Lorena Ochoa calls it quits

Guadalajara golf star Lorena Ochoa officially announced her retirement on Friday, saying she wanted to focus on other priorities such as family and her charitable work in Mexico.

She plans to play her final competitive tournament early next month at an LPGA tour stop in Morelia.

Ochoa departs as the No. 1 player in the world and perhaps the most dominant female gofer of the past decade – at least the latter half of it. She won 27 times and claimed two majors, although her early career was marked by near misses and a sense of being snake bitten in the big events

But she accomplished the rare feat of becoming one of the country’s best-known athletes even though she competed in a sport with a limited profile and one that offered few opportunities for the masses to easily discover – Mexico has no public golf courses, something Ochoa and her foundation have long wanted to change.

Ochoa was perhaps Mexico’s top female athlete over the past decade, along with former world champion sprinter and 2004 silver medal winner Ana Guevara. She might have been Mexico’s top overall athlete. (Who else? Barcelona defender Rafael Marquez?)

In Guadalajara, where sports coverage begins and ends with the soccer club, Chivas, Ochoa is a living legend. My former editor at the Guadalajara Colony Reporter often recalled covering Ochoa and a young Tiger Woods winning world junior golf championships in the early 1990s.

How much golf has grown in Mexico because of Ochoa’s exploits is uncertain – she was certainly no rags-to-riches story, having learned to play at the pricey Guadalajara Golf and Country Club. But she became an icon and true sporting heroine in a country that often lacks much in the way championships or international exploits.

More hard luck for Cd. Juárez

Things just went from bad to worse in Ciudad Juárez - at least in sporting terms - as the hard-luck local soccer team, Club de Fútbol Indios de Ciudad Juárez, was relegated to the Liga de Ascenso, or Mexico's second division. The relegation comes as little surprise: Indios - also known as El Tribu, or The Tribe - only snapped a 27-game winless skid last weekend and had needed to win its remaining six games to have an outside chance at avoiding relegation.

Atlante put Indios out of its misery with a 3-0 victory in Cancún on Saturday night, however.

Relegation in Mexican soccer usually comes down to a nail-biting final weekend as the team with the worst cumulative record over the past three years is demoted. The Liga de Ascenso winner, meanwhile, is promoted. Since Indios suffered through such a miserable season, such nail-biting was avoided this time around.

Ciudad Juárez, of course, has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. A turf war between rival drug cartels and the gangs working for the cartels has intensified and soldiers and federal police have been patrolling the streets. The 2010 death toll in the state of Chihuahua now stands at 585, according to Grupo Reforma, and an estimated 400,000 residents of Ciudad Juárez, a former boomtown on the Chihuahua-Texas border, have decamped for presumably safer places such as neighboring El Paso - one of the safest cities in the United States.

Perhaps making the Indios story so much more sad is the team's unfortunate reversal of fortune. Founded in 2005, Indios was promoted to the top division for the season beginning in the summer of 2008. It became the little team that could: El Tribu made an improbable playoff run by defeating the defending champion, Toluca, before bowing out to Pachuca in the semi-finals.

Then the misery and losing began - and the team never snapped out of it.

Adios to Indios. Teams relegated to the Liga de Ascenso are usually not missed - a few Necaxa fans might disagree - but the Inidos just might be.

Same old lame results

Mexico once again lost an important soccer game to the United States on U.S. soil by dropping the Gold Cup final 2-1. The U.S. advanced to finals only after the Mexican referee in the semi-finals jobbed an upstart Canadian squad, but Mexico looked unimpressive throughout the CONCACAF tournament and probably got an assist from the referee in its quarter-final match against Costa Rica.

Mexico failed to score more than a single goal in any of its matches except for its opener against Cuba. Mexican coach Hugo Sanchez often maligned his predecessor and lobbied openly for the nation team position. Surely he must shoulder a large portion of the blame for his team's performance. And, the U.S. is regularly proving itself the best team in CONCACAF - not that anyone in Mexico would acknowledge that even though the U.S. owns an 9-2-1 advantage since 2000.

Americanistas turn out in force

I've never especially liked Club America, a Mexico City soccer team owned by the Televisa empire. The side often wins and projects an image of power and status. It comes from the mammoth capital, where much of the country's political and economic power is still concentrated. Club America also fields well-paid imports and controversial figures like Cuauhtemoc Blanco, a prolific goal scorer, but bad teammate, who deserved to be left off of the 2006 World Cup squad.

Due in large part to Televisa's long reach, Club America is popular in virtually every part of Mexico - even in Guadalajara, the home of Chivas, a team that only fields Mexican players.

Here's my take on Club America's popularity in the provinces: http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/miami/24702.html

Atlas, Guadalajara's fresa team, struggles for respect

Mexican society has its fresas (young snobs, usually from wealthy families) and nacos (tacky or bad mannered folk, who will never penetrate the Mexican elite's closed circles; think Rodney Dangerfield in Caddy Shack), although these days, it's sort of trendy to be naco (just witness the fresas packing the Lucha Libre in Guadalajara on Tuesday nights.)

In soccer, Guadalajara's Club Atlas is considered fresa. It draws many of its fans from the west side of the metropolitan area and the area's private universities. But the club is ironically one of the least affluent in the Mexican league - and has only once captured a championship. It lags far behind Chivas, the common man's team, in both popularity and on-field success. Atlas, though, develops more talent than any other Mexican club, through its network of soccer academies, which have churned out star players Oswaldo Sanchez, Rafael Marquez and Jared Borgetti - among others. (All now play elsewhere.) Seven current and former Atlistas suited up for Mexico's 2006 World Cup squad.

