Category Archives: Sport

No play, no pay: Covid drives Zimbabwe’s pros to unofficial football matches

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Informal games are a lifeline while the Premier League is locked down, but at what risk to players?

Sweaty and tired, the players tussle before the winning goal is scored on a red-dust pitch at the No 1 ground in Mufakose, a township west of Harare. The football fans start up a chant on the touchline, triggering a frenzied response from opposing supporters, who break into rapturous song.

This parched pitch and others like it have become a source of livelihood for some Zimbabwean footballers, struggling to earn a living during the Covid-19 pandemic’s lockdown regulations.

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Saudi Arabia has spent at least $1.5bn on ‘sportswashing’, report reveals

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Exclusive: analysis finds nation has spent big on high-profile global sporting events in a bid to bolster its reputation

Saudi Arabia has spent at least $1.5bn on high-profile international sporting events in a bid to bolster its reputation, a new report reveals.

The oil-rich nation has invested millions across the sporting world, the report by the human rights organisation Grant Liberty says, from chess championships to golf, tennis and $60m alone on the Saudi Cup, the world’s richest horse-racing event with prize money of $20m.

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Fiji’s Silktails sang from balconies for hotel – and for Australian rugby league | Patrick Skene

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The team whose quarantine serenade went viral are playing the long game to the NRL promised land

Before the Kaiviti Silktails rugby league team finished their Covid-19 quarantine they had become worldwide heroes. Individually singing from 35 Juliet balconies in the Sydney Sofitel Hotel, they serenaded the world with three gospel hymns, going viral with more than million hits and delivering a Fiji-style thank you to the staff and guards who had nursed them to the promised land.

Their joyous gratitude was a refreshing contrast with the complaints and social media moping of other quarantined athletes, and announced the arrival of something unique.

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YouTube stardom to the Olympics? Singer Cody Simpson’s unlikely bid to compete at Games

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  • Australian to go up against likes of Kyle Chalmers at nationals
  • Simpson two seconds off Olympic trials pace in 100m butterfly

Teenybopper poster boy Cody Simpson will be among Australia’s top swimmers at next month’s national championships as he hones his 100m butterfly before June’s Olympic trials.

The junior swimmer turned international singer has taken another key step in his quest to make it in the pool by entering the Australian titles on the Gold Coast, where he will attempt to shave whole seconds from his personal best in his unlikely bid to qualify for the Tokyo Games.

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Olympic surfing hopeful Katherine Diaz killed by lightning while training

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  • Twenty-two year-old killed near home in El Salvador
  • Diaz was preparing for ISA World Surf Games

El Salvador’s top surfer, who had been preparing fo the sport’s Olympic debut this summer, has been struck and killed by lightning during a training session.

“A great athlete who has represented our country has left us,” the Salvadoran Surf Federation said in a post paying tribute to Katherine Diaz on social media. “See you soon, great warrior. El Salvador is in mourning.”

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Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics organisers confirm overseas fan ban

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Overseas spectators will not be permitted to attend this summer’s rearranged Olympic and Paralympic Games in Tokyo. An announcement was made after a meeting of the International Olympic Committee, International Paralympic Committee, Tokyo metropolitan government, the Tokyo 2020 organising committee and the government of Japan on Saturday.

The decision, which was not unexpected, is due to continuing uncertainty amid the Covid-19 pandemic, with international travel restricted and variant coronavirus strains emerging. Japan is unlikely to be open to foreign tourists by the summer and it was felt some clarification over this matter should be given now.

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Chess: humiliated Magnus Carlsen eliminated from his own tournament

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The world champion lost his semi-final against Russian champion Ian Nepomniachtchi in the $200,000 Carlsen Invitational

Magnus Carlsen, the world champion, has been having a hard time in the $1.5m online Meltwater Champions Tour, supported by his own company Play Magnus Group. There are 10 qualifying tournaments leading to a final in the autumn and Carlsen, 30, who won the 2020 Tour, has so far this year been knocked out four times.

The first three Tour events were won by the US champion Wesley So (twice) and the Azerbaijan grandmaster Teimour Radjabov, while on Saturday and Sunday in the fourth event Carlsen will only compete for third place. The tournament’s name is the Magnus Carlsen Invitational, which makes it still more humiliating for the world champion.

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Tokyo Games: ceremonies chief to quit over sexist ‘Olympig’ comment

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Hiroshi Sasaki suggested a female entertainer should dress as a pig at the opening ceremony

Preparations for the Tokyo Olympics have again been thrown into turmoil after the creative director for the opening and closing ceremonies said he would resign over a sexist comment about a female entertainer, whom he likened to a pig.

Hiroshi Sasaki said he would step down after a weekly magazine revealed he had proposed to his creative team that Naomi Watanabe, a popular celebrity, should be lowered into the Olympic stadium dressed as a pig in an opening ceremony segment he called “Olympig”.

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Russian ice hockey player Timur Faizutdinov dies after being hit by puck

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  • Nineteen-year-old was struck during game on Friday
  • Teenager was in hospital over weekend before passing away

A 19-year-old Russian hockey player has died after being hit in the head by the puck during a game, his club and the league said on Tuesday.

Defenseman Timur Faizutdinov was playing for Dynamo St Petersburg’s junior team in a playoff game against Loko Yaroslavl on Friday when he was struck by a puck hit from the neutral zone.

