Sport magazine - issue 263

Issue 263 | July 6 2012

The rise and rise of Team gb

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issue 263, July 6 2012 Radar 05 Our favourite semis

In honour of men’s semi finals day at Wimbledon, we pick the ones that have stuck with us

07 Ping pong for the over-80s In a new film documentary that features the Brit octogenarian answer to Mohammed Ali

08 It’s not mostly balls

At the newly opened National Football Museum in Manchester

10 Kell Brook

The unbeaten welterweight looks forward to his next bout

oFeatures this coming week

25

18 07

18 Team GB: on the up We chart the rise of what could be our greatest Olympic team

25 Singing for En-ger-land That would be British 1,500m star Hannah England. A safer bet than Roy’s lot in the Euros

31 British boxing

We go behind the scenes with the hi-tech team making it work

34 Michael Schumacher Ahead of the British Grand Prix, we talk to the Rain King. Just as well, given the summer so far

60

extra Time 52 Kit

Your chance to win a tennis bag signed by John McEnroe...

54 Brittany Binger

We bring you ours and Brian Badonde’s favourite MLB WAG

58 Gadgets

34

A docking station that looks like a child’s desk – if only we had one when we were at school

60 Entertainment Willem Dafoe goes after a bloody big Tasmanian tiger in The Hunter | July 6 2012 | 03

Radar

Epic semi

Stefan Edberg v Miloslav Mecir 1988 Mecir was known as ‘The Big Cat’, but it was his other nickname of ‘Swede Killer’ that sent shivers down Edberg’s spine. The Slovakian lived up to his rep of beating Swedish players by going two sets up, but future two-time Wimbledon champ Edberg survived six break points in the third set to win in five, the usually ice-cool serve-volleyer sinking to his knees in glory at the end.

Clive Brunskill/Getty Images

In honour of men’s semi final day, we serve up our five favourite Wimbledon semis the guys have ever played Boris Becker v Andre Agassi 1995 “The most devastating of my life,” is Agassi’s succinct description of this loss to his most loathed rival. The American, a heavy betting favourite, won the first set and was 4-1 up in the second, until Becker realised he was unable to match Agassi in long rallies and changed his tactics to chip and charge like a man possessed. It worked. Becker roared back to claim a stunning four-set win, setting the scene for a famed US Open rematch (where Agassi won revenge, while Becker blew kisses at Brooke Shields in the crowd).

Goran Ivanisevic v Tim Henman 2001 Played over three days, with rain delays, shifts in momentum and – of course – a gallant Brit loser, this match had it all. Tiger Tim came back from losing the opener to play his finest ever tennis, taking a 2-1 lead by winning the third set 6-0. However, a final

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p07 – Octogenarian whiff-whaff p08 – Go bowling in your own office p10 – Kell Brook hits us hard and fast

rain delay shattered his momentum and the big, barking mad Ivanisevic (a wildcard entrant) came back to edge a five-set win.

Wimbledon’s gold member: Roger Federer was in sparkling form in ’06

Roger Federer v Jonas Bjorkman 2006 Grand Slam semis between two fully fit players simply shouldn’t be won by a total of 18 games to four. But that’s what happened when the solid Bjorkman was outclassed 6-2, 6-0, 6-2 by an imperious Federer. Not a five-set thriller, sure, but The New York Times likened watching the greatest player of all time, on his favourite surface, at the peak of his powers, to a “religious experience”.

Bjorn Borg v Vitas Gerulaitis 1977 The flamboyantly mulleted Gerulaitis was a different character to placid Swede Borg, but the two were pals, training partners and produced a bona fide Wimbledon classic in 1977. The match gripped an awed crowd for four sets until the fifth, when the ‘Lithuanian Lion’ was on the verge of a 4-1 lead until he choked a sliced backhand. Borg capitalised, eventually winning the final set 8-6.

| July 6 2012 | 05

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Radar

Wild transfers With the Euros over, we’re at the height of transfer silly season. But who are British clubs’ most unbelievable signings?

Claudio Caniggia to Dundee Dun time, Dun coke, Dun dee, exclaimed one newspaper headline as Argentina’s Italia ‘90 star and wild man Claudio Caniggia (above, right) rocked up at Dundee in 2000. The striker nicknamed ‘Son of the Wind’ was a hit in Scotland, earning a move to the then mysteriously loaded Rangers.

Ali Dia to Southampton If someone calls you up pretending to be George Weah, advising you to sign his ‘cousin’, what do you do? If you’re then-Saints boss Graeme Souness, you sign Ali Dia up and then

bring him on for Matthew Le Tissier in a league match against Leeds United (then sub him off again when you realise he’s a total charlatan).

Attilio Lombardo to Crystal Palace Italian international winger and Serie A winner Lombardo leaving Juventus to sign for newly promoted Palace in 1997. Sure, why not?

Things actually got even more surreal from there as ‘The Bald Eagle’ was made playermanager later that season, alongside Sweden striker-turned-meatball Tomas Brolin.

Eric Cantona to Manchester United “Leeds came on the phone asking if we’d sell them Denis Irwin. It was a non-starter. But jokingly I suggested we’d swap him for Eric Cantona...” Alex Ferguson has recalled since.

From that cheeky joke in 1992, a shock deal

was arranged and United snaffled their rival’s star striker. For just £1.2m, they had a new idol.

Tevez and Mascherano to West Ham The ‘signing’ of two feted Argentine internationals on transfer deadline day 2006 was as surprising as it was controversial.

Javier Mascherano wasn’t quite good enough for the Hammers (he had to go to Liverpool and Barcelona for first-team football), but Carlos Tevez’s goals made him a cult hero.

Martin Kemp to Melchester Rovers Spandau Ballet’s Martin Kemp and Steve Norman were shock arrivals at Melchester Rovers in 1985, possibly in a bid to change the fortunes of financially flagging comic Roy of the Rovers. So, Fergie: sign Tony Hadley to end all worries about Man Utd’s whopping debts.

OAPing pong cauldron of competition of the World Over-80s Table Tennis Championships in Inner Mongolia.

British director Hugh Hartford spends time following the stories of eight entrants, including British entrant Les D’Arcy – 89 years young, still pumping iron and reciting inspirational verse like a crinkled Muhammad Ali. Plus there’s 100-year-old Australian Dorothy De Low, whose mobility at the table is questionable, but whose assertion that table tennis has given her a reason to live after she lost her husband and daughter is not.

As cancer survivor Terry Donovan convincingly puts it when asked the question of why: “I don’t want to go home, watch television and just die.”

Preach on, and play on, brother.

Ping Pong is in cinemas from today. See pingpongfilm.co.uk for screening info

Karim Jaafar/AFP/Getty Images

T

he image you see here may not look like a finely honed athlete – but he could definitely paddle yo’ ass (at table tennis). The evidence is all there to see in this funny but life-affirming documentary, Ping Pong, which covers the fearsome

| July 6 2012 | 07

Radar

A history of balls

F

rom the replica of the Jules Rimet Trophy that England’s 1966 team actually used in the post-match celebrations to a holographic Gary Lineker (seriously), the new National Football Museum in Manchester has a lot more than just old balls on offer. There’s plenty of those too, mind – as you can see from the below. These range from a brown, 1930s migraineinducer (you couldn't see for three hours after you headed it) to the very ball a

jet-heeled Michael Owen ran with in that famous World Cup 2002 game between England and Argentina.

From this July, it’s all housed in Manchester’s stunning glass Urbis centre, a suitably grand new location for such amazing items.

However, it’s not just artefacts that explain the history of the game and striker-come-crisp pimps made entirely of light. Visitors can also test their reflexes against those of Joe Hart, try the David Beckham passing challenge and take on a penalty shootout challenge. So long as you can avoid the languid Italian tourists chipping in Panenkas, it’s pretty much a perfect day out.

Opens today at the Urbis, Manchester, nationalfootballmuseum.com

Harris even made a comeback in this most demanding of sports in the 1970s, winning the British Championship at the age of 54.

This new biography by cycling journalist Robert Dineen recounts Harris’ successes in breathless detail with eyewitness reports. However, it’s the tales of how Reg was never quite able to outsprint his vices that make this a fascinating read of a man who chucked back the fine wine like Chris Hoy knocks back Bran Flakes.

Reg Harris (Ebury Press), out now, £16.99

The fall and rise of Reg Harris M

odern UK cycling is associated with model pros, but it’s a slightly less glamorous name that has a bronze statue at Manchester Velodrome: Reg Harris. This multiple world champion and Olympic medallist was a controversial star of the sport in the 1940s and 1950s; as famous for chasing skirt, booze and money as he was the finish line.

Office strike I

Hulton Archive/Getty Images

mpress your boss with your in-office productivity by having this paper bowling set delivered right to your desk. The Office Bowl set is laser-cut for precision fit and easy to assemble, so you can construct all nine pins then take on your co-workers in a full bowling game. Chuck down a ringer and Carol from HR will want to speak to you – must be about that pay rise you’ve long been after. Strrrrrrr-ike! $30 plus p&p via cardboardsafari.com

08 | July 6 2012 |

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Radar

“i haven't lost a round” Unbeaten Sheffield welterweight Kell Brook tells us why he’s up for a challenge My style “I’m a slick boxer with a good jab that can also stand and have a fight. I’m still a switch-hitter, too. It’s like snooker player Ronnie O’Sullivan; he can play with his left hand or his right hand. I can swap. It’s good to watch and you never lose it.”

Video gaMes “I’ve seen nowt of my next opponent to be honest, as I never watch video tapes.

Our gym is full of different characters, different styles, so I’ve seen just about

every kind of boxer in my career. Also, I can feel them out for myself in the ring. After the first 30 seconds, I can read a fighter.”

career. I put the hard work in and I know where I’m headed.”

testing tiMes Under My skin “No opponent has really got under my skin – but if anyone’s come close, it’s this one.

Carson Jones has been doing a lot of trash talking about me, but Americans seem to do that. I do my talking in the ring.”

“Have I ever been tested? Not really, no.

Against everyone I’ve faced, I don’t even think I’ve lost a round. So I do need a challenge – I just hope I get one. Maybe Carson Jones is the man to do it.”

hardest pUnCh thrown Fighting idol “In our gym, Prince Naseem was the man.

Growing up around those sort of fighters you do pick things up, but I’ve also developed my own style, I think. I’ve never tried to copy anyone. I do my own thing and I’m my own man.”

“I’m not sure, to be honest. I’ve not hit anyone with a pure, clean shot of real intention – or it really would be lights out.

With all his trash talking, I would be over the moon to knock Jones clean out. So I plan on doing just that.”

dreaM opponent Changed Man “When I was younger, I used to cut corners in training, but the fighters I’m facing these days are getting harder. Plus I’m more mature; I’ve got a baby and a family now, so I think differently about my

“Floyd Mayweather Junior. I’m 26, I’ve been in boxing since I was nine, and I don’t want to finish up an old man having not fought the very best. I’d love to go in there, have a hard training camp and give it my all – test myself against the pound-for-pound king.”

Kell Brook v Carson Jones is live on Sky Sports 1 HD from 8pm on July 7.

Watch on TV, online and on mobile and tablet devices via Sky Go

olympian time

10 | July 6 2012 |

Scott Heavey/Getty Images

N

o, the starter’s gun hasn’t gone on London 2012 yet – but as the excitement increases we’ve taken a distinct shine to these new, Olympian-themed sporty timepieces from swish Swiss watchmaker Maurice Lacroix.

In tribute to the birthplace of the Olympics, each is named after an ancient Greek god. Zeus is the white-strapped watch, Poseidon blue, Eros in a bold red, and so on. It will look stylish on your wrist, but we don’t recommend eyeing people at the bar, pointing at it and mouthing the words ‘god of love’ at anyone. It’s better if you let the watch do the talking for you. In fact, it’s better you don’t talk at all. £3,390, mauricelacroix.com

Radar Editor’s letter

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History boys: Spain’s tiki-taka was far from tiki-tiresome in Sunday’s display

The future? Not quite...

