Diego Maradona is showing signs of improvement after undergoing an operation for possible bleeding on the brain.
Dr Leopoldo Luque, the 60-year-old Argentinian’s personal physician, has said that Maradona “laughed” and “grabbed my hand” a day after the procedure.
Continue reading...The former Argentina captain and World Cup winner Diego Maradona will undergo surgery for a subdural haematoma, a blood clot on the brain, his personal physician said on Tuesday, after he was admitted to hospital in La Plata, about an hour from Buenos Aires. Maradona coaches the local club Gimnasia y Esgrima.
The operation was expected to begin on Tuesday to address the condition, which is a pool of blood, often caused by a head injury, that can put pressure on the brain.
Continue reading...Sir Bobby Charlton, widely considered to be England’s greatest ever footballer, has been diagnosed with dementia.
The 83-year-old, who was England and Manchester United’s record goalscorer until recently, has the disease, the Telegraph said, with his wife, Lady Norma Charlton, content for his condition to be made public in order to help others with dementia.
Continue reading...England have won the 2020 Six Nations title after Ireland fell to a 35-27 defeat to France in Paris. The result meant Eddie Jones’ side edged France on points difference after their 34-5 win over Italy in Rome.
England’s win had left the situation delicately poised, with Ireland needing to win with a bonus point to be sure of claiming the title or by six points to claim it on points difference. France needed to win by 31 points, with a bonus point.
Continue reading...Two of America’s best athletes are getting married after Megan Rapinoe and Sue Bird announced their engagement.
The couple boast an impressive list of achievements. Rapinoe has won two World Cups and an Olympic gold medal with the US national team, and picked up the Ballon d’Or Féminin for the world’s best women’s player in 2019. Bird, meanwhile, is one of the greatest basketball players of all time. This month, the 40-year-old won her fourth WNBA title to go alongside her four Olympic gold medals with Team USA. She has also carved out a successful career in Russia, winning five EuroLeague titles with Spartak Moscow and UMMC Ekaterinburg.
Continue reading...Surfer tackles huge swell off Co Sligo – after checking lockdown rules allowed it
It’s been compared to the monstrous big waves of the Pacific. But for Conor Maguire, an Irish surfer, who has claimed what may be his country’s largest ever swell, it was almost on his doorstep at Mullaghmore in County Sligo.
The biggest question for Maguire was not whether he wanted to try it, but whether it was socially acceptable to go out in the midst of a national lockdown because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Continue reading...In the end, Tao Geoghegan Hart’s 39-second victory in the Giro d’Italia ahead of the overnight leader, Australian Jai Hindley, was not the tightest the race has ever seen. That honour remains with the Canadian Ryder Hesjedal’s win by 16sec in 2012. But none of the three Grand Tours has ever gone into its final day so tightly poised, with less than a second dividing Hindley and Geoghegan Hart as they prepared to start Sunday’s brief closing time trial into Milan, after more than 85 hours and over 2,000 miles of racing.
On paper, Geoghegan Hart was expected to have the upper hand, and so it proved over the pancake flat course through the Milanese suburbs to the majestic Piazzo Duomo. The 25-year-old Londoner gained time gradually but inexorably on the diminutive Australian, visibly churning a far larger gear as Hindley opted to pedal a smaller ratio with a higher cadence but less power. At the only time check with five kilometres remaining the Londoner had a 22sec lead, meaning the race would be won if he avoided a crash or a puncture.
Continue reading...Top club Santos signed a contract – now suspended – with the former Brazil striker who was convicted of rape in Italy in 2017
A public debate over sexual violence and rape culture has erupted in Brazil after one of its leading football clubs tried to recruit a convicted rapist to lead its attack.
Santos Futebol Clube – which has produced sporting legends including Pelé and Neymar – announced the highly controversial signing of the former Manchester City striker Robinho on 10 October.
Continue reading...The world 400m champion Salwa Eid Naser has escaped a doping ban on a technicality – after one of her missed drug tests was struck off due to a “confused” tester knocking on a door containing gas canisters by mistake.
An independent tribunal found that a doping control officer who had come to test Naser in Bahrain in April 2019 had been thrown off by the unusual numbering system on the buildings around her apartment.
Continue reading...Foreign secretary condemns ‘cynical and reckless’ bid to disrupt Games, before they were postponed
Russian military intelligence services were planning a cyber-attack on the Japanese-hosted Olympics and Paralympics in Tokyo this summer in an attempt to disrupt the world’s premier sporting event, the UK National Cyber Security Centre has revealed, disclosing a joint operation with the US intelligence agencies.
