This week’s roundup features jockey punch-ups, Canelo Álvarez’s power and great bowlers v 1970s speed gun tech1) One of the highlights of the racing season is upon us with the Breeders’ Cup. Still arguably one of the greatest races of all time, Tiznow’s win by a nose over Sakhee in 2001 is not a bad place to start. If that was close then there was literally no separating High Chaparral and Johar in the 2003 Cup Turf, not even a flared nostril. Winners rarely come at much longer odds than Arcangues’ 133-1 but Lester Piggott coming out of retirement in 1990 aged 54 to win on Royal Academy in the Mile is arguably the best story in Breeders’ Cup history.Not...
The NFL now has 30 medical professionals at each game as it grapples with rule changes and greater head-injury awarenessWe are high above the plush seats in the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, the NFL’s chief medical officer and I, watching the Atlanta Falcons’ Cordarrelle Patterson getting dumped on his back. “As he throws the ball, keep an eye on his head,” Dr Allen Sills says. The tackle looks innocuous, at least at first. But then Sills asks a technician in the video review booth to slow down the footage before viewing it from another angle. Now it is clear that, as Patterson falls, his head spanks the turf and ricochets up. The incident, from the NFL game in London on Sunday...
Hopefuls from the UK, Germany, Japan and across the world have a shot at glory via the International Player PathwayDoing shuttle sprints in the north London drizzle might seem a long way from the razzamatazz of the NFL, but maybe that’s the point. For the 50 athletes competing at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium for the chance of a golden ticket to the world’s most lucrative sports league, this was just one more step on a long journey.Adedayo Odeleye’s story is a case in point. One of the dozens of tall, variously muscular individuals who had flown in from all over the world to take part in the day-long trial known as the “NFL combine”, the 23-year-old has a clear-eyed sense...
This week’s roundup also features Fury and Wilder beef, long-distance field goals and javelin greatness1) On this day in 1980, the great Martina Hingis was born. In 1997, she became the youngest person to win a singles grand slam by beating Mary Pierce in Melbourne. Here she is winning Wimbledon later that year plus a tribute to her doubles prowess. Hingis won 20 slams in doubles, including the women’s and mixed titles at Wimbledon in 2015 after coming out of retirement. Finally, here’s a lovely one-on-one interview she did with Chris Evert.2) You might not see a better goal this season than the one scored by Desire Asante for Golden Kicks against Mobile Phone People in a Ghanaian Division 2...
Sports psychologists might not like it, but Steve Stricker’s ‘cut the fluff’ mentality let his team enjoy themselves, and winThe way Justin Thomas tells it, Dustin Johnson’s one frustration was that he didn’t win even more points in the Ryder Cup. “Poor guy went out there, tried to get six points, but all he could do was five,” Thomas joked. Of course there are only five points available, but Johnson is a man who once missed a key putt by six feet because he was holding the green-reading book upside down, and who blew a one-shot lead at the US PGA in 2010 because he didn’t realise he was standing in a bunker.One anonymous fellow pro was repeatedly quoted describing...