Everyone’s asking: how can we play like Spain? The truth is, sadly, that we can’t

O Editor-in-chief Simon Caney @simoncaney

kay, hands up. I admit it: I have accused Spain of being boring in the past. When they first started playing their unique style of football, I was thrilled.

But before long I tired of tiki-taka.

To me, Spain were Barcelona, but missing one crucial component: the divine Lionel Messi. The cutting edge was lacking, but they remained better than everyone else simply by dint of keeping the ball, as evidenced at the last World Cup. It was impressive to watch, but not enjoyable.

I would liken watching Spain to seeing a day of Test cricket where two batsmen rack up 250 runs without a wicket falling: you can’t fault them, but sport without mistakes, or without one team finding a weakness in the other, can get a little, well, tedious.

Then, in this European Championship, Spain appeared to be taking their

philosophy even further, by opting to play without a striker at all. And yet the opposite happened – the whole team attacked in waves, perfectly demonstrated in the final (especially the first half). They were irresistible.

Now, everyone wants to know how to copy them. Here’s the rub: we can’t. They are an exceptional group of players, who have played together for so long that their game is instinctive. Their heartbeat – the Iniesta-Xavi axis – is impossible to replicate.

The Dutch team of the 1970s played their own version of Total Football, and while the world loved it, nobody was able to successfully copy it.

So, will we now see teams lining up without a striker? Somehow, I doubt it.

After all, Spain, for all their famed lack of a striker, still took home the Golden Boot – won by a striker. Anyway, I take it back: Spain are boring no longer.

I found myself nonplussed by the furore surrounding David Beckham’s omission from the Team GB Olympic squad last week. Is it such a big deal? On ceremonial grounds, it might have been fun to see him trot out. But just because he helped London secure the Games shouldn’t be enough to get him on the team, and on football grounds you’d have to argue Ryan Giggs is more worthy of a place. But I don’t really care. Much more outrageous is the decision to omit Aaron Cook.

Interesting to see the Tiger Woods revival gather yet more momentum with his third win of 2012 – taking him past Jack Nicklaus’ total of 73 career victories. Apropos of nothing, Tiger has won 27 per cent of his PGA Tour starts, while Jack won 12 per cent.

Tiger got to 74 aged 36, Jack got to 73 aged 46. As Twitter would have it, #justsaying.

Editorial Editor-in-chief: Simon Caney (7951) Deputy editor: Tony Hodson (7954) Associate editor: Nick Harper (7897) Art editor: John Mahood (7860) Deputy art editor: William Jack (7861) Digital designer: Chris Firth Subeditor: Graham Willgoss (7431) Senior writers: Sarah Shephard (7958), Alex Reid (7915) Staff writers: Mark Coughlan (7901), Amit Katwala (7914) Picture editor: Julian Wait (7961) Production manager: Tara Dixon (7963) Contributors: David Lawrenson Commercial Agency Sales Director: Iain Duffy (7991) Business Director (Magazine and iPad): Paul Brett (7918) Business Director: Kevin O’Byrne (7832) Advertising Manager: Steve Hare (7930) New Business Sales Executive: Hayley Robertson (7904) Brand Creative Director: Adam Harris (7426) Distribution Manager: Sian George (7852) Distribution Assistant: Makrum Dudgeon Head of Online: Matt Davis (7825) Head of Communications: Laura Wootton (7913) Managing Director: Adam Bullock PA to Managing Director: Sophia Koulle (7826) Colour reproduction: Rival Colour Ltd Printed by: Wyndeham Group Ltd © UTV Media plc 2012 UTV Media plc takes no responsibility for the content of advertisements placed in Sport magazine £1 where sold Hearty thanks this week to: Paul Cox, Lee Murgatroyd, Alison Hackney, Anthony Leaver, Serena Thynne, Alex Coulson and Rio Tinto for the Olympic medals. And Bex and Nuala for the cakes.

Reader comments of the week Well done for producing an excellent issue last week, probably the best I’ve read. I especially liked the article on the Tour.

Nice to have a break from all the Euro 2012 hype.

Keep up the good work!

Chris, via email

Richard, via email

12 | July 6 2012 |

According to @sportmaguk there are “400 tossers riding around surrey wishing they were on the tour” Are you one of them?

I regularly read your magazine, and I am a fan of a lot of different sports.

However, I am continually disappointed with the lack of athletics coverage.

@100Climbs Twitter

Victoria, via email

Brilliant Quote. ‘Alan Shearer; face for radio. Jamie Carragher; voice for Ceefax’.

Thankyou @Sportmaguk.

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I wanted to congratulate you on the ‘Story So Far’ feature about Euro 2012.

Its irreverent and amusing style really perked up my morning commute and made me laugh out loud a few times

Radar Frozen in time

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Viva España!

It took 24 days and 30 games to establish the two best teams at Euro 2012 – and one 92-minute masterclass to end any and every argument. Spain may not have been at their most fluent en route to the final with Italy, but the 4-0 finale established them as the worthiest winners, the finest team on the continent and arguably the greatest team of all time. Yet one question remains: what if the Germans hadn’t capitulated so tamely in the semis? Alas, we’ll never know what might have been.

14 | July 6 2012 |

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REDEFINE THE LIMITS OF POSSIBILITY | LIMITED EDITION OAKLEY RADAR速 OFFICIAL PRODUCT OF TEAM GB

THE RISE AND RISE OF TEAM GB

Thanks to some heroic performances at the Beijing Olympics, Team GB are no longer the laughing stock of world sport. So, with fingers firmly crossed this doesn’t come back to bite us on the backside six weeks from now, Sport looks at how Team GB has found the winning habit – and whether it's here to stay 18 | July 6 2012 |

he summer of 1996 was turning into a painful one for British sport.

On the football pitch, Euro ‘96 had ended in English heartbreak at the hands of the merciless Germans.

In cricket, Michael Atherton’s team were getting smacked around the nation’s grounds by Pakistan. But never mind, we consoled ourselves – there was always the Olympics.

Ah yes, the Atlanta Olympic Games. Memorable for Muhammad Ali’s emotional lighting of the Olympic Torch during the opening ceremony, the sobering shock of a terrorist attack on the Centennial Olympic Park and ultimately – in Great Britain, at least – for abject failure.

The numbers are damning. A solitary gold (won by a man you’ll hear more from shortly, Steve Redgrave, with Matthew Pinsent) was accompanied by eight silver and six bronze medals, leaving Britain down in 36th place in the final medal table. Among the nations looking down on us were Ireland, Algeria and that famed titan of international sport, North Korea.

“I have a message for [Prime Minister] John Major,” said then BOA chief Dick Palmer. “We need more money.” And he wasn't alone. Pinsent called the way the Olympic team was sponsored “a disgrace”, saying: “It is vital that the people we send have got everything – not just for two weeks. We need funding for 600 people in the team for a year or two years back.”

BEIJING BOOM

Fast-forward 12 years and Team GB were flying.

By the end of the Beijing Games in 2008, as Boris Johnson emerged to add his own sprinkle of

Left to right: Linford Christie is disqualified in Atlanta; Sally Gunnell pulls up injured defending her 400m hurdles title; Denise Lewis celebrates heptathlon gold in 2000

TALKING ’BOUT A REVOLUTION

How, then, have Britain's Olympians been transformed from the almost comedic failures of Atlanta into the sporting superheroes set to storm Stratford in three weeks' time? Sport turned to three wise men with the experience, knowledge and knowhow to reveal all.

Peter Keen is the man who coached Chris Boardman to Britain's first Olympic cycling gold medal in 72 years, and set up the all conquering high-performance cycling programme based at the Manchester Velodrome. Now at UK Sport, where he became director of performance in 2009, Keen has played a major role in transforming Britain's elite sporting performance.

You probably know Steve Redgrave already, considering he's one of Britain's greatest ever Olympians, with five gold medals from five Olympics dating back to the Los Angeles Games of 1984.

Finally, there's Dave Brailsford, who has taken over where Keen left off at British Cycling. He oversaw a haul of seven gold medals on the track at the Beijing Olympics and set up Britain's first professional road-racing outfit, Team Sky.

All three are in agreement on one thing, and it's proof that Pinsent and Palmer were spot on in their demands for more cash. Brailsford calls National Lottery funding “the biggest single step-change that's ever happened to sport in this country”, while Keen claims it created an “absolute revolution” in most sports.

Introduced in 1994, it wasn't until 1998 that athletes started to reap the rewards of lottery funding, after restrictions on handing grants to individuals were lifted. So while the shocker in Atlanta was followed four years later by Britain's climb to 10th in the medal table at the Sydney Games of 2000, Keen says you have to look beyond even then for Team GB's turning point.

“Most of the start-up programmes had only interim funding in 1998, so Sydney was a product of two years of new investment,“ he explains. “It was an interesting time; a number of athletes were coming towards the end of their careers and had struggled on – signing on the dole, or whatever. And then, with this pulse of funding, they really did pick up. If you look at who won in Sydney, quite a lot of them were mature athletes who got a real lift. But then the truth is that we flatlined for four years.”

THE TIPPING POINT

Great Britain's 10th place in Sydney was repeated in Athens four years later, although the team picked up two fewer golds than the 11 collected in Australia.

The Greek Games came just two years after Keen made a policy change he calls “the real tipping point” in Team GB's transformation. “At the time, it was incredibly painful,” he says. “But looking back at it now, it was probably critical. At the beginning of the lottery era [when Keen was still at British Cycling], I inherited an expectation that a lot of cyclists were going to get funding – and anyone who was national level did get something when it first started.

“But towards the end of the 2002 season, I devised a process that basically weeded out all the people who it wasn't right for. It was really unpleasant at the time, but from that point on it flew – it absolutely flew. The reality of winning in high-performance sport is not only that very few people do it, but that very few people really want to do it and understand what the journey is going to be.

“Being that selective about who it [funding] is right for makes you very unpopular with your board, the wider community in your sport and, indeed, anyone who thought they were good enough but you say no to. But the successful sports have worked out how you say no to most people and yes to a few – cycling nailed it from 2002 onwards. Some sports are probably still working towards the understanding that you have to do it properly, which means going a lot deeper and a lot harder than most people are willing to do.”

SUCCESS v POTENTIAL

Having competed at the very top level from the 1980s until his retirement after winning a fifth gold in Sydney, Redgrave has seen first hand the difference that lottery funding can make to an athlete. He agrees it has had a “huge effect”, but he has concerns. As one of Britain's most successful Olympic sports in terms of medals won, rowing is handed one of the lottery's biggest pots of money, while other sports that have struggled to make an impact get the smaller end of the wedge.

“From that point of view I don't agree with our system of funding,” says Redgrave. “I don’t think we should be funding purely on Olympic performance, especially after these Games, because there’ll be a lot of athletes retiring. It's about potential. Because rowing has been successful, we've been funded extremely well over the years, which means we've

| |19 43

Patrick Hertzog/AFP/Getty Images, Gary M Prior/Allsport, GunnarBerning/Bongarts/Getty Images

stardust (and buffoonery) to the closing ceremony, Britain had amassed an astounding 19 gold medals to put the memory of 1996 far behind them.

Beijing's grand total of 47 medals was the most Team GB had won since the first London Olympics in 1908, when Britain's 146 medals took them to the top of the medal table. The fact that it was only the Brits who showed up for the tennis tournament, and that the tug of war was contested by three British teams out of a field of just five, might have had a little something to do with that grand haul, mind.

The Rise and Rise of Team GB

been able to send our under-23 team on part of the training camps the Olympic squads go on. They'll be the mainstay of our Olympic team in four years, and they already know what's expected of them when they reach the top of their sport.

“That's what we need to do in other sports. Four years ago, taekwondo won one medal, so they were able to keep their funding at just the same level.

At that time, we had three people who had the chance to possibly win gold this year – but they weren't really funded enough to be able to move on to that sort of level. You have to be able to see the potential and there has to be a balance. Yes, you need to reward sports that are consistent performers – but that doesn't mean you ignore the ones that aren't.

