Category Archives: Sport

Why I won’t be joining the queue at the top of Everest

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A startling picture of overcrowding near the summit shows the peril of turning the mountain into a form of adventure tourism

Mountaineering is a physical pursuit demanding an affinity for suffering. Where it is cerebral is in its requirement of good judgment, most importantly in extreme situations when the mind is most clouded and consequences of bad decision-making tend to multiply.

Considering risks requires being honest with yourself. At what climbers call the objective level, that involves assessing dangers you may encounter – weather, avalanches, poor rock, even whether there will be overcrowding on your route.

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Lance Armstrong: ‘It wasn’t legal but I wouldn’t change a thing’

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  • ‘We did what we had to do to win,’ says 47-year-old
  • Interview with former cyclist to be aired next week

Former cycling champion Lance Armstrong has said he “wouldn’t change a thing” about the doping that led to him being stripped of his record seven Tour de France titles, according to details of an interview that will air next week.

NBCSN, owned by NBC Sports Group, said on Thursday it would broadcast a 30-minute interview next Wednesday called Lance Armstrong: Next Stage in which the 47-year-old American discusses his career and the decisions he made.

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Niki Lauda obituary

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Star racing driver who survived a near-fatal crash to win the Formula One world championship three times

Niki Lauda was attempting to win his second Formula One world title when he was almost killed in one of the most famous accidents in the history of motor sport. As his Ferrari caught fire after hitting a bank at high speed during the 1976 German Grand Prix, Lauda lay unconscious in the cockpit. Other drivers stopped and tried to help. One, Arturo Merzario, plunged into the flames to unbuckle the Austrian’s safety harness. Eventually he was extricated and taken to hospital, where he was treated for burns so severe that he was given the last rites.

Related: Niki Lauda: the three-time Formula One world champion's life – in pictures

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US senator asks Canada to protect Erdoğan critic Kanter during NBA finals

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  • Trail Blazers player is an opponent of Turkish president
  • Blazers could travel to play Toronto Raptors in finals

The NBA playoffs have been swept up in diplomatic drama, with US senator Ron Wyden expressing concern for the safety of Portland Trail Blazers player Enes Kanter if his team play the Toronto Raptors in the NBA finals.

Kanter is a fierce critic of Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, calling him the “Hitler of our Century”. The Turkish authorities in turn have accused Kanter of having links with an armed group behind a failed coup in the country in 2016. Last year, Kanter missed a trip to London with his then team the New York Knicks, saying he feared he could be “killed by Turkish spies”.

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Tottenham comeback stuns Ajax and sets up final against Liverpool

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When everything changed, there were suddenly seven, eight, maybe even nine Ajax players flat out on the pitch, their faces buried into the turf, not wanting to see any more. Somehow, Spurs had done it and in those moments we were reminded, once again, about the glories of this sport, about how brutal football can be and how, every once in a while, there is a story that can make your bones vibrate.

We have had two of them in quick succession bearing in mind Liverpool’s destruction of Barcelona the previous night. It will be an all-Premier League final in Madrid on 1 June and when Lucas Moura completed his hat-trick, five minutes into stoppage time, it was one of those rare occasions for every single member of the Spurs travelling party when it must have felt like the blood in their veins had been converted into the finest of red wine.

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Nurse in trousers told her London Marathon record would not count

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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.

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Caster Semenya ruling ‘tramples on dignity’ of athletes, South Africa says

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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.

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Trieste half-marathon backtracks on exclusion of Africans

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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.

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Trieste half-marathon accused of racism in excluding Africans

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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.

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Mo Farah v Haile Gebrselassie: row, recriminations and what next?

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A hotel room theft, blackmail and a gym brawl are among the accusations thrown in a very public falling out between two athletics greats who were once friends

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.”

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Paralympics GB stunned after Yokohama hotels demand payment for accessibility

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• 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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Barcelona v Manchester United: Champions League quarter-final – live!

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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.”

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Tiger Woods wins Masters to cap comeback with fifth Green Jacket

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• 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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Manchester United v Barcelona: Champions League quarter-final, first leg – live!

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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).

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Pope Francis on Lionel Messi: ‘He’s great, but he is not God’ – video

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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.'

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Trump is ‘world’s worst cheat at golf’, new book says

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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

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Surf’s up in Senegal for first ever pro event in west Africa

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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.

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Scandal-hit Yorkshire tourism group was paid £14.9m in public funds

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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.

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From Nazi to football hero: the incredible story of Man City’s Bert Trautmann

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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.

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