The Waiting is Over

When Lance pulled into Paris for magical win number 7, it must have been tempting to stick it out for another year and obliterate the competition again. Instead he took the brave decision to quit whilst he was still at the top of his game. Sport is full of heroes who just couldn’t see when to quit and ended up with not a bang but a wimper.

sh1t Dave before he was a loser

Now poor old Dave really has had a rough few weeks. Firstly he loses the Dave-off at the Muizenberg Festival of Beer (drat, where’s the link? must discipline those lazy staff reporters). So to all and sundry, he is now known as Sh1t Dave.

tuffies if you missed it

Then he rocks up to Sassu ’08 with the air of an expectant rockstar. Sure he’s been part of an all conquering Laser team that has a win streak heading back to a time when beer was R50/case, but reputations alone don’t get you round a course. Don’t forget the two year break since Sassu ’05 and a six month ban under a regulation Rule 69 violation. With boats only materializing on the week-end and not much in the way of stiff competition, sh1t Dave still decided to forgo any training and jet in from overseas the day before the regatta. He’s an old hand, putting the finishing touches to a Ph.D he expects next year, which will put an end to the eternal life of a student (hence SASSU retirement).

Predictably the UCT/HIV team skip into the final and face up against a Maties team known better for off water antics. Hardly stiff opposition to our multiple gold winning hero, and the real moniker being Richard ‘Snailtrail’ H-S being in the wynboer team. Now Snailtrail got that nickname from sh1t Dave himself, when he was regrettably a UCT sailor (we all have our flaws), and a ‘poke slow’ teammate of sh1t Dave.

Well the maties romped home to a win in perfect conditions, sh1t dave was reduced to tears and ordered a funnel on exiting the arena. The longest minute of his life (just pipped ahead of the 200 minutes his poppie took to fill her immense bladder) ended him a mere mortal, and loser for his final curtain in sassu competition.

In the days following an unexpectant loss like this, normally scapegoats are found and soulsearching reveals the reasons for the agony. However this time it was quite clear, as much as sh1t Dave was a part of the mean machine, the real star player all these years was Craig ‘Selwyn’ Sterling. With Selwyn now following the career path in legal fraud practitioning, there was no-one to carry Dave to gold anymore..now that we really think about it, he’s fortunate to crawl away with silver.