At the moment, we're saying because the sport hasn't done very well, we're not going to fund them.

We need to fund them. We can't be so single-minded.”

“It actually pains me to say that all the hands-on coaching I ever did, I never did for a paycheque,” Keen explains. “It was always alongside other jobs.

All that coaching was done outside of what was technically my day job [teaching]. It feels really amateur looking back on it.”

And Brailsford agrees. “You don't have to go back too far to a time when sport science graduates would come out of university with a degree and go: 'Right, where's my career? I can't see a pathway,'” he says. “You'd say 'I'm a coach' and it'd be 'oh, you volunteer down the local football club?' It just didn't exist. But now you can genuinely say this is a profession, like in America, where being a coach is considered a good job. I think that's a profound thing in Britain that's quietly working away. The more that industry becomes recognised and starts to have a standing in society, the more sport will benefit.”

IS CASH KING?

FAST CARS AND PHYSIOLOGY

As Keen says, being selective with funding wins few friends. But Brailsford points out that cash is only one part of the puzzle when it comes to creating champions. “Sport isn’t about putting money in a slot machine, pulling a lever and getting success out the bottom,“ he says. “It's what goes on in the middle.

There's plenty of people who have a lot of money in sport and not been successful – it's not a panacea.”

That crucial middle bit is about supporting and developing performance, according to Brailsford.

In other words: coaching. And life for the sports coach in Britain is unrecognisable now from the days when Keen ploughed a lone furrow with Boardman.

One of Keen's less taxing roles at UK Sport has been to oversee the work undertaken by Dr Scott Drawer's research and innovation team. “They've done a great job of tapping into what the UK's actually still really good at in terms of technology and academic research,” says Keen. “They've been looking at everything from equipment development to training programmes, investigating the underlying knowledge in terms of biomechanics and physiology, and tracking of training through IT systems. It's a whole raft of things that have led us into different

businesses, engineering companies, Formula 1, academia...”

The English Institute of Sport (whose core operating costs are covered by UK Sport) has played a critical role in applying all the above, as you'll find in our GB Boxing feature from page 31. And it's widely believed that, in terms of research and innovation, Britain is among the best in the world at developing new ways of improving sporting performance.

You need look no further than the Manchester Velodrome for proof of that. And it is impossible to discuss the changing fortunes of Team GB without focusing on cycling – a sport that has perhaps made the biggest Olympic performance leap of all. “I would agree with that, because I'll lay claim to having started it all,” laughs Keen. “Certainly the results in Beijing were off the scale – absolutely extraordinary.

“But every sport's different in terms of the gap to the podium they had to bridge from where they were, or the complexity and depth of competition that has to be overcome to get there. There's no doubt cycling has been a trailblazer, and that's so important in terms of the simplest of messages: it can be done.

“If you look back to the late 1990s, it wasn't that we didn't have some world-class cyclists – we had a few – but they were very much individual efforts.

There was nothing systematic happening there.

Whereas with Jason Kenny in Beijing, you'd have to argue he was a complete product of the opportunity that now exists [at the High Performance Cycling Programme, based at the Manchester Velodrome].

“From the moment he was identified in a track race as promising, to the way he was then assessed, coached and managed from promising young junior

Medal matters Before lottery funding took effect, Team GB managed just one gold in Atlanta. By Sydney, the lottery had boosted the money available to sports four times over, and from there it's gone skywards. For the current Olympiad (2009-13) the cash pot has been bolstered to £264,036,053...

Pre-full funding

£58,900,000 lottery funding

£70,000,000 lottery funding

£ 235,103,000 lottery funding

1996 Atlanta

2000 Sydney

2004 Athens

2008 Beijing

Zuffa LLC

Andy Lyons/Getty Images, Clive Mason/Getty Images

Kelly Holmes (above) takes her second gold in 2004; Ben Ainslie (right) celebrates his Finn class win in 2008

20 | July 6 2012 |

The Rise and Rise of Team GB

Money matters Redgrave fears the consequences of rewarding already successful sports with the most cash. And, looking at the numbers, he might have a point Rowing receives most funding

£27,287,600

and has won a total of 54 Olympic medals Table tennis receives the least cash

£1,213,848

and has won no Olympic medals since the sport was introduced into the Games in 1988

through multiple junior world titles, straight into his first Olympics, winning two medals, one of them gold... well, the system that's now in place was able to do that for him. For me, that's so much more powerful than just an individual story of progression and excellence, because it's there for others.”

Martin Bernetti/AFP/Getty Images, Scott Heavey/Getty Images, Bryn Lennon/Getty Images

LEARNING TO LOVE SUCCESS The way Keen describes the conveyor belt of success running through the Manchester Velodrome all sounds quite un-British. We're a nation that typically makes valiant efforts and brave stands before ultimately falling short. Not any more, says Redgrave.

“I think it dates back to our embarrassment at having an empire,“ he reflects. “It got to the stage when actually we wanted to be known as being good competitors – as a nation that tried hard but ended up gallant losers instead of triumphant winners.

“But, in recent years, I think our attitudes have changed. We can be still be gallant and about fair play, but there isn't that embarrassment about being winners. That's important for our country, and sport is a leading light at showing that and at leading the way for business and industry. We can be successful and a big player within world society, and sport gives us the opportunity to do that.”

Redgrave makes no secret of his view that the rowing team heading to London 2012 is “probably the best we've ever sent to an Olympic Games”. It's excellently timed, if so, with a home Games at which to impress. But Redgrave says it's down to more than just the motivation that offers. “Rowing has won gold medals at every Games since 1984, and that builds strength,” he says. “It gives us a profile as well, so it draws more people into the sport.

“It's about belief, too. When I first started, it was about 'I can be part of the team, I could be selected to compete for Great Britain'. Now, every athlete thinks they can win a medal because it's easy to look back at Games before and athletes before and see that they win medals.”

22 | July 6 2012 |

CREATING CHRIS HOYS UK Sport remains tight-lipped over medal targets in London, sticking firmly to a mantra of 'more medals from more sports' even while the post-Beijing euphoria raged. “Beijing was spectacular,” admits Keen. “But if you take the cycling result out of it, it's a steadier improvement than fourth place suggests – that was, by any measure, an extraordinary leap.

If you put in what you might call a more normal cycling performance, it looks a much steadier growth – and that was the growth we'd have been predicting.

“I'm in no doubt that winning at the highest level in sport is a long game. It takes eight to 10 years for really promising people to grow into another Chris Hoy (above), who can win when pressure is massive and expectation is huge. It's not just the conditioning and the skill – it's maturity, self-knowledge, and the robustness that comes with perfecting your craft.

“It's no different to music or the other performing arts, in which as a nation we have wonderful institutions where, if you're really special, there is a pathway you can follow that's resourced and will maximise your chance at being world-class. Sport should be the same. I still think we're building that – it's not solid yet. Sport doesn't work like that here.”

Before Keen can fully address that task, he must await the outcome of a Games at which Team GB has given itself an almost impossible act to follow.

“Did Beijing make my life more difficult?“ he asks.

“No, because, if you understand what it takes to win in high-performance sport and how fragile that can be, then you never rely on it. You know you're always going to have to work harder and be more innovative the next time. I would hope the majority of athletes who are even moderately honest would admit that, within hours of winning, they've already forgotten it and are thinking about the next one. So, Beijing: fantastic, done, dusted. Now boom, off we go.”

And the same goes for losing. So, 1996 and all that? Ancient history.

Sarah Shephard @sarahsportmag

Three wise men: the CVs Peter Keen, age 47 A national junior cycling champion, Keen began coaching aged 22 and in 1992 guided Chris Boardman to gold in Barcelona. He attended four Olympics and more than 20 Cycling World Championships as a GB team official. In 1997, Keen set up the National Lotteryfunded High Performance Cycling Programme based in Manchester, and oversaw GB's move from the 13th-ranked nation in world cycling in 1998 to fourth in 2002. After joining UK Sport in 2004 as performance consultant, Keen stepped up to director of performance in 2009. Earlier this year, he became special advisor for performance.

Sir Steve Redgrave, age 50 One of only four Olympians to have won gold medals at five consecutive Olympics. Now retired from rowing, Redgrave helped London to win the bid and has been appointed London 2012 Sports Legacy Champion, committing himself to ensuring the event leaves a lasting legacy for sport in Britain.

Steve Redgrave is an ambassador for the Matalan Sporting Promise (matalansportingpromise.co.uk)

Dave Brailsford, age 48 The current guru of British Cycling, Brailsford led Team GB to a whole new realm of success in Beijing.

Now overseeing Team Sky's bid to conquer the world of pro cycling, it remains to be seen how involved he'll be in British Cycling after this summer. If he could figure out how to clone himself first, that would be useful.

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Hannah England

Winning 1,500m silver at her first global championships in Daegu last summer thrust Hannah England into the spotlight. And, almost one year later, she’s ready for more...

The final in Daegu was a minefield of people tripping and falling. Is that something you just have to deal with in middle-distance running?

“I was waiting for someone to fall over the whole championships, to be honest. In the women’s 1,500m, people seem to go down like skittles. I think it’s because everyone can run between 3:58 and 4:02. There’s an awful lot of girls in that window, so everybody can make it to the bell and then

you end up with a massive group until the closing stages, which is why you get so many trips and falls.”

In the past, you have talked about wanting to be tougher on the track – are you succeeding?

“I think so. I’m a lot more focused and clinical about it now – cutting out the unnecessary emotions. You can’t help being emotional over something you’re passionate about, but you have to make sure it’s only positive, useful emotions.

I just have to know I can have me as a normal person, and me as an athlete – and they can be two very distinct personalities.

I don’t want to be a hard, horrible person.

But I have to accept it’s okay to be like that on the track.”

Is that quite difficult for you?

“It is, but once you accept it and almost encourage it, it becomes a lot easier.

Saying ‘it’s okay to sit at breakfast in the hotel staring at someone I want to beat’ – that’s fine. I have become a bit better at doing that. I’ve always been competitive with myself, but it’s not always been external. Fundamentally, that’s okay because it does make me push myself to run faster – but I probably need to have a bit of external competitiveness as well.” >

| July 6 2012 | 25

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England expects

Did winning silver at last year’s World Championships alter what you thought might be possible at the Olympics?

“Yeah, it shifted from thinking maybe I can make a home Olympics to me saying: ‘Right, I deserve to make it – then once I’m there, I should go to the final and hope to compete with everyone.’ It’s changed my outlook for every race I do this season, though. It’s easier to put myself at the front of that field mentally and physically too.”

Hannah England

Ian Walton/Getty Images

You’re part of Kelly Holmes’ ‘On Camp with Kelly’ training group. How did you get involved with the double gold-medallist?

“She invited a group of us who were ranked in the top 10 for our age group to a get-together when we were aged between 16 and 18. We didn’t really know what was going on, but it turned out to be a trial to get on a training camp in South Africa. It was really stressful – we had to do all sorts of pull-ups and a bleep test.

“She was looking for mental attitude as well, because she already knew how fast we could run, but she wanted to see what was behind that. She’s a great sounding board for me to talk about training, tactics and nerves – everything that comes with racing. And before every race I always get a ‘good luck’ text, just so I know she’s there if I need her.”

You went to the Beijing Olympics as a reserve – what was that experience like?

“It was an educational thing – athletes who nearly made it from different sports got to go and watch. It was a good idea, but it was quite gutting really. Some of the other sports

26 | July 6 2012 |

were like ‘this is awesome, the best experience ever’ – and then all of us from athletics were moody and very petulant.

[Laughs] Now I see it was good to see what a massive event the Olympics is, but at the time...”

Your dad’s a professor of geophysics at Oxford and you’re a biochemistry graduate, so it’s not surprising that you’ve admitted you used to overthink things. Have you learned how to put the brakes on your brain?

“I guess I try and overthink off the track.

Then, by the time I get on the track, I’ve thought everything through and decided what’s important and what isn’t. It’s hard not to though, especially since I’ve been a full-time athlete. You do just think about it more and more. It’s impossible to blank it out – you just think about everything the whole time.”

