France will put on a good show but the vote to award it rather than South Africa a second World Cup has all the hallmarks of naked self-interestIt is worth keeping in mind on these occasions that rugby union usually strikes gold with its World Cup hosting decisions. Australia proved a runaway success in 2003 despite New Zealand’s de-selection as co-host, France staged a grand tournament four years later, an entire nation of rugby-mad Kiwis rose to the logistical challenge in 2011 and the record sums generated by England 2015 were matched only by the intense interest levels.Japan will be next up in two years’ time, offering Asia a deserved slice of the action. And now, in 2023, it will...
The Oystons’ stewardship of the club has left so much to be desired and the idea the Football League is powerless because of an outdated rule must be addressedAfter the devastating, 163-page ruling of a high court judge that Owen Oyston and his son Karl, the owners of Blackpool football club, “illegitimately stripped” the club of £26.77m and operated “with great prejudice” to it, where to start with the implications? Perhaps, for a moment, by putting to one side the damning assessments themselves – that “the Oyston side enriched itself, prejudiced Blackpool FC and behaved in a discriminatory manner towards the other members of the club” – and the grave question of what happens next to Blackpool now the Oystons...
French campaigner called a political machine benefits from anti-British backlash after scandals to easily defeat Brian Cookson in UCI presidential election“A political machine,” wrote the respected French journalist Jean-François Quénet of his fellow countryman David Lappartient, a man who, it seems, has never lost an election, rising seamlessly through French local and two-wheeled politics to simultaneously hold positions of power in the Morbihan region of Brittany and world cycling. His victory over the incumbent Brian Cookson in the UCI presidential election on Thursday is, just the latest in a long list of political triumphs.However, the scale by which he drubbed the Lancastrian – 37 votes to eight – points to a massive backlash against the former British Cycling head, who...
A regime with one of the world’s worst human rights record is staging the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games and the IOC – like Australia, which will be represented – is silentThe city of Ashgabat in Turkmenistan is famous for two characteristics. It has the highest concentration of marble buildings in the world and is capital of one of the most repressive regimes in the world. The two are not unrelated: all-powerful central Asian dictators with natural resource wealth are able to construct ostentatious monuments to themselves with little concern for their citizens.But the current Turkmen leader, Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, has grown tired of building with marble. On Sunday the 60-year-old dentist’s newest vanity project will be unveiled: the latest...
As the scandal over international corruption and vote buying for the 2016 Olympic Games escalates the International Olympic Committee’s myopic response has again left more than a little to be desiredAs the Olympic flame was lit before beginning its journey to Rio last year the IOC president, Thomas Bach, intoned: “The Olympic flame means hope to us all.” Mr Bach will likely be feeling hopeful now, with the news that the Rio home of Brazil’s Olympic committee chief has been raided, along with various other addresses, as part of a major investigation into international corruption and vote buying for the 2016 Olympic Games.Bach will be hopeful that this is just a cosmic misunderstanding, hopeful that the £155,000 cash the police reportedly...