Athletes are becoming more susceptible to being spiked and more prone to outlandish explanations if the recent case of a couple of Japanese kayakers is anything to go byThere are all manner of reasons why an athlete might fail a drug test and it seems the rarest, the most exotic of the lot, may just be they were actually cheating. Because it’s an offence very few athletes ever confess to.There was the cyclist who argued his positive test was down to a vanishing twin he had absorbed in utero. The high jumper who suggested he had been set up by the Cuban-American mafia and the sprinter who explained his testosterone levels were high because he had had a lot of...
Mike Pence’s very presence in Pyeongchang is having a debilitating effect on everyone and everything enduring his contactIt is, perhaps, a question as old as athletic competition itself: who is sport’s worst spectator? Of all the absolute arses, watching all the sports in all the world, who is the most unspeakably irksome, the most antithetical to everything you thought you knew about the power and possibilities of physical contest? Whose name is Death, Destroyer of Sports? Who is Earth’s foremost sporticidal maniac?I could have sworn I sat next to him at Stamford Bridge once. Yet a friend insists the entity takes female form, and attends the same junior netball games as her every week, destroying not just her own kids’ confidence,...
Dutch fans take great pleasure in attempts to make sense of their dominance, particularly the frozen-canals theoryNicholas Tomalin reckoned that the three qualities a journalist needs to succeed are rat-like cunning, a plausible manner and a little literary ability, none of which are much use when you’re trying to tell a salchow from a toe-loop on a tight deadline. During the Winter Olympics it pays to be a quick study, too. Particularly in Britain, where the usual recreational activities in winter are football, baking potatoes and having a national freak-out about each smattering of snow. Because the first week of the Games always provokes perplexing questions, like why are the Dutch so damn good at speed skating?As of Monday, the...
From British speed skater Elise Christie to American prodigy Nathan Chen, via Nigeria’s unlikely bobsleigh team, a unified Korean women’s ice hockey side and moreFour years have passed since Elise Christie had an Olympic silver medal ripped from her in Sochi, and for far too many sleepless nights it remained an open sore. But three world titles last year finally extinguished that pain and the brilliant Scottish short-track speed skater goes into Pyeongchang with strong chances of a medal in the 500m and 1000m. Even a podium place in the 1500m may not be beyond her. Continue reading...
With UK Sport’s funding set to fall, we need an honest debate about which sports to fully support – and whether medals benefit the nationIt is a question that could soon sound as familiar as a BBC commentator getting overexcited about a potential curling medal. “Why spend a huge amount of money on winter sports,” asked the interrogator, “when we are not a winter sport nation?” Yet when it was uttered, at a press conference to announce Britain’s medal target of five in Pyeongchang, you could have heard a pin drop.That was because the person doing the asking was Katherine Grainger, the new chair of UK Sport, which supplies – and denies – funding to Olympic teams. And the organisation’s...