Guinness World Records says Jessica Anderson needed to have had a dress on to qualify
An NHS nurse who ran the London Marathon was told her Guinness World Record attempt would not count because she was not wearing a dress.
Jessica Anderson, who has been working for the Royal London Hospital’s acute admission unit for seven years, was aiming to become the fastest female marathon runner dressed as a nurse but her scrubs and trousers did not match the uniform criteria.
Continue reading...Olympian receives strong backing from South African government and fellow athletes
South Africans have expressed widespread support for the double Olympic champion Caster Semenya, who will run her last 800m on Friday before the imposition of controversial new rules limiting testosterone in female athletes.
Tokozile Xasa, the sports minister, said on Thursday that the South African government was disappointed with the ruling by the court of arbitration for sport that women with unusually high testosterone levels, such as Semenya, would have to take medication to significantly reduce their testosterone before they were permitted to compete internationally at distances between 400m and a mile.
Continue reading...Organisers invited only Europeans to draw attention to exploitation of African athletes
The organisers of a half-marathon in the northern Italian city of Trieste have backtracked on their decision to exclude African athletes from the race following accusations of racism.
“After launching a provocation that hit a nerve, drawing great attention to a fundamental issue, contrary to what was communicated yesterday, we will also invite African athletes,” Fabio Carini, the manager of the Trieste running festival, said in a statement.
Continue reading...Organisers say move is intended to highlight the exploitation of African athletes in Europe
The organisers of a half-marathon in the northern Italian city of Trieste have been accused of racism over their decision to exclude African athletes from the race.
Fabio Carini, the president of Apd Miramar, the company organising the 5 May event, said the decision to only open the race to European participants was to call out the exploitation of African runners.
Continue reading...A sedate Wednesday morning press conference for this weekend’s London marathon appeared to be over when Mo Farah suddenly raised his hand and began to speak. Clearly Britain’s four-time Olympic champion had something to get off his chest. “Training has gone well, and everything else,” he said, “but there was a slight problem with my hotel in Ethiopia.”
Continue reading...• Paralympics GB team hit with ‘huge headache’ for training camp
• Senior figure says hotels have shown a ‘total lack of interest’
British Paralympic officials say they were left stunned when hotels near their training camp for the 2020 Games demanded they pay to make rooms accessible for wheelchair athletes – and then pay again to convert them back afterwards.
One senior figure said there had been a “total lack of interest” from hotels they had contacted in Yokohama when it came to helping the British Paralympic team, who will make their final preparations in the city ahead of Tokyo 2020. Another source said the issue had been a “huge headache” for more than 18 months.
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23 min “The most remarkable thing about Larsson’s spellat Man United,” emails Simon McMahon, is that it was IN 2007!!! Time really does speed up the older you get. Soon I’ll be eating breakfast every five minutes.”
This sounds like an excellent ruse, and well worth wearing a suit to go to the newsagent.
22 min “The ‘Walking’ in ‘Walking to Glory’ sounds like a schoolchild’s go at translating ‘Caminando’,” advises Charles Antaki, “but to be fair, caminar can mean to walk, but also, presumably more appropriately, moving or, better marching. Here endeth the evening class Spanish lesson, misremembered from a very long time ago.”
Continue reading...Scenes from Augusta National as the golf legend claimed his first major title since 2008, his 15th major overall, and his fifth green jacket in a remarkable return to glory
• American all-time great claims 15th major by one stroke
• Dustin Johnson, Koepka, Schauffele share second
Tiger Woods wins the Masters. If ever five words did not do justice to an outcome …
Let debate now rage as to where this sits in the pantheon of sporting comebacks. Fourteen years after last donning the Green Jacket, 11 years after last winning a major and 24 months after conceding to friends “I’m done” Woods completed a triumph which rates as extraordinary even by his standards. It seemed poetic for the sensational act to transpire at Augusta National, where Woods began altering the shape of golf back in 1997. Twenty two years on a 43-year-old Woods celebrated more wildly than ever before in the company of his mother and children.
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“We need to improve on the first leg [of the PSG tie]. We know we need to play better at home. It’s down to us to try to dominant the game. If we let them dominate, we’re in for a hard game. So that’s part of the battle, to maybe take control of the ball.”
He’s unsure how long Rashford will be able to last because he’s just recovered his fitness. “But you know Rash, he lives for these games.”.
The teams are on the pitch at Old Trafford going through their pre-game stretches and what not. “Lionel Messi warms exactly how he wants to warm up,” announces Steve McManaman, almost swooning. That warm-up, by the way, seems to involve some gentle stroking the ball about and the occasional caress of a baroque tattoo on his left leg (the tattoo appears to feature a ball and a hand, no doubt Messi’s own tribute to Diego Maradona).
