Sad Fury is cut to the quick

THERE is only one thing certain about someone who tells you how hard they party...they do not.

And that is Lewis Hamilton, now established as one of Formula One’s finest-ever drivers.

Hamilton has a penchant for telling us about his super-glamorous social life, posing with his private jet, hanging out with Rihanna in Barbados.

Maybe that is why public acclaim for his achievements is not as thunderous as it should be.

We like our sportsmen and women dedicated, we are impressed when their feats are based on a life of sacrifice.

But don’t be fooled by Hamilton’s image. You do not win five world championships while burning the candle at both ends.

With your 34th birthday coming up, you do not get even more dominant in your sport by overcooking your social life.

No elite sportsman or woman has been as driven, pardon the pun, as Hamilton over the last couple of decades.

Hamilton has won one BBC Sports Personality of the Year award and, if committed motor-sport fans mobilise their ranks this year, he might come out on top in December’s vote. But his popularity outside the petrolhead community is not blindingly obvious.

Being a tax exile does not help. Fact.

For someone who lives in Monaco, Hamilton plays the patriotic card a lot.

But today is purely about his sporting achievements, monumental sporting achievements.

Of course he is in the best car but speak to anyone with any sort of inside knowledge of Formula One and they will tell you Hamilton is, pound for pound, the most complete driver out there, simple as that.

His astonishing record in qualifying alone tells you that, just as his dominance over team-mates in the same car tells you that.

Put Hamilton and the field into wet conditions and the outcome is an inevitability.

Michael Schumacher’s numbers – an amazing 91 Grand Prix wins and seven Championships – might prove to be unbeatable but to secure a fifth world title puts him not just in the pantheon of motor racing greats but in the pantheon of British sporting greats.

And if he now actually decides to properly party after this achievement, no one could blame him. PETER FURY insists his son Hughie would have beaten Kubrat Pulev had he not suffered an early cut in his unanimous points defeat.

Fury sustained a cut above his left eye in sparring a fortnight ago and the wound re-opened when Pulev caught him with a jab in the second round of their IBF heavyweight title eliminator. The 24-year-old never got going because of the injury and lost 117-111, 118-110 and 115-113 on the judges’ scorecards in Pulev’s Sofia backyard.

“Hughie came into the fight with a cut above the eye,” said the trainer. “He was stitched up two weeks ago but the doctors said it would heal in time for the fight and obviously it didn’t.

“Pulev caught him with a jab and split it right open. From that moment in the second round it was an uphill battle. I’m proud of my son, he was fighting on away soil, injured, yet he still went the full distance.

“If the cut hadn’t happened, we would have seen a different outcome.”

Fury now misses out on the chance to face Anthony Joshua. “It wasn’t my night,” he said.