Category Archives: Sport

This isn’t strong enough to be a fact but there’s a tendency all the same:

West Country powerhouse – why the South West has become English rugby’s dominant region

Soccer was, largely enough, the game of the industrial proletariat. The West Country didn’t have a lot of that. It’s for this reason that there have been, at times, no Premiership teams south west of a Bristol to, erm, Southampton? line. One of the poorest areas of the country from the 1830s onwards, as that industrial prole thing first began, was Dorset. That old North South divide on poverty etc worked the other way a century and more back.

As I say, this isn’t true enough to be absolute fact but there’s a trend there, definitely.

Colombia players receive death threats on social media after losing to England at World Cup 2018

Was this Ms. BiS or Miss BiS?

‘Nuff said, eh?

Police in Germany say a hunter has died after being attacked by a wild boar he was trying to shoot.

The 50-year-old man was on a boar hunt with a dozen others near the north-eastern town of Greifswald on Sunday when he was attacked by the male boar.

Sometimes the boar wins.

She dazzled the nation at the London 2012 Paralympic Games, taking home two gold medals.

But now Hannah Cockroft MBE, the world record-breaking wheelchair racer who has won five gold medals for Britain, fears she will become trapped in a cycle of unemployment once she is too old to compete professionally, joining the ranks of Britain’s 800,000 young people who are not in employment or training.

Her comments come amid wider concern that the champions of London’s 2012 Games are falling into uncertain futures, with many having little work experience outside athletics.

This is rather what happens to all professional athletes, isn’t it?

England will unleash one of the fastest back-three units in the history of the game against Australia on Saturday after Jonny May revealed he had just clocked a sprint record that was faster than Usain Bolt’s average speed when the Jamaican set his 100 metre world record.

May was in a state of shock after he recorded a personal best of 10.49 metres per second in a 40-metre speed test last Saturday, which would equate to a time of 9.53 seconds over 100 metres. Bolt’s world record is 9.58 seconds, which he set in 2009.

How do they do a 40 metre speed test? Is it a standing start? Or accelerating to a mark then measuring speed over 40 metres?

This is his fifth grand tour, but it puts Froome in a new bracket in terms of his stature in the sport. It was his first outside of the Tour de France. It was a ‘double’ that no rider had ever managed before.

Several people have won the Tour and Vuelta in the same year. Although not, perhaps, in the “modern” age when the Vuelta occupies this position in the calendar.

Conor McGregor’s biggest weapon? His lack of boxing experience
The allure of Saturday’s much-hyped fight in Las Vegas is that no one knows what will happen in the ring – not least the overwhelming favorite, Floyd Mayweather

Everyone who knows about boxing is pretty sure what will happen……

Through the rest of the year, Palmer is one of just three or four regular riders on the island.

“The only thing that stops us going out is if the wind speed is over 38 mph – that’s dangerous if it’s a crosswind, and I’ve been blown off my bike twice. But the advantage of our weather is that no one will ever steal your bike, because no one is stupid enough to want to ride it in these conditions,” Palmer says.

I have as many recorded Tour de France wins as Lance Armstrong.

Although it doesn’t take 16 days on the Tour. 60 km will do it for me.

Umm, what? 6 foot five and fast enough to be a full back?

This rugby in a world of full and fine nutrition is going to be different, isn’t it?

If Beauden Barrett could kick then…..

Two lovely tries but that was won by no Sonny Boy.

When in 2012 disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong finally confessed to the most “sophisticated, professionalised and successful” doping programme the world had ever seen, he became sport’s ultimate bogeyman.

His admission that for years he took a suite of supposedly performance-enhancing drugs, most prominently erythropoietin (EPO), saw him stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and Olympic medals, his career and reputation in tatters.

So it may be with a certain queasiness that he learns today about the results of ground-breaking new research which suggests his prolonged campaign of abuse was pointless – because EPO confers no advantage at all.

If this is true then he did it all himself, thus gets the titles back, no?

Well, no, obviously not. He attempted to cheat which is enough. But logically, if EPO doesn’t work, then those wins are legit as efforts at least, even if not by the rules.