The Russian cyber-reconnaissance work covered the Games organisers, logistics services and sponsors and was under way before the Olympics was postponed due to coronavirus.
Continue reading...As the game enjoys a boom online, players ranging from grandmasters to preteens are getting caught ‘computer doping’
In one chess tournament, five of the top six were disqualified for cheating. In another, the doting parents of 10-year-old competitors furiously rejected evidence that their darlings were playing at the level of the world No 1. And in a third, an Armenian grandmaster booted out for suspicious play accused his opponent of “doing pipi in his Pampers”.
These incidents may sound extreme but they are not isolated – and they have all taken place online since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
Continue reading...The Juventus forward Cristiano Ronaldo has tested positive for coronavirus, the Portuguese Football Federation has confirmed.
The 35-year-old is said to be “doing well, without symptoms, and in isolation”, with no further positive tests reported in the squad before Portugal’s Nations League match against Sweden on Wednesday.
Continue reading...Novak Djokovic drove Rafael Nadal to almost unprecedented heights of excellence but was powerless to stop his old rival winning his 13th French Open and the 20th major he needed to match the record of their absent friend, Roger Federer.
Nadal’s 100th win at Roland Garros was almost flawless – 6-0, 6-1, 7-5 in two hours and 41 minutes in front of a drastically reduced audience because of the pandemic at a rescheduled grand slam under a new roof at Court Philippe Chatrier – yet it was a final of rolling contradictions, too.
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How many properly good centre-backs are there in the entirety of the Premeer League? The current standard is remarkably low.
Chelsea/West Ham: Meanwhile West Ham are interested in Fikayo Tomori on loan. Chelsea really need to shift a centre-back now that Rudiger is staying.
Continue reading...Kelvin Bilal Fawaz, who was trafficked as a child and has won right to stay in UK, signs with top promoter
The former England amateur boxer Kelvin Bilal Fawaz, who won his 16-year legal battle with the Home Office for the right to remain in the UK, is launching his professional career after being signed by MTK Global, one of the world’s largest boxing management agencies.
Fawaz, who has represented England six times and was once an amateur champion, has spent his adult life struggling to establish his nationality and immigration status after being trafficked from Nigeria to the UK as a child and kept in domestic servitude.
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Andy Robertson makes up for his mistake by putting Liverpool ahead.
34 min Liverpool have had 76 per cent possession and nine shots to Arsenal’s one.
Continue reading...It appears that NFL hall of famer Joe Montana is a crimefighter as well as the winner of four Super Bowls.
The former San Francisco 49ers quarterback foiled a kidnapping in his Malibu home on Saturday evening. Law enforcement confirmed on Sunday that a woman, named as Sodsai Dalzell, entered the house and snatched one of Montana’s grandchildren from a playpen. Montana and his wife Jennifer then tried to deescalate the situation before a tussle ensued, during which Jennifer grabbed the child.
Continue reading...Photographer Luke Gilford couldn’t believe his eyes when he first stumbled across a gay rodeo. He set out to capture the joyous, tender, authentic world he saw there
Luke Gilford was at a Pride event in northern California in 2016 when he was drawn to a stand by the sound of Dolly Parton singing 9 to 5. What he found there would change his life. Members of the local chapter of the Golden State Gay Rodeo Association were promoting what they do, and how they live. Gilford looked on in astonishment. “I grew up around this world,” he says. “I had no idea this existed. I really didn’t think it was real.”
A sought-after film-maker and photographer, to whom Barbara Kruger is a mentor and Pamela Anderson and Jane Fonda muses, Gilford cuts a striking figure. A New York Times profile that same year recounted how you could often catch a glimpse of him downtown, in a hand-me-down cowboy hat, football-style shoulder pads over his bare torso.
Continue reading...More than two years after disappearing in a huge swell at Waimea Bay, Doug Falter’s board was found near the remote island of Sarangani
When big wave surfer Doug Falter lost his board in a wipeout in Hawaii, his best hope was for a local fisherman to pick it up. He never imagined it would be found more than 8,000km (5,000 miles) away in the southern Philippines.
But more than two years after watching his pale blue custom-shaped board disappear in the huge swell of Waimea Bay, Falter was alerted via social media that it had been found near the remote island of Sarangani.
Continue reading...Afkari had been convicted of killing security guard during anti-government protests in 2018
Iran has executed a champion wrestler convicted of murdering a security guard during anti-regime protests in 2018, state media said on Saturday, despite an international campaign to spare his life.
Navid Afkari, 27, was executed “this morning after legal procedures were carried out at the insistence of the parents and the family of the victim”, the Islamic Republic News Agency quoted the head of the justice department in the southern Fars province as saying.
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