Schumi, Serena shine, Klopp’s dull first season at Liverpool
May 18 1991: Tottenham Hotspur players celebrate after beating Nottingham Forest to win the FA Cup final.
Stuart Pearce gave Forest the first-half lead, after Paul Gascoigne gave away a free kick and was carried off injured. Paul Stewart’s goal for Spurs took the game to extra time, where it was settled by Des Walker’s own goal in the 94th minute.
It was Tottenham’s eighth FA Cup triumph, a record at the time, and saw them qualify for European competition for the first time since English teams were banned after the Heysel Stadium disaster in 1985.
May 18 1994: AC Milan midfielder Demetrio Albertini lifts the European Cup in celebration after they beat Johan Cruyff’s Barcelona 4-0 in the final at the Olympic Stadium in Athens.
● ●
Barca, who had won the title in 1992 and sealed their fourth consecutive league title, were firm favourites, with Milan missing injured striker Marco van Basten while Franco Baresi and Alessandro Costacurta were suspended.
Cruyff dropped the influential Michael Laudrup for the final, which allowed Milan to dominate the game and score twice in each half to put their demons to bed having lost in the final to Olympique de Marseille the previous season.
May 18 2003: Ferrari’s crew members celebrate as Michael Schumacher wins the Austrian Grand Prix. In a rain-hit race, Schumacher had started on pole position but lost his lead during a pit stop when a faulty fuel nozzle caused a small fire when they attempted to refuel his car.
But luck favoured Schumacher when Kimi Raikkonen had engine trouble while Juan Pablo Montoya retired with an engine failure, allowing the world champion to retake the lead and win the race.
May 18 2008: Yamaha’s Valentino Rossi of Italy rides to victory in the French Grand Prix at Le Mans circuit in central France.
Rossi finished nearly 5sec ahead of Spanish teammate Jorge Lorenzo while American Colin Edwards of the Tech 3 Yamaha team finished third.
● ●
Rossi tied Angel Nieto’s tally of 90 race victories to become the joint-second most successful rider of all time and the Italian allowed Nieto to ride his bike on the slow down lap while he sat behind him waving a flag that said “90 + 90.”
May 18 2011: Porto striker Falcao celebrates scoring what proved to be the winner against Braga in the Europa League final in Dublin.
With a minute to go in the first half, Porto midfielder Fredy Guarin floated in a cross for Falcao who netted with a header that beat Artur Moraes in the Braga goal.
The title was Porto’s second after they first won the trophy in 2003 and it would be Falcao’s last goal for the club before his move to Atletico Madrid.
May 18 2013: Russia’s Yelena Isinbayeva clears 4.70m to win the women’s pole vault at the IAAF Diamond League meeting in Shanghai.
● ●
Three-times Olympic medallist Isinbayeva beat American Mary Saxer, runner-up, and Germany’s Silke Spiegelburg.
However, the double Olympic champion and reigning world record-holder would be excluded from the 2016 Rio Olympic Games — along with more than 100 of her teammates — after revelations of systemic, state-sponsored doping in Russian sport.
May 18 2014: American Serena Williams beats home favourite Sara Errani 6-3 6-0 to win the Rome Masters final.
Top-seed Williams had dropped only one set in the run to the showpiece match when she went the distance in the semifinal against Serbia’s Ana Ivanovic.
May 18 2016: Manager Juergen Klopp’s Liverpool are defeated 3-1 by Sevilla in the Europa League final in Basel, Switzerland.
In his first season after taking over from Brendan Rodgers in October, Klopp failed to guide Liverpool into the Champions League after they finished eighth in the Premier League.
Winning the Europa League offered a qualifying ticket for Europe’s premier competition but Liverpool, despite taking the lead in the first half, conceded three goals in the second.
May 18 2018: Atletico Madrid’s players celebrate at
● ● ●
Neptuno Square in Madrid after winning the Europa League for the third time in the club’s 117year history.
After failing to advance from the Champions League group stages, Atletico dropped into the second-tier Europa League and beat Sporting and Arsenal to reach the final. Antoine Griezmann scored twice, while Gabi added a late goal as Atletico beat Olympique Marseille 3-0 in the final in Lyon.
May 18 2019: Runners take part in the Great Wall Marathon at the Huangyaguan Great Wall outside Beijing. The race is one of the most challenging marathons in the world due to the nature of the course which has thousands of stone steps, many of which vary in height.
While the world record for the marathon is getting closer to the two-hour mark, the Great Wall Marathon takes more than three hours to complete.
●