Category Archives: Sport

Trump orders McDonald’s for football champions as shutdown cuts staff

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Staff absences at White House see president set the menu, and unsurprisingly he chose a Big Mac buffet

Any champion football player disappointed with Monday’s dinner at the White House can blame Democrats, according to a presidential spokesman.

Clemson University’s football team on Thursday joined Donald Trump for dinner to celebrate their win over Alabama in the College Football Playoff National Championship. However, the government shutdown has left much of the White House staff furloughed, forcing the president to set the menu, the spokesperson said.

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Andy Murray: from gangly kid to genuine sporting grownup

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Widely loved and politically progressive, the Scot will retire as arguably the greatest individual British sports person of the modern age

Stop all the green and yellow Timex clocks. Put away that union jack tea towel. Stow the Pimms-sodden crash barriers at the foot of the Aorangi Terrace.

Andy Murray may yet play another Wimbledon this summer, depending on the state of his chronic, career-capping hip injury. But in the wake of a raw and tearful press conference on Friday morning it seems highly likely that next week’s Australian Open will be the final appearance of a stellar, transformative, broadly-sketched tennis career.

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Tearful Andy Murray says Australian Open could be last tournament

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• Murray unsure he will make it to Wimbledon
• ‘The pain is too much. I don’t want to continue’
• Latest updates: tributes paid as Murray admits time is up

Andy Murray’s career is all but over. He expects his match against Roberto Bautista Agut in the first round of the Australian Open on Monday to be his last but, even if another hip operation were to help him reach a more emotional and perhaps more fitting farewell at Wimbledon, it will never be the same for the player who stood alongside Fred Perry as the greatest Britain has ever had. Many would say Murray was the greater, but it is a fine call.

The former world No1 and three-time slam champion conceded that the pain that has been running through his right hip with increasing strength the past few months has brought his serious playing days to a reluctant conclusion.

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Cristiano Ronaldo rape allegation: lawyer confirms police have issued warrant for DNA

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  • Juventus star is subject to allegations from 2009
  • Forward has denied claims he raped woman in hotel room

Cristiano Ronaldo’s lawyer has confirmed authorities in Las Vegas have issued a warrant to collect DNA from the football star in the wake of allegations he raped a woman in the city in 2009.

“Mr Ronaldo has always maintained, as he does today, that what occurred in Las Vegas in 2009 was consensual in nature, so it is not surprising that DNA would be present, nor that the police would make this very standard request as part of their investigation,” Ronaldo’s lawyer, Peter S Christiansen, said in a statement to the BBC. The Wall Street Journal reports that the warrant has been sent to courts in Italy, where Ronaldo plays for Juventus.

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Hallucinations and $100,000: the poker player who shut himself in a pitch-black room for weeks

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Rich Alati had a six-figure sum in his sights. As long as he could survive 30 days in the dark with no human contact

Three – or was it four? – days after he shut himself in a pitch-black bathroom, Rich Alati started to hallucinate. He saw little white, bubble-like balls, floating around the room. To calm himself he imagined he was in a magical cloud, cozy and relaxed. Embracing the visions was key. “Or else,” he says, “you might get a little scared.”

Alati was in the dark for a bet, which makes a little more sense once you know he is a professional poker player. On 10 September last year, the American was sitting at a poker table at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, when he was asked a question by a fellow professional player, Rory Young: how much would it take for him to spend time in complete isolation, with no light, for 30 days? An hour later a price had been agreed: $100,000.

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Cyclist, 90, stripped of world record after failing drugs test

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  • Carl Grove accepts public warning from Usada
  • Violation likely caused by contaminated meat

A veteran American cyclist has accepted a public warning issued by the US Anti-Doping Agency after failing a drugs test and being stripped of a world record he set earlier this year.

Carl Grove set a new record when winning the 90-94 age group sprint title at the US Masters Track National Championships in July, only to test positive for epitrenbolone, a metabolite of trenbolon, which is a substance prohibited by Usada.

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Australia v India: SCG fourth Test, day three – as it happened

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  • Bad light brings an early end to day three with Australia 236-6

So an early end to another day of Indian dominance at the SCG. The lost overs will make it more difficult for them to force a victory but the delay will allow their attack to rest up in preparation for enforcing the follow on should Australia’s batting woes continue.

Day three actually began promisingly for the home side. Marcus Harris showed plenty of intent during the opening session and he was ably supported by Marnus Labuschagne on a pitch perfect for batting. But both fell in a sloppy afternoon session that yielded four wickets for India and reinforced the issues at the heart of this brittle Australian XI.

“As this game hurtles towards a swift conclusion (barring a Cummins century and inclement weather)” begins Abhijato Sensarma, “I am left to wonder about minuscule things which I frankly have no time for - yet, one can’t help overthinking ideas during such sessions of Test cricket.

Ever since the dawn of professional cricket, the scorecard has been said to say ‘only half the story’. The minutes batted column, the last saving grace of first-class matches, are slowly disappearing too. Can it not be that annotations are used for cricketing scorecards?

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Teen’s round-the-world yacht Wild Eyes found floating eight years after boat abandoned

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Yacht spotted near Kangaroo Island off South Australian coast after being abandoned by 16-year-old sailor Abby Sunderland in 2010

Eight and a half years after it was abandoned in the middle of the Indian Ocean when 16-year-old solo sailor Abby Sunderland had to be rescued in rough seas, a yellow yacht named Wild Eyes has been found floating upside down off the coast of South Australia.

The 40-foot yacht was encrusted with barnacles, the signature eyes on the hull scratched and faded. Its mast snapped off in the wild weather that forced Sunderland’s rescue midway through her world record attempt to be the youngest solo sailor to circumnavigate the globe in 2010.

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