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...
British Olympic Association chairman Sir Denis Follows was determined not to join the Moscow Games boycott in 1980, to the fury of the prime ministerSir Denis Follows, 71, short and bald, started every day’s work by opening his post. It was a habit he’d had as secretary of the Football Association, and a habit he kept as chairman of the British Olympic Association. In between the two jobs, he’d been knighted. Which was some going, for the son of a stationmaster, but it hadn’t changed him much. He still wore a pair of thick horn rims, still worried about putting on weight, was still the same avuncular, pragmatic man who had kept the Jules Rimet trophy under his bed and...
People love seeing the best athletes competing together so let’s celebrate it and use it to our advantageWhen my brother, Jamie, and I were growing up we lived very close to the local tennis courts in Dunblane. Given my mum played tennis to a reasonable standard and was also a coach, it was inevitable we would end up playing.My mum has great energy and has been a workaholic ever since we were young, often getting up at 4am to start her day. She’s a role model for me through her determination, work ethic, and drive to do what she wants to do. Even now she’s still travelling everywhere and teaching on the court, trying to bring tennis to the masses...
The Russian oligarch has moved on from Arsenal to Everton but more intriguing is his decision to buy Pierre de Coubertin’s 1892 manifesto and donate it to the Olympic MuseumAt last, the mystery buyer of the world’s most expensive piece of sports memorabilia has been revealed as the Russian tycoon Alisher Usmanov. The cuddly oligarch purchased Pierre de Coubertin’s original 1892 Olympic manifesto for $8.8m (£6.8m) in December – a whole week after he had suggested Wada’s Russian doping ban was a “lynching”, and a whole two weeks after the IOC president, Thomas Bach, had awarded Usmanov the IOC Trophy of Olympic Values in his capacity as the deep-pocketed bankroller and president of the International Fencing Federation. As Bach advised...
How long can sport, like Hollywood, continue to wave away the contradictions between its activities and its supposed ideals?Someone once told me about a film actor who had developed a powerful ecological conscience, and in this spirit he bought every cast and crew member on his latest production a reusable coffee cup. As the shoot wore on, he’d make spot checks to see if they were using them. This was a source of some irritation but more amusement to the crew, who’d observe darkly to each other that – with the best will in the world on the old coffee cup front – they were literally MAKING A MOVIE HERE. There are few more disposably indulgent, bigger footprint projects than...