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...
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 ban on protests at the Tokyo Games this summer comes from an organisation, the IOC, that considers itself far too noble-minded to allow unfortunate ‘divisions’ in the real worldIn a memoir published a few months after Arthur Ashe’s death the tennis champion reflected on one of the most famous demonstrations in sporting history. Tommie Smith and John Carlos made their Black Power salute at the Mexico Olympics in 1968, the year that Ashe won the first US Open. “Although I did not always agree with everything these men had said and done,” he wrote, “I respected the way they had stood tall against the sky and had insisted on being heard on matters other than boxing or track and...
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...
Ever since Peter O’Connor scaled a flagpole in Athens to call out Olympic unfairness the stage was set for winning athletes to make powerful statements. So why outlaw it now?Some called him the Antelope. Others the King of Spring. But, above all, Peter O’Connor was a revolutionary. These days the exploits of the Irishman have been all but forgotten, yet at the 1906 Olympics in Athens he caused a worldwide stir by staging the first – and quite possibly greatest – podium protest in history.And what a protest it was. O’Connor was incensed enough when he was told he had to represent Great Britain despite being selected by the Gaelic Athletic Association to compete for Ireland. But matters got even...