Your fiance (Luke Gunn, a 3,000m steeplechaser) is an athlete too – which must make it even more difficult, right?

“We do talk about it, but he’s very good for just saying: ‘Stop obsessing about it, shut up

“I try and overthInk thIngs off the track. then, by the tIme I’m on the track, I’ve decIded what’s Important” and watch the TV.’ And I’ll be there thinking I could just do one more stretch or physio exercise. But it’s nice to have someone who understands and who can join in. We’ll do drills and weights together, and we’ll start running at the same time, but then he drops me.” sarah shephard @sarahsportmag Hannah England is an ambassador for Garnier Ambre Solaire, who have launched two official licensed Team GB products: Clear Protect+ SPF 30 and Sun Protection Lotion SPF 30

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Paul Goodison

Making waves having won olympic gold in 2008, british sailor paul goodison tells Sport nothing short of a repeat will be acceptable this summer

Clive Mason/Getty Images

You finished fourth in 2004 and then won gold in 2008. Were you tempted to call it a day after that?

“I was very disappointed after finishing fourth in Athens, and my sole goal was to try and win in 2008.

And you don’t really know what you’re going to do after winning. Having the Games in London meant I was definitely interested and wanted to do them, though, no matter what happened in 2008. The main question was whether I would change discipline for London, but I chose to go with Laser and we’re here now.”

You secured your place in the team back in September. Was there ever any doubt?

“I was always pretty confident I’d be on the start line to defend my title. But that doesn’t take anything away from the challenge it was, because Nick Thompson in particular has come on leaps and bounds – and he did fantastically well at the worlds.

Fortunately for me, I achieved what I set out for and got the place, and Nick has been great in helping me ever since. It’s been a pretty good year so far, because I’ve been working with a new coach over the past few months and been doing some new technical things. I’m sailing well and racing well, so I just want to get the Games started now.”

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Is knowing the water and wind conditions in Weymouth going to be an advantage to you?

“It’s critical that you get used to the conditions: the weather, the current, the wind directions and so on.

But there are a lot of foreign sailors over here already doing that. I can see a Spanish guy and a Guatemalan guy out there now. The big advantage is that we don’t have to fly here to compete in unfamiliar surroundings. It was bit of a mission having to go to China for 10 days, so it’s a big advantage knowing the area and having family and friends around.”

about sailing – it’s a national thing, and we’re lucky to have a figurehead like him around because that generates a lot of interest. When we’re out training during the school holidays, there are a lot of kids around the sailing centre, and for them to have the chance to brush shoulders with Olympians and see us while we’re all training is great for the sport.

You have to take the time to sign autographs and things because it might just inspire one of these kids to go on and take up the sport.”

Would winning another gold medal be the only mark of success?

“Yeah, definitely. I wouldn’t be here spending all this time training if I didn’t think it was possible.

And when you’ve done it once, there’s nothing else that’s acceptable. You have to push harder and harder because it’ll be tougher to defend the gold than to win it – and you’ve got to be in the best position to put yourself in the top spot.”

What’s your favourite thing about sailing?

“I started when I was about three or four years old, and what I love about it is getting out on the water, away from anybody else, and really being challenged by the conditions. There are other boats out there with whom you’re competing, but you are out there by yourself with your boat and it’s up to you to make the right decisions and control your boat to get round the course.”

Mark Coughlan @coffers83

Do you think sailing as a sport in Britain will benefit from a home Olympics?

“Definitely. When you have someone like Ben [Ainslie] going for his fourth consecutive gold, it’s not just

Musto is the official performance clothing supplier to Skandia Team GBR, the British Olympic Team in the Olympic and Paralympic classes. For more information, visit musto.com

“You have to push harder and harder because it’ll be tougher to defend the gold than to win it” | July 6 2012 | 29

Inside British Boxing

BEHIND THE ROPES Eight years after only one British boxer qualified, GB Boxing is churning out Olympic gold medal hopes.

Sport went toe to toe with the people making it work

Action Images/Steven Paston Livepic

W

hen Amir Khan’s lightningfast hands got him to an Olympic final in 2004, it saved British boxing from drawing an embarrassing blank. But the medal table couldn’t hide the fact the 17-year-old was the only GB boxer out of 11 weight categories to even qualify for the Games.

In Beijing four years later, an impressive total of seven British boxers made it to the Games, delivering a successful return of three medals. But the statistics could and should have been even better. Before a punch was thrown, GB’s favourite for lightweight gold, Frankie Gavin, was on a plane back to Britain. His crime? Weighing in 1.36kg over the 60kg limit. For many, it amounted to a failure of the British boxing set-up to properly prepare one of its most talented prospects.

But out of chaos, occasionally, comes clarity. Four years on from Beijing, GB Boxing is backed by a team comprising the nation’s best sport science and sport medicine experts – a team that is producing

some of the finest boxing specimens ever to don the British vest.

It all happens at the English Institute of Sport (EIS) in Sheffield, inside a dedicated boxing hall that opened its doors so Sport could pick the brains of the aforementioned boffins and specimens. But first, to the man at the helm of the GB Boxing programme, the one with whom the buck will stop when the medals are counted on August 12...

ROB McCRACKEN PERFORMANCE DIRECTOR “When I came in after Beijing, we brought in a couple of highly experienced coaches and we had to find the right boxers, too.

Luckily, we have the talent and, with the right coaching, they’ve really come through.

Seven of the 10 boxers going to the Games are ranked in the top three in the world for their weight categories, and we’ve been winning medals at every major

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championships we’ve been to for three years now.

“I was an amateur boxer, but turned pro a year before the Barcelona Olympics. It was the wrong move. I was young, naive and somewhat silly. It was a mistake I always thought about, so when the opportunity came along to coach the best boxers we have, I jumped at it. It’s a great chance to pass on what I know about the sport.

“In terms of facilities, I think we’re right at the top of the world – I really do. We host training camps here all the time. Recently, we had Uzbekistan, Germany and France over here at the same time as us. The boxers are able to come here and concentrate on their boxing. They stay in Sheffield from Monday to Thursday, and have great support from performance analysts so they can study their opponents weeks before they’re boxing in some far away country. We have great nutritionists, strength and conditionists, psychologists, >

“we’ve been winning medals at every major championships we’ve been to for three years” | July 6 2012 | 31

Inside British Boxing weaknesses – so, making sure when they do go in the ring they’re actually doing what they’re good at. A lot of people spend time thinking they need to improve this or that and actually forgetting what they’re good at.

“A few of the girls have just boxed at the Czech Grand Prix, so tomorrow they’ll come in and we’ll watch the footage back with the coaches. They’ll feed back on technical and tactical aspects of it and I’ll look at the 24 hours preceding – were they following the routine they wanted to be following? Did they feel as though they were really clear on the tactics?

“Once they get to the Games we need to prepare them for the surreal environment of the village, where there will be so many other sports around. When you go away to a competition, you’ll know most of the competitors, bump into people you recognise and it can feel quite familiar.

Going into an Olympic Games environment will feel completely different. There’ll be people who you’ll see as superstars and the probability of getting distracted will be quite high, so managing that will be really important. Building up to the Games, it’s about trying to keep the noise level from the media and friends and family really low – a big part of our role is trying to minimise that noise and help them deal with it.”

“I train carl froch here, which really inspires the guys because they know what hard work can do” lifestyle coaches and physios who work round the clock here.

“I also train Carl Froch here, which really inspires the guys because he was on the squad 10 years ago – he’s one of them.

They’ve seen him win three world titles and become a millionaire, so they know what hard work, dedication and belief can do.

He’s 34 now, not 24, so they keep him on his toes. He’ll be in at 7.30am to do the strong man workout with them, where he has to try and keep up with them on a circuit run.”

MARK ELLISON EIS PERFORMANCE NUTRITIONIST “One of the first things we did was introduce a strict policy of no heavy clothing in the gym – shorts and T-shirt only. At boxing clubs around the country, you see athletes training in heavy gear and plastic suits so they sweat off the weight. Here, there’s not that manipulation of weight each day. And we no longer weigh them all day, every day.

Previously you could have been weighed between five and seven times during a training day, but ultimately the only weight that’s important is first thing in the morning when they’re empty.

“We control their meals 100 per cent while they’re here. We used to get catered

32 | July 6 2012 |

through the cafe, which was typical leisure centre stuff. But if we wanted to increase the iron content and asked for some red meat rather than cheap mince, they wouldn’t accommodate it. So we looked at other options. When GB Boxing bought the flats at the top of the road [where athletes can stay], that gave us the flexibility to have something in our own environment.

“We found a company called Soul Mate, which was set up as a meals on wheels for the rich and famous, and negotiated something that’s given us complete control of the guys’ diets. The food gets delivered to the flats each week and I control portion size, so big Anthony Joshua (superheavyweight) gets large portions and Andrew Selby (flyweight) gets small portions. We can even manipulate the carbohydrate, protein and fat content of the meals – or, if someone’s ill, increase antioxidants. Do it right 90 per cent of the time and you’ll be flying. You can’t live like a monk every day.”

Chris Marshall EIS Performance Psychologist “There’s always a stigma initially: ‘Oh, do I have to see a sport psychologist?’ But the way we work is about building people’s strengths as much as showing up their

Ian Gatt EIS Head Physiotherapist “Two years ago, we did an education programme around the bandaging of the boxers’ hands and we identified that a lot of the bandaging wasn’t good enough. So we developed better techniques that are now compulsory.

Within two years we saw a 15 per cent reduction of significant injuries in hand and wrists, and haven’t had any pull-outs in competitions with hand or wrist injuries.

“At competitions, other teams will have the boxer bandage their own hands. But with us, the physio will do it because we’ve found we can do something better and the boxers agree. We’ve seen which are the main areas of injury and use the bandaging as a way of reducing forces. It’s an expensive luxury, because using the tape we do is expensive.

But we measure that against injuries and value for medals – and it’s worth it.

“One of the other things we noticed was that their hand strength was actually less than the average Joe. That’s probably because of the micro-trauma that comes with regular boxing and because they were not doing any specific hand strengthening along with their general conditioning. So, we spoke to a lot of strength and conditioning coaches and came up with some hand and grip exercises that we do regularly.

“There will still be hand problems because the impact is there and there isn’t a lot of muscle compared to other areas. Hands weren’t made to box, but that’s their tool so we need to be sure we’re protecting them.”

KNOCKOUT TRIO

Meet three members of Team GB’s Olympic boxing squad, who could punch their way to the top at the Games this summer

LUKE CAMPBELL

NICOLA ADAMS

ANTHONY JOSHUA

DID YOU KNOW? Campbell paid his own way to train at Freddie Roach’s Wild Card gym in Los Angeles and Gleason’s Gym in New York, where the likes of Jake LaMotta, Roberto Duran and Mike Tyson once plied their trade. “I wanted to experience tough gyms where champions have come from,” he says.

DID YOU KNOW? She’s suffered nothing worse than a fractured knuckle and a broken thumb over her years in the ring, and has no fear – whoever she’s up against.

“I just go in thinking they’ve got two arms and two legs, same as me,” she says. “The worst that can happen is you’re gonna lose.”

DID YOU KNOW? Joshua was arrested for possession of cannabis last year, but says: “It forced me to grow up and respect my responsibilities. I wasn’t with the best group of people, but now I go running on Saturday nights – not clubbing.”

Sarah Shephard @sarahsportmag

AGE 29 WORLD RANKING 2 (Flyweight 51kg) The Leeds-born boxer has been learning her craft for 11 years, becoming the first English female to win a medal in a major tournament when she won silver at the 2007 European Championships.

Now a two-time world silver-medallist, having taken second prize in 2008 and 2010, the 5ft 3ins boxer is bidding to become one of the first female Olympic boxing medallists after the IOC voted to lift the barrier to the last all-male summer sport in 2009.

AGE 22 WORLD RANKING 3 (Super heavyweight 91kg) Big Josh, as he’s known to teammates, is the phenomenon of the GB Boxing camp. The 6ft 6ins fighter only donned a pair of boxing gloves for the first time four years ago, but rapidly rose through the ranks, becoming a national champ in 2010. After reaching the quarter finals of the 2011 Europeans, Joshua was promoted to the GB Podium squad and proved his worth with a silver medal at the 2011 worlds, thus grabbing his spot at the Olympics.

| 33

Clive Rose/Getty Images

AGE 25 WORLD RANKING 3 (Bantamweight 56kg) Just missed out on selection for Beijing in 2008, but made up for it later that year by becoming the first boxer since 1961 to win a European Championships gold medal for Great Britain. A hand injury then kept him out of the ring for 10 months, but he returned to go 23 fights unbeaten and last year won a silver medal at the World Championships to secure his place in the squad for London 2012.

34 | July 6 2012 |

Michael Schumacher

Before this weekend's British Grand Prix, Sport chats to seven-time Formula 1 champion Michael Schumacher, back on the podium for the first time in six years... t's glorious in Valencia – waves lap the hulls of yachts in the harbour and the sun beats down on packed pavement cafes. Sport, meanwhile, is crammed into a cage at the back of the Mercedes garage, watching and listening through a mesh screen as mechanics and engineers tend to the temperamental beasts that are modern Formula 1 cars. Our mid-afternoon latte can wait. After all, we have a job to do.

Surrounded by noise and machinery, it's stifling.

We can only imagine what it's like, then, for Michael Schumacher. Strapped into his car ready for free practice ahead of the European Grand Prix, he also has a job to do. As you might expect of a man with 91 Grand Prix wins to his name, Schumacher is a calm, assured presence in a frantic environment – receiving instructions from his team and talking through changes to the car set-up as his colleagues run through their race preparations. It could have all been so different – a life of sipping champagne on yachts awaited the then 37-year-old when, in 2006, he retired from a sport he had dominated for so long. But the pull of the pits was too strong.

Valencia would go on to be the highlight of Schumacher's comeback so far – his third-placed finish marking a first podium in 46 attempts since returning to the sport with Mercedes in 2010. It's been a tough road back to the top – but, despite the travails and all-too-regular retirements from individual races, Schumi is just as calm as he'll be on the circuit when we sit down to speak to him in his team's swanky paddock motorhome a few days before the race. He speaks in careful, considered sentences – the product of years of media-handling experience – but seems genuinely full of optimism (well-placed, as it turned out) that, despite a torrid start to the year, his lot will improve.

I

How do you feel the season's going for you so far?

“I think, if you look to the first two years, there was probably a clear issue in qualifying that I was not able to maximise the car's performance. Since we have changed the engineering team on my car – that was Spa last year – we made a big improvement to our personal situation. That has helped a lot, and from there on, in qualifying and the race in particular, I got much better. This year, since the beginning actually, in all fields we've been very

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competitive – we're looking very good. Although if you look at the points, they don't show it.”

But you've only finished two races so far this season?

“At least the team and I do know the reality, and we can easily understand what's going on. We all don't feel excited and happy about what has been happening on my car. The boys are doing their utmost in order to achieve the two most reliable cars and the best result possible, but then you've got to know that these cars are prototypes – and, in that case, they sometimes have problems. That's the nature of Formula 1.”

That must be frustrating?

“It's not very exciting... but it would certainly be much worse for me if it happened to be that I'm going off the track and I make mistakes and I hit the walls or whatever. That would certainly be much more tough. But we're not talking about a particular person doing failures – we're talking about a prototype car that sometimes, unfortunately, doesn't finish the race. It's not our standard. It's very unusual – especially for the team record, if you look at it.

But it's the nature of the sport that it can happen.”

"We’ve been very competitive, we’re looking very good – but if you look at the points, they don’t show it"

The DRS has given you a boost in qualifying that you've not been able to match during the race, though?

“If you say that the system compared to another car gives us a tenth of lap time performance, then yes – maybe in the race it will give me proportionally less because you can use it only on the straight. This is the case, but some people wish to believe it gave us a big advantage – and that's why we're looking good in qualifying and sometimes maybe not in the race. But if you make a proper analysis, you understand that now we are as competitive in the race as in qualifying – whereas initially we were not because we were not doing a good enough job with setting up the car.”

So do you think you're in a good position to win a race this season?

“Erm, I hope so.”

You had provisional pole in Monaco – do you think that could have been your moment, were it not for the five-place grid penalty?

“I think it's a very simple calculation – with being in pole position and starting from there, I would have been leading the race. But I would have still retired from my mechanical problem that I had anyway.”

Knowing how things have turned out since your return to Formula 1, would you still have made the decision to come back?

“I do feel excited, and I think Monaco was a good example despite the race – and yes, I would still be here. The Formula 1 world has its excitement in different areas – it's not only about the driving and the success that you have. That is the ultimate, but in the meantime developing something, building up a team and achieving something can ultimately be a very big challenge and a target. Yes, it was a surprise that this challenge and work was much bigger than we anticipated. But we understood that very early and we have the means [to be successful]. >

| 35

www.mercedes-amg-f1.com

Return of the king?

Mercedes' unique DRS system came in for some scrutiny at the start of the season – do you think it could be to blame for the reliability issue?

“No. No, definitely not. I mean, yes – we had a DRS failure [in Canada], but that was very different to the first time we retired in Bahrain. So I don't think this is to do with that.”

Michael Schumacher

"We’re talking about a prototype car that sometimes, unfortunately, doesn’t finish"

You've had a couple of years now to get used to the changes to the sport, such as KERS and DRS. Has it made the sport better? And is it easier or harder?

“I used to have a lot more buttons to press in previous days, so that's not a big deal. It is different and you sort of have to think about it, and you have to be serious and prepare yourself. But it's not very difficult. It's definitely improved – if you look at the overtaking possibilities we have these days, they're serious. Whereas before, if you didn't want

British Grand Prix Sunday 1pm Sky Sports F1 & BBC One

somebody to overtake, you could have stopped him too easily. So in that respect I'm definitely happy to see the FIA doing the right measures and having good systems.”

How do you think you have changed over the course of your career?

“Umm... I got quicker, I think. [Laughs] If you get a little bit more experienced, you have a little bit more of a better overview. You are more relaxed in the moment. You're able to focus much better, and therefore steer and set the targets much more clearly. You're still a human, and you still make your mistakes. But you make far less. I think I'm much more helpful for the team the way I am now, compared to maybe 10 or 15 years ago, because I'm much more able to focus the team and give directions.”

Sky Sports F1 commentators David Croft and Anthony Davidson talk us through the twists and turns at Silverstone...

DC: “It's one of the great race tracks in the world today – even in its current guise.”

AD: “I'm a fan of the new layout, I don't care what people say about the old layout – they need to move on, because it's created the bit that Silverstone's been missing for

So, what is the goal?

“Still winning a race – that is naturally our goal, and maybe not only one.”

Schumacher's third-place finish in Valencia is a step towards achieving that goal. And, for the first time since his return, you have to say it wouldn't be a surprise if he was to occupy the top step of a podium again. It almost felt like he'd never been away as he posed for photographs and drenched fellow world champions Kimi Raikkonen and Fernando Alonso in expensive booze after the last race.

It has not been the same straightforward course he was used to since he exchanged the life of a retired multimillionaire for the gruelling physical and mental demands of his sport. But two years after his return to Formula 1, Michael Schumacher has finally tasted champagne again – and not just on one of those harboured yachts.

Amit Katwala @amitkatwala

some time: a nice technical section round Village and The Loop. That's created a nice overtaking opportunity into Brooklands now, and they've left alone the best section of any circuit, maybe bar the first sector at Suzuka, with Copse, Maggots, Becketts, Chapel – an excellent sector.”

DC: “Last year's race was sensational there – we didn't get the blown diffusers because the FIA got their way for that race,

Club

if you remember. We got a change from wet to dry, and we had some sensational racing right to the wire where Lewis [Hamilton] and Felipe [Massa] were battling. You can get great British Grands Prix, but you don't always get it – sometimes they're a bit processional, but you get the greatest fans.”

AD: “It's one of the best races in the world.”

Sky Sports F1 has full live coverage of every race on Sky Channel 408

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Stowe

Village The Loop Copse Chapel

36 | July 6 2012 |

Maggotts Becketts

www.mercedes-amg-f1.com

I think we have proven that already this year by winning with Nico [Roseberg] in Shanghai. And, ultimately, I've proven I could have won races. We are on the right track, so I'm reasonably happy. It's not only what I see on my account in terms of the two points [now 17, with the European Grand Prix podium] – I know what we are capable of.”

Is another World Championship a possibility?

“Not this year.”

The Greatest

The Greatest…

BrITISH DrIverS There’s a lot of people I have to consider. It’s very difficult you see. Jackie Stewart won so many races, but I certainly wouldn’t put him as the greatest driver – but he certainly was exceptionally competent.

James Hunt, I wouldn’t put him there.

Mike Hawthorn, I wouldn’t. Graham Hill, I certainly wouldn’t. You see, it’s very difficult actually to compare drivers today with drivers of my era, because it was very dangerous then. And, obviously, if you’re going to race round a circuit, you were a lot more cautious or possibly a little more cautious then. For example, Lewis Hamilton is fantastically fast – but would he be that fast if he was thinking ‘Christ, I might get killed’?

So you have just got to really ignore that factor.”

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Mark Thompson/Getty Images, Paul Gilham/Getty Images

by stirling moss

6

Lewis Hamilton

“Lewis is exceptionally fast. He’s one of the great late brakers in Formula 1, and he’s a very exciting driver to watch. I just think that he probably gets as much out of his car as anybody out there can do – and I think he’s as good as it gets.

I don’t think the pressure worries him much, from what I’ve seen. It doesn’t seem to matter too much to him.”

5

Jenson Button

“He’s a very complete driver. As conditions change, I think he becomes even more competitive – so I think he handles all sorts of situations exceptionally well. He’s sort of a thinking man’s Lewis. If you put them both in the same car, Lewis is going to be the fastest. But if you get a sprinkle of rain, anything like that, Jenson is the most adaptable in knowing what to do.” >

| July 6 2012 | 39

The Greatest

“Well, he was in my era, and John Surtees had enormous car control. I remember seeing him in Monaco, I think it was. If you were following him, you saw as much of the front of the car as the back – it was absolutely unbelievable, his car control.

He settled down and then became world champion.

He really was an enormously talented driver.

And tough. He was a tough person.”

3

Nigel Mansell

“He unfortunately wasn’t in my era, but if one looks at Nigel Mansell, he was a showman.

Very fast, and I think he’s somebody who was a real racer, really. I think it’s probably his best quality.

It’s very difficult if you’re not driving against guys, because it’s very difficult to know them properly.

All I have to go on is what you see on the box, and his practice time and that sort of thing. To me, the impressive thing – the most interesting quality that a driver has – is whether he is a racer. And there aren’t many racers. There are an awful lot of fast drivers, and there are people who are really fast, but they’re not real racers. And that’s something that Nigel had.”

2

2

Tony Brooks

“For my money, if I’d ever owned a team that raced in sports cars and touring and Formula 1, I’d take Brooks above anybody. Exceptionally fast, careful with his car, a very easy person to be with – not in anyway flight, not moody or anything like that.

He was just an exceptional driver. I raced alongside him – we shared a car because in my era a race was three hours minimum, and you were allowed to change driver. He’d had an accident at Le Mans, and we raced in the British Grand Prix after that at Aintree. I had an arrangement with him that if my car should break, he’d give me his. So we actually shared the same car because, in my car, the injection pipes broke. So I came back to the pits and stood there with my helmet and I think he was quite relieved. But he was a quite exceptional driver.”

1 4

3

Jim Clark

“When I retired, Jim Clark (below) was just coming in. Up until then, many factories wouldn’t sell us their latest car – we had to do it with last year’s car. And I can remember saying to my team owner, Rob Walker: ‘Look, I’m not going to be able to beat this guy Clark with last year’s car – I’m going to need the same machinery.’ So that was the big thing from my point of view. His added benefit was that he drove for Lotus and had Colin Chapman, who was a brilliant engineer – no doubt about it. I think Chapman and he as a pair were formidable – they went up another notch.

“For instance, Jim would come in and say something about the car; he might not know what it was, but Colin could interpret that and build that into the car. They became a team, so obviously when you refer to Clark, you refer to Chapman behind him as a terribly important ingredient of his success. I think probably his greatest thing really was that, whatever the weather and whatever car he had, he could win. He really was that good.”

Sir Stirling Moss was speaking to Amit Katwala. To celebrate a season of in-depth Formula 1 coverage on the Sky Sports F1™ HD channel, he has created a limited edition Sky+HD 1TB. For more information, visit sky.com/designerboxes

40 | July 6 2012 |

Express/Getty Images, Keystone/Getty Images, Chris Cole/Allsport, Victor Blackman/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

4

John Surtees

Advertising feature

EvEry sEcond counts Speed, precision and innovation: values shared by Certina and the Sauber F1 Team

B

y all accounts, it’s been a mad Formula 1 season so far, with 11 different drivers on the podium. One of those is 22-yearold Mexican driver Sergio Perez, who drives for the Sauber F1 Team, which is sponsored by Certina.

He has claimed two podium finishes this season – third in Canada and, most impressively, a battling second-place finish at the Malaysian Grand Prix. “It was a very good result,” he says. “I was pushing all the way through and the conditions were very difficult, but we managed a great race.”

The Sauber F1 Team deserve it – they put a lot of work into the pursuit of perfection, with engineers and mechanics working long hours in the team’s Swiss offices to get more out of the cars. The same goes for Perez when he is in the car. “We are working a lot,” he explains. “I try to work myself through the lap, try to squeeze the maximum out of the car each time I jump into it, and I always try to do my best.”

After a tough start to his Formula 1 career, with a few retirements in his debut season, Perez has benefitted from the confidence that comes from having a reliable car. He now sits ninth in the World Drivers’ Championship, but has vowed to

keep on improving, and to keep working hard to get maximum performance from the car.

The young and talented Mexican has certainly been doing that this season, as the Sauber F1 Team have been punching above their weight – outperforming the traditional favourites. So what’s his secret? “It’s all about time and precision,” he says. “You have to turn at the right moment and open the throttle at the right moment not to create too much instability in the corner, so it’s very important to always be precise.”

Preparation is important too. As with Certina’s quality timepieces, the hard work starts long before the finished product hits the shelves – or in Sauber’s case, the track.

Pre-season at the factory in Switzerland,the best brains in the business work with the drivers, according to Perez: “We give input about the car from the previous year, what we need to improve, and the designers and engineers try to get the maximum out of the design.”

The parallels between both Sauber and Certina’s search for perfection are strong, and this makes them perfect partners – even the drivers approve. “I think it’s a good combination,” says Perez. “Both are Swiss, and it’s great to have a good watch brand supporting the team.”

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The Sauber F1 Team logo is engraved on the back

| 41

Shane Watson Saturday England v Australia: 4th ODI Riverside Ground Sky Sports 1 10.30am

42 | July 6 2012 |

All-round good guy

to make himself available for Australia in all three formats. As an all-rounder, he is ranked five in the world in Test cricket, second in ODIs, and first in Twenty20; few in the shortest form of the game can match his combination of aggressive hitting at the top of the order and tight medium-fast bowling, but T20 wasn’t always a format he enjoyed.

“I wasn’t a huge fan when it first came in, because at that stage my batting in particular hadn’t evolved to a point where I was consistently powerful,” he reveals. “I was still in that transitional period of working out how to be the best batsman I could. So 2004 was the first time I ever played Twenty20 cricket, here in England with Hampshire, but over a period of four or five years I worked very hard on different aspects of my game to make it more suited to power-hitting and, in terms of bowling, to find ways to be able to contain guys who are really going for it.

“Looking back, I feel lucky to have come through at a time when T20 is around, and feel able to contribute to any Twenty20 team with either bat or ball. But you think about guys from past eras, players like Viv Richards and Ian Botham... you know, these guys would have been phenomenal to watch.”

Australia trail England in the current one-day series, but in vice-captain Shane Watson the tourists have a man who will fight to the end for his country – and do so smiling, too hen Sport shuffles north of the Thames to meet Australia’s star all-rounder Shane Watson at Lord’s, the wind is blowing and the rain is falling. It is late June, and the tourists have flown in for a one-off series of five one-day internationals against the old enemy. There remains a 12-month wait until they return for the Ashes, and yet another grand British summer is threatening to interrupt what little cricket they have travelled for. So why is Watson so happy?

“Aw look, I absolutely love coming to the UK,” comes the response. “It’s one of the best places in the world to be able to come and tour, and there’s definitely a big buzz around the place this summer. I mean, there always is around London anyway, but especially so right now with Wimbledon on at the same time – and with the Olympics coming as well, it’s going to be an amazing summer.”

All of which may be true for the locals, but Watson and his teammates aren’t hanging around for the Olympics. So what can they possibly hope to gain from five single games of international cricket – two of which, at the time of writing, they have already lost?

“To play any game against England, whether that’s at home or away, is the ultimate for any Australian cricketer,” says Watson. “It’s the oldest rivalry in cricket, and while this may seem a random series compared with the Ashes, you still grab any opportunity you get to play against them. It hurts more than anything when you lose against the English, but it’s one of the biggest rewards you can experience if you’re able to beat them. This is a great appetiser for the Ashes next year – a chance to get England-Australia at the forefront of everyone’s minds.”

W

The 31-year-old might have wished to revise such a sentiment after his side fell to defeat in the first two matches of the series, at Lord’s and the Oval last weekend.

The current Australia team still tops the international one-day charts – a ranking underlined by victory in the marathon Commonwealth Bank Series against India and Sri Lanka earlier this year – but to the casual observer it pales into weak comparison against the glorious sides of the recent past. Watson is one of few survivors of that era, when the likes of Hayden, Ponting, Gilchrist, Warne and McGrath bestrode the game like giants, but he prefers to look forward rather than back.

“We’re definitely still evolving as a team,” he admits. “I was lucky enough to play in a team that had so many all-time greats of world cricket, and there’s no doubt that it’s certainly changed from that team. But we’re still having success, and I think we’re only going to continue to get better.

“We have some young guys coming through who have amazing talent – and it’s exciting to be a part of that, seeing these guys grow, learn what it’s like to be an international cricketer and know what it is to play England.

For me growing up, that was the ultimate aim; and I know the younger guys in the squad are in that same space right now.”

Bat or ball It’s now a full decade since Watson made his own international debut, in a one-day game against South Africa at Centurion. Injuries took a significant toll on the early part of his career, but they also fostered a hunger and desire for the game that means he continues

“It’s the oldest rivalry in cricket, and it hurts more than anything when you lose against the English” Download the free Sport iPad app in the Apple Newsstand

Competitive, no matter what

*

185

Shane Watson’s highest score in a one-day international, achieved against Bangladesh at the 2011 World Cup. It’s the biggest ODI hit ever by an Australian and contained no fewer than 15 sixes – not just an Aussie best, but a world record too

A wistful moment spent romanticising over just how destructive that pair would have been in Twenty20 leads into us asking Watson about the current England team. Who does he most relish crossing swords with?

“It’s a good question, because England have a number of world-class players,” he says. “But I suppose the guy who impresses me most is Tim Bresnan. He’s probably the one guy in that team who is most after my own heart; he can have an impact with both bat and ball, and as another all-rounder I enjoy watching how he’s evolving his game.

“But the guy I enjoy playing against most is Jimmy Anderson. He’s an opening bowler who tries to find a way of getting under your skin, and as an opener I guess that’s the effect I try to have on him as well. But the best part about it is that because he’s such a good bowler, especially with the new ball, facing him is always a real challenge. That’s what gets you going, what you play for... knowing that it will be competitive no matter what. You want to be out there and up for it.”

And there you have the man in a nutshell. No matter how Australia fare in the remainder of this series, one thing will be certain – that Shane Watson will keep on going out there, and will always be up for it.

Tony Hodson @tonyhodson1 Shane Watson was speaking on behalf of ASICS, the official footwear and apparel sponsor to Cricket Australia. See asics.co.uk

| 43

7 Days

JULYHIGHLIGHTS 6-JULY 12 » Horse Racing: Coral-Eclipse » p46 » Baseball: MLB All-Star Game » p48 » Athletics: Diamond League Paris » p48 » Cycling: Tour de France Stage 10 » p49 » Snooker: Australian Goldfields Open » p50

OUR PICK OF THE ACTION FROM THE SPORTING WEEK AHEAD

thursday > GOLF | ABERDEEN ASSET MANAGEMENT SCOTTISH OPEN | CASTLE STUART, INVERNESS | SKY SPORTS 1 10.30AM

You wait ages for a links golf event to turn up, and then three come along at once...

After the roaring success of last weekend’s Irish Open at Royal Portrush, the European Tour moves to the north of Scotland on Thursday for the Scottish Open.

Its host venue, Castle Stuart near Inverness, is an exquisite links test, especially if the wind blows – and it will provide a perfect preparation for the Open Championship itself, which begins the following week at Royal Lytham in Lancashire.

So you’d expect that US golfers in particular, normally starved of links golf, would be queueing up to practise ahead of the Open. Yet most will stay away and

44 | July 6 2012 |

leave world number one Luke Donald as the star attraction.

One reason for that might (possibly) be the weather. Last year was the first time Castle Stuart had staged the Scottish Open, but gale-force winds and torrential rain – eventually causing a landslide across the course – meant the tournament had to be reduced to 54 holes. The softened greens played directly into Donald’s hands, as he closed the week with a sensational 63 to win by four from Swede Fredrik Andersson Hed. If they manage to get through the week unscathed, and anyone is to challenge

* See next week’s Sport for an exclusive interview with Luke Donald as he prepares for the Open Championship

2,180

Pounds won by Neil Coles on becoming the first ever Scottish Open champion, at Downfield in 1972. Last year’s champion, Luke Donald, collected £440,000

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Richard Heathcote/Getty Images

Links of Scotland

Donald, it could be local (ish) man Paul Lawrie.

The Scot, who won the Open at Carnoustie in 1999, is rejuvenated of late and playing the best golf of his life. He thrives in bad weather, and shot a 64 in the second round here last year. A mark of his success this season is that he is currently second in the European Ryder Cup standings – some seven places ahead of Donald. If the wind gets up in Inverness, expect Lawrie to blow hot.

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7 Days Saturday Horse racing | coral-eclipse | sandown park | cHannel 4/racing Uk 3.45pm

Sunday motogp | roUnd 8: german grand prix | sacHsenring, HoHenstein-ernsttHal BBc two 12pm

Stoner lights up

The racing career of one of the most successful and versatile horses of recent times looks set to come to an end at Sandown tomorrow, when So You Think (above) makes what is expected to be his last competitive appearance on a racecourse in the prestigious Coral-Eclipse.

The winner of 14 of his 23 starts, the well-travelled six-year-old took his career earnings past the £5m mark when hosing up in the Prince of Wales’s Stakes at Royal Ascot last month. That impressive two-length defeat of the Queen-owned Carlton House led trainer Aidan O’Brien to issue a spectacular apology to the people of Australia, where So You Think had looked a real superstar for much of his

Alan Crowhurst/Getty Images, Mirco Lazzari gp/Getty Images

They think it’s all over

early career. “I’m sorry I’ve made a muck-up of training this horse for so long,” said the Irishman, who has seen his charge rack up a run of near-misses to go with a bunch of Group 1 wins since his arrival in the spring of 2011. “I made a right dog’s dinner of it.”

How true that is remains open to question, but So You Think was good enough to defeat former Derby winner Workforce in the Coral-Eclipse 12 months ago – and, with O’Brien’s increasingly impressive son Joseph set for the leg-up at Sandown tomorrow, the team look more than likely to send their horse out on a winning note.

