This week’s roundup also features Champions League highlights, Lance Armstrong and Football Italia1) This was supposed to be Champions League final week, with a return to Istanbul, scene of 2005’s all-time classic, hosting the showpiece this Saturday evening. The Ataturk Stadium appears to have had something of a scrub-up since then. Those missing the Champions League can relive the thrills and spills of last season’s competition here.2) The Women’s Champions League final was due this week too and set to be played in Vienna’s Viola Park if a date can be found. Lyon won the last four finals, though were set to be without the brilliant Ada Hegerberg, out for the season with a ruptured ACL. She scored a hat-trick...
This week’s roundup also features T20 action, the best of Wesley Sneijder and Marshawn Lynch’s philosophy1) Geraldao Dutra Pereira or Geraldão, a centre-back by trade, scored probably the greatest swerving free-kick of all time that you haven’t seen for Cruzeiro in 1986.2) Burt Reynolds, who died last week aged 82, was a college football running back before he headed for Hollywood and starred in one of cinema’s most famous gridiron depictions in the Longest Yard, a tale of a former NFL player recruiting a group of prisoners to play against their guards. Here’s a trailer for the 1974 film. Until Vinnie Jones made Mean Machine, a football-based remake in 2001, the closest UK equivalent to The Longest Yard’s in-game action...
First British rider to head the MotoGP standings for 39 years has done it on a non-works Honda and without the need for endless hours in the gymIn a universe of professional sportsmen and women happy to proclaim the incredible rigour of their winter training regimes, it was refreshing to hear Cal Crutchlow summarising his very different preparation for the MotoGP season a few minutes after climbing off his Honda in Argentina two weekends ago, having won the second race of the new campaign and shot to the top of the world championship standings.He spoke of spending the off-season on holiday in California with his wife and their one-year-old daughter. “It shows you don’t have to ride motorcycles all winter and do press‑ups...
Emphasis on simulator work in motor sport means more drivers will emerge from the gaming scene – if they can conquer problems over the lack of ‘fear of death’When Lewis Hamilton looked to his future in Formula One in 2012 and decided to leave McLaren, the team with whom he had grown up and won his first world championship, the decision was roundly questioned. After securing two further titles for Mercedes, the move was regarded as inspired but predicting what is round the corner in motor racing has never been easy and, with F1 having just begun the process of reinvention under its new owners, the future is very much on the agenda.Many sports have faced new challenges and opportunities...