful.

3) Replace the medals and say you've destroyed the defective ones - but save a few. In a few years, those 'Word Games' medals will be collectors items and can be auctioned off to finance the next World Games. (In fact, game officials plan to add the L to the medals with a laser beam.)

Meanwhile, the games go on. Colombia, boosted by hometown advantage, is doing well, in tenth place overall.

This looks like hockey, but it can't be.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Bullfighting Season

Heroic bull-killers in Manizales

Bullfighting season is back, with its pageantry, tradition, blood and violence. The season started in December in Cali, continues in Manizales and will begin in Bogotá Jan. 15th.

Bullfighting is a central part of these cities' annual festivals, right along with parades, beauty queens and salsa music. Who'd have thought that killing and mutilating could be so family friendly?

Colombia does have a law against cruelty to animals, but the law has four exeptions, out of tradition, including bullfighting and cockfighting.

Whoa there!

Even though only a small minority of Colombians are interested in bullfighting, that minority tends to be wealthy and influential. As a result, we get headlines like yesterday's, about how many ears the bullfighters got (a great honor for the bullfighter), how many dead bulls got dragged around the arena (an honor for the bull) and the bull that got indultado, or 'forgiven' and allowed to live.

Bullfighting's popularity has unquestionably declined, and last year a court ruled that the government shouldn't spend money on the sport, perhaps dooming it to disappearance.

Such a fate would please many animal rights advocates, but sadden supporters of tradition and the fiesta brava's life and death blood sport drama.

Bullfighting posters

Torture: Neither Art Nor Culture.

Hundreds of cops defend the bullfighting stadium - from who?

Animal rights advocates protest bullfighting.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours