Sport

Why should we expect Nicola Sturgeon to support Team GB?

It hasn’t been a great month for Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. First, there was the announcement that an official police investigation would take place into missing money from donations supposedly ‘ring-fenced’ for a future independence campaign; then questions about why Scotland’s vaccination targets had been missed led, apparently, to Sturgeon’s ‘Trump like meltdown’ (how she must have hated that comparison); and to cap it all off, Team GB started off rather well at the Tokyo Olympics. The sporting success led to politicians from all hues of the political spectrum tweeting their congratulations: all hues save the bright yellow of the Nats that is – from whence silence. Not one

Why do anglers get so hooked?

The other day a friend asked me what a lascar was. Fair enough: it’s not a word you come across in everyday conversation. Perhaps he’d been reading Spike Milligan, where I last met it. A similar question struck me about the ‘unreasonable virtue’ which the American writer Mark Kurlansky sees in fly fishing. I have fished all my life and am no more or less virtuous that the next man. I searched for the answer in this book but failed to find it. It is hard to understand why it was published. True, British writing about fly fishing has become a lackadaisical, threadbare thing. Monthly magazines are full of accounts

In defence of the BBC’s Olympic coverage

For viewers of the BBC Olympics coverage, it’s back to the old days. Not since Sydney in 2000 has all the Games content been squeezed into the main terrestrial channels, with the red button and its one extra stream making its debut in Athens 2004. ‘The Olympics are perfect for interactive television,’ said a BBC executive celebrating the innovation, ‘because there are so many events happening at the same time.’ In the run up to London 2012 we made the promise that UK viewers would be able to watch any event they chose, from beginning to end – and the corporation delivered 24 HD television channels and an equivalent number of

Isabel Hardman

The strange obsession with having the right ‘kit’

Have you got what it takes to go ‘wild swimming’? No, not so much the hardiness or the love of sinking your feet into the boggy bottom of a lake or feeling something brush against your ankle that could be a fish, a plant or something more sinister. Have you got the right kit? Outdoor swimming – or open-water swimming, wild swimming, ‘in-my-day-we-just-called-it-swimming’, whatever you want to call it – is enjoying a swell in popularity, and alongside what is supposed to be a simple pursuit is a growing obsession with having the latest equipment. It’s not just wetsuits – which a lot of purists eschew on the grounds that

The hateful Hundred is putting cash before cricket

The cricket at Cheltenham last week was reassuringly old–fashioned. In the last session of the fourth day, Gloucestershire’s bowlers took a flurry of wickets to beat Middlesex by 164 runs, watched by spectators who assemble at the college ground each July from all over England to renew a much-loved ritual. ‘Proper cricket,’ said a chap from Slad. They were joined, as ever, by dozens of retired cricketers, fed and watered in one of the tents which ring this most evocative of grounds. Little wonder those former players choose to hold their annual gathering in Cheltenham. Here they can bear witness to championship cricket as they once played it; a traditional

Yes, they’re deplorable – but those football tweets don’t prove Britain is racist

There are two certainties whenever England’s football team plays; one that is long-established and the other a recent phenomenon. Players who never miss a penalty during training sessions will end up fluffing their attempts under the pressure of a shoot-out. And the post-match discussion of football will quickly move on to the issue of racism. England’s first appearance in the final of a major tournament since the 1966 World Cup ought to have been a moment of national celebration. Indeed, that is how it seemed until the three missed penalties. Within hours, though, few seemed to be talking about anything other than the racist abuse directed at the three players

Do the England team play football, footer, footie – or soccer?

I have never been a soccer mom, described in the Washington Post as ‘the overburdened, middle-income working mother who ferries her kids from soccer practice to scouts to school’. That was in 1996, during the American election campaign when Bill Clinton wished to appeal to this stereotype. I admit there have been days devoted to Veronica and gymkhanas, but that is a different matter. I don’t understand why British writers should mind when the Americans call association football soccer. It used not to be foreign usage in this country. As Steve Hendricks, an American from Boulder, Colorado, points out in a well-researched paper on the origins of soccer, Jimmy Hill

Roger Alton

The real sporting star of this summer

Think of a punishing distance for a bike race. Double it, multiply by ten, throw in two of the world’s great mountain ranges — and now you have the course for that epic examination of man’s very being known as the Tour de France, a ruthless appraisal of his heart, mind and soul. Not to mention body. Trying to dominate such a mighty beast is extraordinarily difficult. There are men who have subdued it multiple times to finish in the yellow jersey. But dominate it? That’s another story. On Saturday, while England’s footballers were limbering up for a mere 90 minutes of kickabout against a modest Ukraine side, Tadej Pogacar,

Why everyone should try streaking

One evening a few summers ago, I convinced a friend to run with me up Portobello Road completely naked. As we reached the finish line, we could hear the sirens in our wake. We were accosted by two policemen. I was convinced they would throw us in the slammer. Instead, the officers gently told us that it would be wise to put our clothes back on. One of them, having seen my body gleaming in the pale moonlight, suggested that I should really consider getting a tan. I have long enjoyed streaking. People wonder why someone would choose to expose themselves in such a way. There are a few explanations.