The main challenge could come from the Frankie Dettori-ridden Farhh, who was less than three lengths behind So You Think at Ascot, or the in-form trainer-jockey duo of John Gosden and William Buick, who team up with the returning King George winner Nathaniel. In truth, however, So You Think should head off to a lucrative stud career down under as a winner – now that would be something to tell the grandfoals.

As starters go, motogP’s german grand Prix should act as a pretty tasty way to whet the appetite of motorsport fans ahead of the Formula 1 at silverstone this sunday. it also gives reigning champ casey stoner (pictured) the opportunity to take an unlikely lead in the drivers’ standings. stoner arrives in germany level on points with Jorge lorenzo after wiping out the spaniard’s 25-point lead in one fell swoop in the netherlands last weekend. stoner’s victory at assen, combined with the first-corner crash that ended lorenzo’s race, sees the pair level on 140 points as the season nears its halfway mark. if either is to win on sunday, however, they will likely have to get past lightning starter dani pedrosa. lorenzo’s fellow spaniard is on a hat-trick of wins in germany and sits only 19 points behind the big two in the championship.

Advertising feature

Here Come THe girlS! he Dubai Duty Free Shergar Cup is returning to Ascot with a twist for 2012, as the first ever all-female team is set to compete alongside three male teams for one of the most coveted trophies in horse racing.

Our own Hayley Turner will join forces with North American stars Chantal Sutherland (left) and Emma-Jayne Wilson to take on teams representing Great Britain & Ireland, Europe and the Rest of the World in what always proves to be a great day of racing entertainment.

T

46 | July 6 2012 |

And the fun doesn’t stop there. An array of activities, from fairground rides and urban sports to street dancing and jockey workshops for the kids, will entertain the whole family – and, after racing, Ascot is laying on a two-hour nostalgia-fest from the 1980s, featuring seven acts from the Here and Now tour. This includes some of the top female acts from the decade, including Bananarama and Belinda Carlisle (far left). What more could you honestly want?

Tickets for the Dubai Duty Free Shergar Cup on Saturday August 11, including the Here and Now concert, start from £26. To book, or for further information, call 0844 346 3000 or visit ascot.co.uk

7 Days Tuesday BaseBall | MlB all-star GaMe | KauffMan stadiuM, Kansas City esPn aMeriCa 12.30aM

Friday athletiCs | saMsunG diaMond leaGue: Paris stade de franCe, Paris | BBC red Button 7PM

Hey batter batter

Kauffman Stadium, home of the Kansas City Royals, hosts this year’s Midsummer Classic – the 83rd MLB All-Star Game. The top players from each league will be in action, the winning team gaining home field advantage for their representatives in the World Series.

More than 34.9 million votes have been cast by the public to decide which hitters start the game, and leading the way with more than 11 million of those is Josh Hamilton of the Texas Rangers (above). He is among the league leaders in almost every statistic, and this season became only the 16th player in history to hit four home runs in a single game (against the Baltimore Orioles).

Also swinging for the fences will be the Toronto Blue Jays’ Jose Bautista, on target for another 50 round-trippers this season. If he hits the ball it usually goes out

– his batting average this season is a measly .239 (at time of going to press).

The NL were victorious last year – and, even though they will be missing their leading vote-getter Matt Kemp through injury, have plenty of talent themselves. This includes Joey Votto, the Cincinnati Reds’ first-base slugger, whose patience at the plate sees him leading the league in walks and OBP, and the St Louis Cardinals’ switch-hitting Carlos Beltran, who is having a monstrous year.

The NL pitching roster could also be headed by New York Mets’ knuckleballer RA Dickey (below). Dickey is the only player currently throwing the knuckleball in the Majors, reinventing himself as a knuckler after not making the grade as a regular pitcher. He has mastered the art to such an extent that he went 44 innings without allowing an earned run earlier this season.

Dictionary corner KnucKleball The most unpredictable and the most difficult pitch in baseball, thrown slower than any other pitch (around 60mph). The aim is to release the ball with little or no spin so that it reacts to the air around it, making it completely unpredictable.

Former Pittsburgh Pirates hitter Willie Stargell once described the pitch, saying: “Throwing a knuckleball for a strike is like throwing a butterfly with hiccups across the street into your neighbour’s mailbox.”

50 | June 29 2012 |

Last tango in Paris

For some of the world’s finest athletes, the final countdown to London 2012 begins tonight, with the first of three Diamond League meetings staged on consecutive weekends in July.

The Stade de France in Paris is the venue, where world 400m hurdles champion Dai Greene (above) will look to gain valuable track time ahead of the Olympics. The Welshman has failed to fire this year, his recovery from a winter knee operation hampering his preparations to the extent that his season’s best is a moderate 48.96s – a full second and more short of Javier Culson’s world-leading 47.92s.

Tonight’s Meeting Areva, and next weekend’s two-day Aviva London Grand Prix, offers Greene two opportunities to close the gap on the Puerto Rican, who is favourite to claim gold in London. If he’s to challenge for the Olympic title, he will need to take them.

Greene is by no means the only Brit in action at the Stade de France, however. New British record holder Shara Proctor goes in the women’s long jump, while defending Olympic champ Christine Ohuruogu continues her career revival in the women’s 400m – and US-born Tiffany Porter will take a break from learning the national anthem to try and get close to all-conquering Aussie Sally Pearson in the 100m hurdles.

There’s no question as to the meeting’s main men, though. The seemingly unbeatable David Rudisha should stroll to yet another win in the 800m (leaving Team GB’s Andrew Osagie one of many in his wake), before the night climaxes with another clash between Justin Gatlin and Tyson Gay in the men’s 100m. The American duo will have watched with interest as Yohan Blake bested Usain Bolt at last week’s Jamaican trials – with London just round the corner, they may just be starting to believe that gold isn’t an impossible dream after all.

Rolling for Colombier

If the opening week of the Tour de France could ever be called a phoney war, then this is possibly the year. From the minute Fabian Cancellara crossed the line in Liege to win last Saturday’s Prologue, to the time the last cyclist rolls into Besancon at the end of Monday’s individual time trial, the imposing Col du Grand Colombier has cast a significant shadow over the 2012 Tour. After a rest day on Tuesday, though, Wednesday’s Stage 10 represents the moment when this year’s race truly opens for business.

Put simply, the Grand Colombier is a monster. Arguably the toughest in France, the gruelling mile-high climb is making its debut in this year’s Tour. But, set only 43km from the stage end, it is likely to lend itself to a multirider breakaway rather than the kind of single, devastating attack for which the race’s toughest mountain stages are renowned.

That’s not to say it won’t give an indication of who may challenge for the prestigious Polka Dot Jersey, however. The first serious mountain stage of the 2011 Tour was won by Spain’s Samuel Sanchez (pictured), who went on to become the King of the Mountains despite a series of crashes in the race’s first week. Sanchez, the defending Olympic Road Race champion, is among the Polka Dot favourites again this year – don’t expect him to be too far away at the end of this stage.

Elsewhere, the Grand Colombier will provide a stern test of Bradley Wiggins’ mettle as he continues his bid to become the first Brit to win Le Tour. This is not a stage on which you can win the race, but it’s certainly one on which you can lose it. Wiggins and his Team Sky teammates will set out with one simple order: no disasters.

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Cooper Neill/Getty Images, Jamie McDonald/Getty Images, Lionel Bonaventure/AFP/Getty Images

Wednesday CyCling | Tour de FranCe STage 10 | MaCon To Bellegarde-Sur-ValSerine | iTV4 2pM & BriTiSh euroSporT 12.30pM

7 Days

Maximum return

The snooker season has begun with something of the flavour of the start of the Formula 1 calendar, with Australia following the opening ranking Wuxi tournament in China.

And, in terms of picking winners, it promises to prove just as tricky. Home favourite Ding Junhui fell at the first hurdle to Mark Davis in China, with world number five Neil Robertson (pictured) exiting at the same stage.

The Aussie should be more confident of a better showing in his own home state of Victoria, where he faces Nigel '00-147' Bond in the first round – and a potential semi final against the in-form defending champion Stuart Bingham.

Bingham's form in Wuxi saw him knock out world number one Mark Selby on his way to the final, where he lost 10-4 to Ricky Walden despite knocking in a maximum. Both Walden (now in the world top 10) and Selby will line up in Bendigo, although there will be no sign of Messrs O’Sullivan, Trump or Higgins.

The absence of some of those bigger names mean snooker may not quite have the draw of F1 down under, but the Goldfields Open’s prize pot of about £46,000 means it will be just as competitive.

50 | July 6 2012 |

Monday RUGBY LEAGUE | STOBART SUPER LEAGUE: WARRINGTON WOLVES v CATALAN DRAGONS | HALLIWELL JONES STADIUM | SKY SPORTS 1 8PM

dragons on fire

This week’s Monday night Super League game promises to be a cracker, with second-placed Warrington welcoming third-placed Catalan Dragons to the Halliwell Jones Stadium. A win for the Dragons would see them leapfrog the Wolves – and, given current form, few would bet against them.

An under-strength Warrington went down 48-24 to Salford in their last fixture, coach Tony Smith admitting he had rested some personnel. “Some of our missing players were injured and some rested,” he said afterwards.

“We have rested and rotated all season, and it was important to give some of our players who had been out some game time.”

After topping the Super League table last season, Smith’s side failed to make either the Challenge Cup final or the Grand Final, so he’s

BEST oF THE REST

keen to manage his resources for the crucial last quarter of the season. However, with a Challenge Cup semi against Huddersfield looming just six days after this fixture, his selection on Monday will be interesting.

The Dragons have no such concerns, having come through a tough battle at Hull KR a fortnight ago before beating Wakefield Trinity Wildcats 34-10 in the south of France last weekend. Scott Dureau and Leon Pryce offer a nice blend of pace and strength in the backs, while Aussie back-rower Steve Menzies – the Super League’s oldest ever player – continues to roll back the years.

The 38-year-old (pictured) scored two tries against Wakefield, one a length-of-the-field effort in 30-degree heat. It’s likely to be a little cooler in Warrington on Monday...

Friday

Sunday

RUGBY UNION Super Rugby: Chiefs v Crusaders, Waikato Stadium, Hamilton, Sky Sports 4 8.30am

MOTORCYCLING British Superbikes Round 6, Oulton Park, British Eurosport 2 11.25am

CRICKET Friends Life T20: Lancashire v Yorkshire, Old Trafford, Sky Sports 2 7pm RUGBY LEAGUE Super League: Leeds Rhinos v Hull FC, Headingley Carnegie Stadium, Sky Sports 1 8pm

Saturday AUSSIE RULES AFL: St Kilda v Essendon, Etihad Stadium, Melbourne, ESPN 10.30am RUGBY UNION Super Rugby: Waratahs v Brumbies, ANZ Stadium, Sydney, Sky Sports 2 10.40am CRICKET West Indies v New Zealand: 2nd ODI, Sabina Park, Kingston, Sky Sports 4 2.25pm

BEACH SOCCER 2013 FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup Qualifying Final, Victory Park, Moscow, ESPN 4.45pm FOOTBALL MLS: Chicago Fire v LA Galaxy, Toyota Park, Chicago, ESPN 8pm

tueSday ATHLETICS World Junior Championships Day 1, Barcelona, British Eurosport 9.30am CYCLING Tour of Poland Stage 1, Poland, British Eurosport 4.30pm

WedneSday ATHLETICS World Junior Championships Day 2, Barcelona, British Eurosport 9.30am

BASKETBALL France v Great Britain, France, ESPN 5pm

CRICKET West Indies v New Zealand: 3rd ODI, Warner Park, Basseterre, St Kitts, Sky Sports 2 2.25pm

UFC UFC 148: Anderson Silva v Chael Sonnen II, MGM Grand, Las Vegas, ESPN 3am

CRICKET Clydesdale Bank 40: Warwickshire v Sussex, Edgbaston, Sky Sports 1 4.30pm

Dean Mouhtaropoulos/Getty Images, Stu Forster/Getty Images

Monday > SNOOKER | AUSTRALIAN GOLDFIELDS OPEN | BENDIGO STADIUM, VICTORIA | BRITISH EUROSPORT 2 7AM

Extra time Kit

P60 Moves like Jagger: but Mick won’t be serenading Centre Court any time soon

Making the most of your time and money 2

See you on court Kit yourself out and start your journey to becoming the next Andy Murray.

