by Rod Hughes

Costa Rican sprinter Nery Brenes finished just out of the money at the World Indoor competition in Valencia, Spain, last weekend, an impressive fourth in the 400-meter. His time was 46.65 seconds, two laps around the 200-meter oval.

This was the best performance of the handful of athletes sent from this country. Winner of the 400 was Canada’s Tyler Christopher, followed by Sweden’s Johan Wissman and Chris Brown from the Bahamas, barely edging Brenes.

by Rod Hughes

Heredia, ambitiously nicknamed “the Team” in Spanish (where the word is a foreign one), seemed somewhat schitzoid in its 2-1 soccer win over a scrappy Liberia. In the first half, “the Team” played like champs, scoring their goals with aplomb against a porous defense.

When Liberia returned to the pitch for the second half, coach Carlos Restrepo had them breathing fire and Heredia seemed put off by all this spirit. Wasn’t the Liberia side supposed to rollover and play dead? If they thought so, they did not know their Guanacaste adversaies well at all.

After only 14 minutes of play, Heredia’s Carlos Johnson blasted one past Liberia goalie Rodolfo Alvarez. Then came what proved the silver bullet by Mario Camacho at minute 23. There the half ended comfortably for Heredia. Too comfortably, it turned out. But in the second half Jacques Remy booted one in during an Heredia siesta. The situation got even chancier when Heredia’s Roberth Arias was expelled with two yellow cards against him and Heredia once more had to depend on their remarkable goalie Ricardo Gonzalez to yank the smoking chestnuts out of the fire.