10 football films to get you in the mood for kick off

When many people think of films about ‘The Beautiful Game’, a few, (mainly mediocre) movies tend to spring to mind, usually headed by John Huston’s 1981 folie de grandeur Escape to Victory. As you may recall, the film cast Sly Stallone, a noticeably chubby Michael Caine, Max Von Sydow and real-life football legends Pelé, Osvaldo ‘Ozzy’ Ardiles and Bobby Moore in a ‘soccer’ themed homage to The Great Escape (1963). But there are a surprising variety of other motion pictures about the sport and some are well worth checking out. Of course, there are some real stinkers as well, most recently the Sky Cinema Original Final Score (2018), a lame attempt to

My problem with the Euros

I’m struggling to work up much enthusiasm about England’s progress in the Euros. I know, I know, Tuesday night’s victory was the first time England has beaten Germany in the knockout stage of a tournament in 55 years — and the moment Gareth Southgate, the team manager, finally made amends for missing his penalty in the semi-final against Germany in Euro 96. It’s conceivable we might make it all the way to the final, but I’m more excited about watching QPR play Leyton Orient in the first round of the Carabao Cup. Why? One reason is that in the past ten years I’ve become a QPR superfan. Being a QPR

Lloyd Evans

Staged: a handful of VIP events is no substitute for normality

Wimbledon is back. The start of the tournament in June marks the opening of the British summer, sending a signal to everyone that it’s time to take it easy: enjoy a glass of fizz, some strawberries and some sporting drama on the grass. And this year, for the first time, we witnessed a roar of applause from the crowd on Centre Court for Britain’s vaccine success. It looks very much like life as normal. The same was true at Wembley stadium, where thousands of fans cheered on England this week when they beat Germany. A few plays have opened as well. Several politicians were in attendance at the Garrick for

The true cost of theatre closures

It turns out that if there’s one thing more expensive than making theatre, it’s not making it. Empty buildings haemorrhage money. Postponing a show already in rehearsal or raising the curtain only for it to be dropped shortly after — as happened in December when theatres reopened just to close days later — scares off investors and unsettles audiences. (I might also say that being unable to gather as a community to make sense of the world through stories is costly not just in a financial sense. But then I am a pretentious playwright.) No, what we need is to begin filling our diaries once again with plays, musicals, comedy

How to take up shooting

With summer on its way and Covid restrictions (hopefully) easing, what better time than now to take up a new hobby? Clay shooting is a hugely popular sport in the UK – and we Brits are quite good at it too, with a team of five set to head to the Tokyo Olympics, and a tally of two bronzes from the 2016 Olympics. At the Commonwealth Games, Wales, England and Scotland are often at the top of the medals tables, too. It’s no surprise then that there are plenty of people all across the UK willing to teach you to shoot. Whether you’re looking to refine your skills ahead of

Thoughts on a foreign clash of the English titans

Thank heavens the Champions League final is being played in Portugal, now Turkey’s off the menu (sorry). It will certainly be a damn sight easier to get to than Wembley: have you tried to go round the North Circular these days? And at least the capital will not have to accommodate what is ominously described as ‘the Uefa family’, all 2,000 of them. Pity no one told them about family planning. And where would you prefer to go out for a post-match bite: Porto or Wembley Way? Anyway, then we will see quite how far Chelsea have got inside Manchester City’s head, with two very efficient victories in the League

Why all the outrage over the European Super League?

Anything been happening in football in the past couple of weeks? No? Moving on then… Hang about though. The doomed relegation-free European Super League may have had a shorter life than the average mayfly but it generated the level of fury produced by poking a stick in a hornets’ nest. How justified was all the outrage? The idea that clubs such as City, Spurs, Arsenal, Chelsea and the rest of the ‘Shameful Six’ are friendly neighbourhood outfits where you could run into Chopper Harris down the pub has long gone. These are huge international businesses run by Arab rulers, Russian billionaires and US hedge funds. They might have backed down

The unsavoury truth about American sport

New York What follows has been covered ad nauseam, but I wonder why people were surprised at the planned breakaway football Super League? Professional sport in Europe now follows the American way, which means that money comes before tradition, hometown loyalty and the fans — the shmucks who live and die for their teams. The bottom line is what sport in this country is all about, and European football has a lot to learn from the closed shop that has made zillions of dollars for US sport. I’ll keep it brief. American football, baseball and basketball teams are privately owned, and no matter how badly they perform, they cannot be

Why did Britain fall out of love with speedway?

It’s classified by the government as an ‘elite’ sport but you’ll struggle to find it mentioned in the national press. The current European champion is a Briton — Robert Lambert — but I’d be surprised if many people reading this have ever heard of him. It was once reckoned to be Britain’s second most popular spectator sport but the weekly numbers attending this summer’s shortened league season will be in the low tens of thousands. I’m talking about speedway, which has dropped out of national consciousness so much that it’s often necessary to explain what it actually is: motorbikes, four riders, racing four laps around an oval circuit at up

What cricket will look like in 50 years

After the thrills and spills and last-gasp excitements of England’s triple-headed series in India, the attention of the cricket fan moves on. But to where? To Derbyshire’s next game, say — a university match at the county ground, over what promises to be a somewhat nippy Easter weekend. Or perhaps to the Indian Premier League, where the Mumbai Indians, featuring Rohit Sharma and the Pandya brothers, from the recent Test series, kick off the latest edition of the tournament against Bangalore, perpetually under-achieving despite the presence of A.B. de Villiers, Virat Kohli, Washington Sundar and Adam Zampa. Some of the best players in world cricket will be in India, for

The Richard Freeman affair casts a cloud over British cycling

For those with neither the time nor inclination to plough through a PhD in the intricacies of the scandals surrounding British cycling, here’s a quick suggestion for Sir Dave ‘Marginal Gains’ Brailsford, head of Team Sky, now Ineos Grenadiers. His former team doctor, Richard Freeman, has been found guilty of ordering packages of banned testosterone for an unnamed rider a decade ago in 2011 but — in a neat piece of Harry and Meghan-style ‘We’re not saying who said what’ — has refused to reveal which athlete. Armstrong said it wasn’t certain that he gained any unfair advantage from doping So since it seems that marginal gains might involve considerably