Cas leniency is like Great Train Robbers getting community service, but a lesson in realpolitik may concentrate mindsHere is a question you may not expect to find in a sports column. When a journalist is assassinated, do financial markets care? The answer, according to new research in the journal Applied Economics, is a resounding yes. And there is more in the detail. If the murdered journalist was an editor or worked in television, stock prices of companies with headquarters in that country declined on average by 2.18%. However, if they were tortured beforehand, they fell by 3%. And if they were killed by military officials, prices went down even further by 4.62%.This awful set of statistics tells us that the...
Sunday’s 40th edition of the race will be like no other but that it is being staged at all is cause for celebration in troubled timesThere is a day in the sporting calendar that I can guarantee will put a wide smile on my face – in fact, I can time the moment it happens to the nearest minute. It comes at 7.01pm on the last Sunday of April as I head towards Green Park tube station at the end of a long day covering the London Marathon. Without fail there are runners being propped up by friends, their walks now a waddle, having got around the 26.2-mile course in five or maybe six hours. In truth it looks like...
Fifty-two years after Tommie Smith and John Carlos used the Olympic podium to protest against racial injustice, a new documentary examines the legacy of the gestureChaos on the streets. Poison seeping into minds. Athletes speaking out against racial injustice being vilified as villains by those in power. Right now 2020 looks a lot like 1968, recast and rebooted.Certainly when LeBron James and other NBA stars went on strike last week, they were standing on the shoulders of giants of that era. And two in particular: Tommie Smith and John Carlos, whose podium protests at the 1968 Olympics are the subject of a timely and vital new film, The Stand: How One Gesture Shook The World. Related: Most Australian athletes believe...
This week’s roundup also features Fanny Blankers-Koen, Robin van Persie, and ‘the best coach in the Premier League’1) Things are hotting up at the Crucible, where the World Snooker Championships are in full swing. So here’s Ronnie O’Sullivan talking us through what is widely considered to be the greatest break of all-time, his 92 against Ali Carter in the 2012 final. Now here’s the Rocket in 2014, getting Mark Selbied in one of the classic frames, here are his Crucible 147s, and here’s a full show dedicated to his unfathomable brilliance in Sheffield.2) Isamu Yamamoto is a freestyle skateboarder you need to watch. Take a look at his channel and a short film featuring the teenager.Today I discovered Japanese skateboarder...
Bolt had a gift for making the impossible seem easy but his success was based on mental resolve as well as electric paceSomething you may not know about me: there is almost no set of circumstances – personal, professional, medical – in which I will not drop everything to watch Usain Bolt. Naturally, my personalised YouTube algorithm has already known this for some time, and will now instantly recommend me a selection of his greatest hits whenever I log in. “Usain Bolt | IAAF Daegu 2011 (200m s/f)”: yes please! “Bolt beats Gatlin | 2015 World Championships [HD]”: click! “Men’s 200m final | London 2017”: er, I think you’ll find Bolt didn’t run the 200 metres in London that year....