We can be, and are, serious...

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1. adidas adiPure Polo Classy, elegant and plain white enough to keep the Wimbledon head honchos happy, adidas’ white polo offers Climalite fabric to sweep away sweat from your skin, and bonded shoulders for increased comfort. £37 | adidas.co.uk

2. Dunlop Limited Edition Wimbledon 10-racket Bag With space for 10 rackets, plus extra room for phones, shoes and plenty more, this is a tennis fan’s dream.

And we’ve got one – signed by John McEnroe – to give away. Simply download the Sport iPad app to find out more. We do spoil you sometimes.

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£50 | prodirecttennis.com

3. Wilson Steam 100 BLX Racket Promising power and spin in a lighter racket, the Steam is used on the tour by such luminaries as Kei Nishikori (beaten by Murray in the Australian Open quarters), Ernest Gulbis and 2011 Wimbledon champ Petra Kvitova.

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£120 | prodirecttennis.com

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4. adidas adiPower Barricade Trainers Designed by David Nalbandian, these come with a reinforced steel toe for those tricky line judges.

Don’t panic, ATP chaps, we jest. These light and flexible trainers do, however, offer extra stability for those Djokovic-inspired glides and slides around court. £95 | adidas.co.uk

5. Nike RF Jacket Impress your opponents by turning up to a match wearing this smart Roger Federer jacket. Whether or not you go on to dominate your local tennis club for the next seven years is down to you.

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6. Slazenger Wimbledon Ultra Vis Balls Emulate Murray’s famous on-court, mid-point juggling act by playing with one of these while keeping another not quite in your pocket. We can think of no better way to make chalk titanium dioxide fly up. £3 | sportsdirect.com

52 | July 6 2012 |

Photography: Ed Price

£63 | nikestore.com

Download the free Sport iPad app in the Apple Newsstand

Extra time Brittany Binger

54 | July 6 2012 |

Glover and three-time All-Star Sizemore will not be appearing in this season’s MLB All-Star Game on July 10. He is on the disabled list for the seventh time in the past four years, having had back surgery in early spring. And that came after knee surgery last October.

Still, at least he can spend more time with the missus. We could think of less appealing people to say ‘bello’ to in the morning.

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Apix Syndication

Grady’s W lady

ere Facejacker’s bart critic and social bommentator Brian Badonde to have a favourite model-turnedactor-turned-baseball WAG, we reckon Brittany Binger bould be her.

Badonde, however, would probably be more interested in Binger’s fiance, Cleveland Indians’ centre-fielder Grady Sizemore. And so he will be disappointed to know that two-time Gold

Extra time Grooming the styleR

Oh I say...

Gillette Fusion ProGlide Styler More versatile than Roger Federer’s ground strokes, Gillette’s new Fusion ProGlide Styler features a Braunengineered Power Trimmer with three slim combs that manoeuvre effortlessly through hair, a precision

Wimbledon draws to a close this weekend, so it’s about time you scrubbed up to a standard considered acceptable at the All England Club. New tools, please

edging blade that helps sculpt accurate facial hair lines, and its most advanced blade technology yet. And Gillette’s non-foaming Clear Shave Gel allows you to see where you’re trimming. Ace. boots.com

Fusion ProGlide Blades clip on to the compact styler with ergonomic grips

Fusion ProGlide Clear Shave Gel: £3.99

Gillette Fusion ProGlide Styler: £20

the muscle mOIstuRIseR sOak

the muscle Rub and spRay

the fRagRance

Molton Brown Bracing Silverbirch Muscle Soak

Natural Hero Peppermint Muscle Spritz and Ginger Muscle Rub

Eau De Lacoste Blanc

Something to help combat the effects of those epic Djokovicesque five-setters with your dad (or that overly keen early retiree who lives in your building). Molton Brown’s bath soak contains potent thermal salts and active extracts of silverbirch to soothe muscles, flush away toxins and boost the condition of your skin.

Those thermal salts are taken from the seawater deposits in the German Leine Valley and are therefore, as we understand it, more powerful than a Goran Ivanisevic service game, circa 1996. moltonbrown.co.uk

It’s those two weeks of the year when you actually pick up a tennis racket, so for Jeremy Bates’ sake, give yourself a chance with this combo, which will ease muscle and joint stiffness and soothe fatigued limbs. naturalhero.co.uk

56 | July 6 2012 |

£19 for 300g

This limited-edition bottle from the house of a man who twice took the honours at SW19 is designed to ‘mirror the chic simplicity’ of the original Rene Lacoste polo shirt. A fresh and stylish way, say Lacoste, to celebrate the beauty of the game. lacoste-parfums.com

£42 for 100ml £9.99 for 100ml

£11.99 for 100ml

Download the free Sport iPad app in the Apple Newsstand

Extra time Gadgets

Call off the search

Google Nexus 7

Looking for an affordable tablet on which to watch films and browse the internet on your commute to work? Just Google it

Not content with their all-powerful online search monopoly, Google has laid siege to the world of tablets as well. The latest addition to their Nexus range of Android-powered hardware is the dainty Nexus 7, named so because it measures seven inches on the diagonal from corner to corner.

Still, it’s smaller than an iPad, and similar in size and scope to the Kindle Fire, which is flying off the shelves over in the States but is yet to be

released in the UK. Like the Fire, the Nexus 7 is Wi-Fi only, so no mobile browsing. But, with the retail price less than half that of the new iPad, you can’t really argue. The tablet will run Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and syncs nicely with Google’s software, from Gmail to Chrome. It’s available for pre-order now in 8GB and 16GB configurations, with the first units shipping later this month.

From £159 | play.google.com

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4

1. Lenco iPD 9000

2. Nintendo 3DS XL

Don’t let the shiny aluminium exterior fool you – this iPod dock’s ‘Sonic Emotion 3D chipset’ means it’s as liable to burst into tears as a Portuguese winger.

Not really – but it does mean it provides room-filling sound by using top-secret tech to remove audio blind spots. £230 | lencouk.com

You know when you get a Burger King, and they ask if you want to supersize, and you say yes because it’s only 30p – but then you regret it afterwards? Well, the 3DS XL is like that – except it’s more like £50 extra and instead of more fries you get a massive screen and no regrets.

TBC | nintendo.co.uk

58 | July 6 2012 |

3. La Boite Concept LD Series Laptop Docking Station

4. Philips Fidelio Primo Docking Speaker DS9100W

Transforms your laptop into quite an odd-looking music system, thanks to speakers built into what at first glance appears to be a child’s desk from a primary school. But instead of crayons, it’s packed with powerful speakers. £870 | laboiteconcept.com

A summer makeover for Philips’ flagship iPod dock. As well as improved sound, it now connects to your wireless network, so you don’t even have to bother plugging anything into it. Our dream of a sofa-bound existence moves closer. £500 from August | johnlewis.co.uk

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Thanks to 2D-3D upscaling you can transform normal, standard programming into the third dimension – allowing you to enjoy all your favourite channels with greater depth and enjoyment.

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Extra time Entertainment

Bond to buddies

EXHIBITION

Undercover law-enforcers are front and centre as 007 showcases his style, while Jump Street gives us buddy-cop giggles BLU-RAY

21 Jump Street

FILm

The Hunter Willem Defoe goes into the the bush armed with a gun, steel traps and his manly beard in order to catch a Tasmanian tiger in this tense Australian drama. His dedication to the task is tested by a single mother he meets who he fears is in danger, making this film as much a moral dilemma as it is about outdoor, tigerchasin’ action. Out now.

60 | July 6 2012 |

Designing 007: Fifty Years of Bond Style It may contain everything from the gold shooter used in The Man With the Golden Gun to Daniel Craig’s suits (and swimming trunks), but this London exhibition is more than just clothes, props and gadgets.

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first Bond film, the Barbican have created an immersive event,

BOOK

with themed rooms, set designs and even a Martini Bar where you can order a Bond-style cocktail.

Frankly, so long as you’re not arrested sneaking out with Oddjob’s bowler hat at a rakish angle on your head, it seems impossible not to enjoy. Open from today – booking ahead is advised.

DVD

mUSIC

Walking Home Simon Armitage

Space Between the Words dan le sac

Author walks 256 miles across Britain with not a penny in his pocket, stopping to give poetry readings in village halls, pubs and living rooms.

Not sure we’d really have appreciated that during Match of the Day, but Armitage is a warm and witty wordsmith.

Hip-hop producer best known for his work with rhymer Scroobius Pip flies solo for an album of breezily brilliant dancepop. It’s remarkably eclectic, the boy sac being led by his varied collaborators. The most instantly catchy is the aptly playful Play Along, with Sarah Williams White offering slinky, sassy vocals. Well worth some of your ear time.

Live At The Checkerboard Lounge Chicago 1981 Muddy Waters and The Rolling Stones In 1981, lucky patrons of Chicago’s Checkerboard Lounge were treated to four Rolling Stones joining local blues legend Muddy Waters on stage for an impromptu gig. Caught on film, restored and released on DVD on Monday, it’s worth watching for the sheer glee on Mick Jagger’s face as he jams with his hero. Plus the music is pretty amazing, too.

Download the free Sport iPad app in the Apple Newsstand

Express/Getty Images

Channing Tatum surprises with his comic flair in this enjoyable action-comedy about two inept rookie cops who pose as school students in order to bust a drugs ring. The twist is that it’s jock Tatum who’s more the outsider, while nerdy Jonah Hill is accepted by his peers. With a knowing nod to the fact that all Hollywood high school movies feature full-grown adults playing teens anyway, this is a neat take on the buddy-cop genre: less Lethal Weapon, more two laughable weapons – and out on Monday.

Advertising feature

Ocean lovers plashing out on a new fragrance is always guaranteed to put a smile on your face, but when was the last time doing so made you feel as good inside as you smell on the surface? Well, this summer you can do both, with the iconic Davidoff Cool Water.

The fragrance is now available in retail stores nationwide, with a new limitededition sleeve highlighting Davidoff’s support of the Pristine Seas Mission of the National Geographic Society. Each Davidoff Cool Water bottle will come with a unique access code inscribed on the inside of the limited-edition packaging’s sleeve.

The code will enable buyers to enter www.love-the-ocean.com, where you can use a geo-localisation application to follow the route of National Geographic explorerin-residence Enric Sala’s latest expedition to the Pitcairn Islands. Once online, you can

S

also donate directly to the project, or share your support and love for the ocean by spreading a message through the Davidoff Cool Water Facebook page.

Passion for the cause By showing your support, you will be joining the face of Davidoff Cool Water: The Fast and the Furious star Paul Walker, who studied marine biology himself and, having grown up in California, has an almost innate passion for the ocean.

“I have a really intimate relationship with the ocean, and Davidoff Cool Water is the quintessential ocean fragrance,” he says. “I am honoured to be the face of this campaign.”

While Paul is the face of the campaign, you can be the driving force behind it – so join Cool Water today, and do your bit to help preserve the ocean’s beauty.

The Quintessential Ocean Fragrance In 1988, Davidoff introduced a new wave of freshness to the world. Known as Cool Water, the fragrance was a pioneer that, according to its composer Pierre Bourdon, had ‘a new freshness’ at its very heart. Now, more than 20 years later, Cool Water has grown into one of the world’s most iconic male fragrances. Inspired by and evocative of the ocean, it was the ideal partner to support the Pristine Seas Mission of the National Geographic Society.

But what of the scent itself? An aromatic, fresh fragrance that bursts to the surface in swells of peppermint and lavender, then moves out with force and intensity in heart notes of jasmine, oakmoss, geranium and sandalwood. A long, warm and sensual flow of amber and musk brings it to a close, embracing the power of the ocean all the way.