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A fast lens is required to get crossing Thunderbirds in close proximity at the Duluth Air Show.  Photo by John Gilbert.

If you spent last weekend finding some highly entertaining sports events, live or on TV, you might agree with me that we’re in the midst of a big week for exciting comebacks and finishing performances. 

And it doesn’t matter what your choice of entertainment was — the annual Duluth Airshow, for one, or staying glued to your TV for an anticipated Timberwolves collapse that instead turned into a record-setting comeback to win the NBA’s Western Conference Game 7 from Denver.

Or, there were some spectacular finishes in the NHL’s Stanley Cup Playoff second round. 

You also might have not been surprised when the Twins continued to follow their win-a-few, lose-a-few routine, stumbling to a six-game losing streak that spilled into this week.

If you enjoy racing, of any kind, you had your fill also. There was Saturday’s Preakness, when a big grey colt named Seize the Grey surprised everyone by taking the lead at the start, and holding it for the entire race to prevent anticipated big finishing rallies by a dozen better-know steeds.

Auto racing is nearing its biggest weekend of the year — the Indianapolis 500, the Monaco GrandPrix, and the Coca Cola 600 — and they all got prepared for it with major performances last weekend.

Max Verstappen won the Romania Grand Prix, which was no major surprise, but what was a surprise was that Lando Norris, the young and flashy prospect driving for Team McLaren’s bright orange team, qualified second, failed to prevent Verstappen from easing off to a 15-second lead in his Red Bull car, then may have actually pulled a fast one, so to speak, on Verstappen. 

After everybody had pitted for new tires, Norris was still second, having out-dueled several more established competitors, and then he started to cut into Verstappen ’s big lead.

Steady, he cut the deficit down, to 13 seconds, then 10 seconds, and with a dozen laps to go, he was flying, and might still have avoided notice from the Red Bull team. 

In Formula 1, they have a device to open the wing baffles and allow a racer to have a brief chance at going at a higher rate, but to do so a driver must get within 1.5 seconds of a car being pursued. It does make for some exciting moments, but never more than Sunday in Romania. 

Norris close to within 2 seconds, and when it became obvious Vertappen knew he was being challenged, and tried to regain his earlier pace, Norris was able to keep closing. With two laps remaining, Norris was within DRS distance, but even though he closed to within less than a second, he ran out of time, and race distance.

Verstappen  took the checkered flag and Norris flashed by right on his tailpipes, finishing 0.07258 seconds — barely more than a half-second — behind. Norris later was quite cheerful about the close call, and said maybe one or two more laps might have allowed him to make a passing attempt. 

But now it’s on to the streets of Monaco, early Sunday morning our time.

That will give us time to then grab brunch, and tune back in for the 11 am start of the Indianapolis 500, where the historic old race around the 2.5-mile oval will see a history-repeating sight. 

On the front row will be a bright yellow car driven by Scott McLaughlin, which snatched the pole with a record 234.220 miles per hour average speed for four qualifying laps. 

Next to him will be Will Power, and on the outside of the first row will be last year’s champ, Josef  Newgarden. All three are driving cars for the Roger Penske team. McLaughlin’s pole-winner will look familiar to long-time Indy fans, because the same bright yellow car started on the pole 36 years ago, with Rick Mears driving the Pennzoil-sponsored “Yellow Submarine,” and next to him were Al Unser Sr., and Danny Sullivan. Mears won the race.

The Pensek team is attempting to give Roger Penske his 20th Indy 500 victory, so they have created an identical driving suit for McLaughlin to what Mears wore, as well as painting the car to match Mears’s winning racer in the hope history can repeat itself.

Alexander Rossi qualified fourth, inside on the second row, with NASCAR star Kyle Larson fifth. Larson will be the fifth driver to qualify for the Indy 500 and then be whisked off to the Coca Cola 600 in Concord, N.C., where NASCAR’s big 600-mile race is scheduled to start at 6 pm.

The Twins are on this weird schedule where they sweep series from teams below them in the standings, but then get swept by teams above them, such as the New York Yankees and, last weekend, the Cleveland Guardians. 

The Guardians got their sweep to balloon their lead against the Twins in a tight 2-1 game that the Twins tied in the top of the ninth without a hit, parlaying a walk, hit batter and error into a run by pinch-runner Byron Buxton with two out in the top of the ninth. 

Ah, but that means there also was a bottom of the ninth. The Guardians had a runner thrown out at second on a steal attempt, but the umpires reviewed it and called him safe, with two out. So Jhoan Duran walked the next hitter intentionally and up comes Will Brentan, who hits a walk-off 3-run home run for a 5-2 Cleveland victory.

The Timberwolves fared much better, but it didn’t look that way through the first half, when they fell behind defending champ Denver — by 15 points. It became 20 in the third quarter, as Timberwolves emerging star Anthony Edwards couldn’t hit the side of a barn. He went 6-for-24 for the game, and 2-for-10 on 3-pointers, and scored a measly 16 points. But he did use his teammates in the fourth quarter, as the Timberwolves rallied to catch up, and pass, the suddenly lifeless Nuggets and won 98-90. 

It was the largest deficit ever made up in an NBA Game 7. Karl-Anthony Towns scored 23, same as Jaden McDaniels, but those numbers pale next to Denver’s Jamal Murray, who scored 35, and Nikola Jokic, who had 34. Murray had 24 at halftime! 

So the Timberwolves now play Dallas for the West final. Amazing.

In the NHL, the Stanley Cup games get tighter and tougher by the round, with the hitting more severe and the officiating incredibly more lenient. Players are falling left and right, and power plays mean more and more. In the pair of Game 7s held last weekend, Florida beat Boston in a scintillating 2-1 game, and then Dallas held off Colorado and all its firepower by an identical 2-1. Edmonton hammered Vancouver 5-1 in the other West semifinal’s Game 6, sending the series back to Vancouver for Monday night’s Game 7.

Then there was the annual Duluth Air Show, and it was, once again, a spectacle that can only thrill onlookers. Moved up to May for the first time, I thought the Sunday crowd was not as large as usual, and maybe that had to do with morning rain. 

But the show went on, after what seemed like some technical glitches, and the Air Force Thunderbirds waited until after all the other demonstration fliers and performances were finished, then they put on their usual spectacular show against a sky that was grey, with occasional patches of blue. 

Next year, the show reverts back to later in the summer, July 4th weekend to be exact, and the featured attraction will be the Blue Angels.