Although, umm, look, let’s think of something we really know doesn’t work. The St. Christopher medal. Kissing it, not uncommon among a certain level of religiosity in Catholics when partaking in a journey, could be said to be an attempt to cheat, asking for divine intervention. That it doesn’t help is obvious, that it’s an attempt to cheat is at least arguable, so, should anyone who does that be disqualified?

Hmm.

There are quite obviously things which don’t work and we allow them, things we think at least might work and we don’t, we call that cheating. Thus when we prove that something doesn’t work does it stop being cheating?

A human rights group has called on the International Olympic Committee “not to repeat the mistake of the 1936 Berlin Games” by permitting North Korea to host events as part of the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea.

Do Jong-hwan, the South Korean minister of sport, proposed last week that some of the skiing events at present scheduled to take place in the city of Pyeongchang instead be held at North Korea’s Masikryong Ski Resort.

Because they’d really never manage to cope at all. Tens of thousands of westerners there would be the mother of all disasters for the N Koreans. They simply would not comprehend how people would act.

England wing Dan Norton breaks Rugby Sevens try scoring record in Hong Kong – and he’s only 29

7 s has only been a serious international thing for a bit so someone’s got to have the record – and this is the lifetime try record being talked about. And 29 is not exactly young for either a wing or a 7 s player either.

I mean yes, well done, certainly better than anything I’m likely to do but still. We are rather like having a list of top try scorers in the Calcutta Cup in 1890 or so. Early days that is.

I’m an Olympic medalist but I’m worried I won’t be able to provide for my unborn twins’.

When Chris Langridge discovered shortly after the Rio Olympics that his wife, Emma, was pregnant with twins, it seemed the timing couldn’t have been more perfect.

Langridge and Marcus Ellis had won bronze in the men’s doubles, Britain’s first badminton medal in 12 years, and negotiations with potential new sponsors were well underway.

Then UK Sport pulled the rug from beneath their feet, cutting all £5.7m in funding despite Langridge and Ellis’ success. Sponsors have disappeared and, with less than three months until Langridge has two more mouths to feed, he is consumed with worry about how he is going to manage.

“After Rio we found out Emma was pregnant – surprise!” he explains. “Then we found out it was twins – big surprise. Then we found out straight after we had no funding. It has been a really stressful time.

“I have been worrying about how I am going to provide for my family. I’m an Olympic medalist but my finances are bleak as I’m in such an uncertain situation.

“As soon as your sport is told that funding is being removed a lot of sponsors look at you a different way, thinking you’re a risk and maybe they won’t invest. I think ‘I’m one of the best in the world and I can’t get sponsors – this is mad’.

“After I won that medal I thought that finally I could relax a little. Finally I can enjoy this a bit more.

You’re one of the very best in the world at doing something not many people are interested in. Thus it’s a bit difficult to make a living at it.

Well, OK, umm, shrug?

Meanwhile it gets odder still. Murdering Bruno, who as things stand is guilty of ordering a woman’s murder and feeding her to his dogs, wants to play football again. And soon. He’s still only 32, in his prime for a goalkeeper. He’s been training in prison. But wait. There’s a problem with Murdering Bruno returning to football. No, not mass protests, a life ban and questions in parliament. The problem is he’s not quite match fit. Just give it a few weeks, his agent says. He’s back, baby. Murdering Bruno is back.

In fact, several Brazilian clubs have already been in touch trying to secure his signature. And why not? He’s a good goalkeeper. Brazil don’t really have a settled No1 right now. The current regular is Alisson of Roma (whose older brother is also a goalkeeper, called Murial). It’s not inconceivable Bruno could be pushing for a spot in the squad six months from now, maybe even making it to Russia 2018. Who knows we might even see Murdering Bruno at Wembley, ruffling the mascot’s hair, shaking Trevor Brooking’s hand, staring with cold, flat, glazed eyes out of your TV screen while he mouths the national anthem.

Crime and punishment are always difficult, are they not?

But the crime and the punishment are for the legal and court systems to do, not the football authorities.

Would we say that a baker out on appeal for murder could not work as a baker? And why the difference if a footballer?

Rubbing it in a bit, no?

Via Matt L and Reddit