Continue reading...The five-times Ballon d'Or winner Lionel Messi has earned the nickname 'D10S', a combination of his shirt number and the Spanish word for God - Dios - but Pope Francis has said 'it is a sacrilege' to give the Barcelona captain that title.
In an interview with La Sexta, the leader of the Catholic Church, praised his Argentinian compatriot saying: 'He's great to watch - but he's not God.'
Continue reading...Fellow players have accused president of cheating, says former Sports Illustrated columnist in book to be published Tuesday
Donald Trump played golf on Saturday and Sunday at his course in Jupiter, Florida. According to custom, once off the fairways the president tweeted angrily on political subjects.
Related: From victory to vengeance: Trump scents blood in 2020 fight
Continue reading...Ngor is on the global circuit, 50 years after featuring in surfing film The Endless Summer
A wave of boys ebbs and flows on the black rocks, watching surfers paddle out, pop up and catch the right-hand point break they know so well. Surfers from all over the world hop from rock to rock past them, waiting their turn to compete, their boards swaddled in giant stripy socks.
Ngor right, a Senegalese wave put on the international surfing map by the 1966 surf documentary The Endless Summer, has never seen so much sun-bleached hair. This week, the World Surf League brought its qualifying series to west Africa for the first time, a historic moment for surfing off a continent with plentiful waves but few people who have the means to take advantage of them.
Continue reading...Welcome to Yorkshire calls in investigators over its boss Gary Verity’s expenses
The Yorkshire tourism body that has appointed independent investigators to examine its chief executive’s lavish expenses accepted £14.89m in public money over the past five years, the Guardian has learned.
More than half of Welcome to Yorkshire’s (WTY) income derived from the taxpayer between 2013 and 2018 but the organisation will not answer detailed questions about how that money was spent by its boss, Sir Gary Verity, who resigned last Friday.
Continue reading...Famous for playing the 1956 FA cup final with a broken neck, Trautmann went from Nazi soldier to goalkeeping legend and symbol of truth and reconciliation. Now, his life is the subject of a new film
Film director Marcus H Rosenmüller looks out of the car window, a little spooked. “It is only one kilometre from the concentration camp,” he says. We are in a quiet, pretty, well-heeled town, a short drive from Munich. It is called Dachau.
“It’s quite shocking to be coming to Dachau, isn’t it?” says the British producer Chris Curling. Both men agree there is something eerily appropriate about filming here. They are making a movie about the life of the legendary German Manchester City goalkeeper Bert Trautmann, who is still best known for his part in the 1956 FA Cup Final against Birmingham City. With 17 minutes of the match left, he dived at the feet of Birmingham City’s Peter Murphy, and sustained a nasty neck injury. But he continued to play, making two crucial saves as Manchester City won 3-1. Trautmann was a hero, particularly when, three days later, it was discovered that he had actually broken his neck.
Continue reading...Prejudice faced by Afghan women with a disability has proved no barrier to its national wheelchair basketball team
Nilofar Bayat played her first game of wheelchair basketball in an open court in the middle of Kabul, surrounded by mainly male onlookers who shouted insults and called her names.
She decided to keep playing anyway.
Continue reading...Tennis champion describes pay discrepancy between male and female squads as ‘ludicrous’
Serena Williams and other prominent past and present American tennis players have expressed their support for a lawsuit filed by the US women’s national soccer team against their federation alleging gender discrimination in wages and conditions.
All 28 members of the US squad were named as plaintiffs in a federal court in Los Angeles on Friday, International Women’s Day.
Continue reading...Man, 44, reportedly undergoes emergency operation after attack with ‘large blade’
A Manchester United fan is being treated in hospital in France for a stabbing injury shortly after the English side knocked Paris Saint-Germain out of the Champions League on Wednesday evening.
The Foreign Office said it was in touch with the French authorities over the incident, with reports suggesting the man is undergoing emergency surgery.
Continue reading...Briton Tom Ballard and Italian Daniele Nardi disappeared on Nanga Parbat
A search for the missing British climber Tom Ballard and his Italian climbing partner, Daniele Nardi, who disappeared on the Himalayan peak Nanga Parbat, has been called off.
The decision involved Pakistani and Spanish climbers from nearby K2, a Pakistani mountaineering official told the Associated Press.
Continue reading...A cycling race in Belgium was thrown into disarray when the leader of the women’s race, which set off 10 minutes after the men’s, almost caught up with her male counterparts and found herself in danger of being impeded by their support vehicles.
Related: Elinor Barker wins fourth world track cycling title in Poland
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