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Marvin Hagler obituary

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One of the greatest world middleweight boxing champions of all time

Marvin Hagler, who has died aged 66, is recognised as one of boxing’s greatest champions, holding the world middleweight title from 1980 to 1987, but his fabled status is assured because of one never-to-be-forgotten night in the old open-air arena at Caesars Palace, Las Vegas, in 1985, when he fought and defeated his great rival Thomas Hearns in one of the most thrilling contests the sport has ever produced.

Related: Marvin Hagler, middleweight boxing's towering champion, dies aged 66

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Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez say reports of break-up are ‘inaccurate’

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‘We are working through some things,’ Lopez said, following reports that the celebrity couple had called off their engagement

Singer Jennifer Lopez and former New York Yankees baseball star Alex Rodriguez said on Saturday they were “working through some things” and that reports of them splitting up after almost four years together were inaccurate.

Celebrity website TMZ, the New York Post’s Page Six and multiple entertainment sites on Friday cited unidentified sources close to the couple, sometimes known in the media as J-Rod, as saying the pair had called off their engagement.

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Murray Walker, the voice of Formula One, dies aged 97

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  • Tributes paid after broadcaster’s death announced
  • Walker first commentated on F1 in 1978 for the BBC

For generations of British fans, Murray Walker, who died on Saturday at the age of 97, was, quite simply, the voice of Formula One.

The affection with which he was held by the paddock and across the sport rose from an enthusiasm and often overlooked a dedication to his craft that has rarely been matched in any discipline. Few commentators come to truly epitomise their subject, but over Walker’s 23 years of bringing F1 to the nation he was acknowledged as a true great, and a unique talent.

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High school announcer caught by hot mic blames racist outburst on high blood sugar

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  • Announcer used racial slur for girls’ team who knelt for anthem
  • Incident happened before Oklahoma high school playoff game
  • Broadcaster blames racist comments on diabetes in statement

An announcer for a live stream of an Oklahoma girls’ high school basketball game cursed and called one team by a racial epithet as the players knelt during the national anthem, then suggested his diabetes was to blame for the episode in a statement expressing his regret.

The incident occurred Thursday before the Norman High School-Midwest City quarter-final game in Sapulpa as the Star-Spangled Banner began to play. The broadcasters told their listeners on the NFHS Network stream they would return after a break and then one, apparently not realizing the audio was still live, used an expletive and the epithet as the Norman players knelt.

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Dr Richard Freeman found guilty of ordering banned testosterone for unnamed cyclist

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  • Worked for Team Sky and British Cycling between 2009 and 2017
  • Claimed he was bullied into ordering banned testosterone

The former chief doctor of British Cycling and Team Sky, Richard Freeman, has been found guilty of ordering banned testosterone “knowing or believing” it was to be given to an unnamed rider to improve their athletic performance. The verdict, announced on Friday by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service in Manchester, will send shockwaves through British sport and raise questions about the decade-long success of British Cycling and Team Sky.

Announcing the verdict, the chair of the MPTS, Neil Dalton said: “The tribunal had found that you, Dr Freeman placed the order, and obtained the Testogel, knowing or believing it was to be administered to an athlete to improve their athletic performance. The motive for your action was to conceal a conduct.”

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The making of a heavyweight: Scorsese and De Niro behind the scenes of Raging Bull – in pictures

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The award-winning biopic of Jake LaMotta was released 40 years ago. With these exclusive images, Jay Glennie, who interviewed the cast and crew for a new book, reveals secrets of the film’s shoot

  • Raging Bull: The Making Of, by Jay Glennie is published on 5 April by Coattail. Use code RBP10 to receive a discount
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Sir Alex Ferguson: ‘I feared I would never speak again’

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Former Manchester United manager tells of brain surgery worries ahead of documentary about his life

Sir Alex Ferguson has said he feared he would never be able to speak again after suffering a brain haemorrhage in 2018. The former Manchester United manager told a Q&A at Glasgow film festival he was worried that he could lose his voice and memory after undergoing emergency surgery.

A new documentary about the two-time Champions League-winning manager premiered at the the film festival on Saturday.

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BBC’s Sonja McLaughlan reveals online abuse over Owen Farrell interview

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  • Six Nations reporter targeted after Wales v England
  • McLaughlan: ‘In my car crying ... Hope you’re happy’

Sonja McLaughlan, the BBC rugby reporter, was the target of online abuse following the live broadcast of England’s 40-24 Six Nations defeat to Wales in Cardiff.

Related: Sheedy holds nerve as Wales make England pay in Six Nations thriller

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Not a sprint: endurance experts on how to make it through lockdown

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Marathon runner Eddie Izzard, solo sailor Pip Hare and explorer Levison Wood explain what they have learned about enduring the seemingly unendurable

It just goes on and on, doesn’t it? Despite the millions of vaccinations, and Boris Johnson’s “roadmap” for easing the lockdown, this pandemic is feeling increasingly like an endurance test – a marathon, followed by another marathon, followed by another. Or trudging for miles and miles across the desert for day after day. Or sailing alone around the world, battling storms and loneliness. How do you keep going? There are people who know a thing or two about that – keeping going, endurance, deserts and storms. Perhaps they might even have some advice.

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