With the Tapatio Classic between Atlas and Chivas going tonight, here's my piece on Club Atlas in today's Miami Herald Mexico: http://www.mexiconews.com.mx/24239.html

The good ol' boys roll into Mexico City

The left-hand-turn circuit (Nascar) comes to Mexico City this weekend for a Busch Series race - on a track that doesn't just feature left-hand turns. And based a successful 2005 debut, expectations for this year's event are high - especially with former F1 star Juan Pablo Montoya participating. A number of drivers apparently expressed reservations about running the inaugural race, but according to an ESPN.com story, the only unhappy campers this year were "the merchandise haulers that follow stock car drivers around the Busch and Nextel Cup series [who] aren't quite comfortable making the trip to Mexico City."

A member of Montoya's team jokingly noted that while the Colombian driver's stuff was possibly selling well outside of the race track, "nothing licensed" was being moved. (There's nothing like an army of tianguis vendors hawking pirated merchandise to spoil the party.)

Vendors aside, Mexico City makes an odd stop for auto racing with its elevation (2,200 meters) and distance from Nascar's heartland, but it is the second-largest city in the world and with Nascar increasingly reaching out to a non-good-ol-boy crowd, the Mexican capital is a logical stop.

The race also reflects the growing importance of the Mexican market to U.S. professional sports organizations. The PGA Tours just staged an event near Cancun last week - its first tournament in Mexico. The LPGA, piggybacking on Guadalajara golfer Lorena Ochoa's success, now has two Mexicans stops and the NFL drew more than 100,000 fans to Estadio Azteca for a regular season tilt between two struggling teams in 2005. Look for this trend to continue, although talk of putting an NFL or MLB franchise is just that: talk - at least for now.

Adios Oswaldo

Only 10 days after leading Chivas to an improbably victory in the Mexican soccer league's Apertura (opening leg), goalie Oswaldo Sanchez traded the red and white candy-cane stripes of Club Deportivo Guadalajara for the somewhat less illustrious green and white stripes of Santos Laguna. The Torreon-based club - and not the UANL Tigres of Monterrey as previously rumored -acquired the star national team goalie after making what Sanchez called a "very attractive" package reportedly worth US $6 million over three seasons.

Santos, which is owned by Grupo Modelo (Corona), finished second from the bottom in the 2006 Apertura and risks relagation without a marked improvement in the upcoming Clausura. The club also signed midfielder Juan Pablo Rodriguez, who played on the 2006 Mexican World Cup squad.

Allowing Sanchez to leave would normally raise hackles of outrage in Guadalajara - his hometown - but with the team ending a ten-year championship drought last season, Chivas owner Jorge Vergara will most likely be forgiven - for now. Sanchez had flirted with the idea of playing in Europe after the 2006 World Cup, but didn't receive any especially attractive offers. (High transfer fees could have hindered the process too.) Given his age, 33, he'll probably finish his career in Mexico.

The good guys (read: Chivas) capture Mexican soccer title

Long-suffering Chivas fans took to the streets on Sunday after their squad bested Toluca 2-1 to capture the Mexican league's Apertura (Opening leg). The Guadalajara-based team only fields Mexican players - which endears it to millions across the Republic - and hadn't won the championship since 1997. Along with celebrations at Lakeside, Chivas fans also swarmed the Glorieta Minerva in Guadalajara and the Angel monument in Mexico City and later lined a two-kilometer stretch of the Carretera Guadalajara-Chapala (which runs by the airport) in order to welcome their conquering heroes home.

Despite the loss, Toluca, the runner up, has perhaps been Mexico's most successful club over the past decade. According to sports marketing expert Hector Lopez Zatarain, the Diablos Rojos (Red Devils, as Toluca is known) have been well managed and seen little turnover. Players are also paid promptly - unlike at some other clubs. The consistency differs from the coaching carousel in Guadalajara, but with a championship under his belt, no one's really blaming Chivas colorful owner Jorge Vergara for anything right now.

Update: The Miami Herald, Mexico Edition ran my piece on why Chivas' is more than just a popular soccer team.

Mexico ends soccer futility

By David Agren

Mexico's under-17 soccer squad capped an improbable run last Sunday in Lima, Peru, winning the World Cup for its age group. It marked the first time the futbol-mad country claimed a world championship in the sport. Mural, a Guadalajara newspaper, summed up the accomplishment by saying in the lead paragraph of its Monday story: "(It) put an end to 75 years of mediocrity in Mexican soccer."

Making the win even more remarkable, the Mexican teenagers defeated defending champion and perennial soccer power Brazil 3-0 in the final.

The team's run captivated the nation's imagination and drew immense media attention. Some newspaper articles dubbed the young players, "Ninos Heroes," (Boy Heroes) a reference to the six cadets who died defending Mexico City's Chapultapec Castle against invading U.S. troops in 1848. Televisa broke away from its normal professional soccer coverage to beam in highlights of the Mexican squad's games. Jubilant fans crowded the Minerva glorieta in Guadalajara and the Angel de la Indpendencia monument in Mexico City after the win. Supporters also turned out en masse at Mexico City's airport to welcome back the team. The victorious teenagers later visited Los Pinos (the president's residence).

Mexico's victory bodes well for two of Guadalajara's professional squads, which haven't won a championship since 1997. Chivas and Atlas own the rights to nine of the 20 Under 17 squad members. Some legendary European clubs though, including Real Madrid and Chelsea, have expressed an interest in several of the young players.

Previous to this win, Mexico's biggest accomplishment was winning the 1999 Confederations Cup, a tournament for each continent's champion. The team, though, has mostly disappointed, despite usually having a high world ranking. Most recently, the men's team lost a 2002 World Cup elimination match to their northern arch rivals, the United States.