WHAT’S HOT WHAT’S NOT
HOT
JOHANNA KONTA THE British No 2 enjoyed the best week of her career at Eastbourne, beating two top-20 players despite feeling unwell and taking antibiotics. She then admitted she is ‘quite a highly-strung person’. You would have thought that would be a positive, being a tennis player...
BASEBALL CHICAGO Cubs fan Keith Hartley casually stuck out his right hand — while feeding his seven-month-old son Isaac with his left — to catch a ball that reached the first row of seating at Wrigley Field this week. Cubs manager Joe Maddon said: ‘That was outstanding. You worry about the baby, of course, but he looked like he had it under control.’
NICOLA ADAMS NOBODY appears to give two hoots about the European Games taking place in Baku. But that didn’t stop Olympic champion Nicola Adams from becoming the first woman to win boxing gold in the flyweight division. ‘I can’t wait to go home and see my dogs,’ she said. You can take the girl out of Leeds…
RICHARD KILTY HIS language was appalling, but the world indoor 60m champion, was entitled to a rant on Twitter over the latest wave of athletes to switch to GB. Whether you agree or not is another matter, but good for Kilty for refusing to blandly toe the party line like so many.
NOT
JOHN HERDMAN THE English coach of Canada women’s football team compared his side’s World Cup quarter-final against England to climbing Everest. ‘It hurts. It’s painful. We’re now in the death zone where the oxygen’s thinner.’ Why do so many ambitious young managers feel the need to talk in such utter jargon? Stop the claptrap, please.
OLYMPIC LEGACY ALMOST one in four children now think playing video games counts as exercise, according to new research by the Youth Sports Trust. That is simply terrifying.
CLINT DEMPSEY HE has been banned from US Open Cup games for at least two years after tearing up the referee’s notebook when Seattle Sounders lost to Portland earlier this month. Dempsey could be suspended from Cup action until 2021 — when he will be 38 years old. What on earth was he thinking?
USAIN BOLT THE six-time Olympic gold medallist is not running in Jamaica’s national trials this weekend and has yet to break 10 seconds for 100m or 20 seconds for 200m this season. He has already qualified for August’s World Championships in Beijing, but the omens are not good — for Bolt or the sport he represents so brilliantly.