1. They just wanted to settle, once and for all, who gets sport’s bronze medal in the mega-event stakes. Which they will do, just as soon as they work out a way to go head-to-head with the Asian Games, the Champions League, the European Football Championship, the Paralympics, the Ryder Cup, the Super Bowl and every other event that has claimed to be third only in size, significance or some mix of the two, to the Summer Olympics and World Cup.
The Olympics and the World Cup are the biggest sporting events in the world — but what’s next? Matt Slater investigates for the BBC.
2. They had private investigators reporting on his movements. They had seen the swelling in his knee. They had seen him grimace with every step. They had heard him say that he was in pain. But still, they couldn’t be sure. So they got a needle, and filled it with sodium pentothal — truth serum. It was 1986, and NFL running back Joe McCall was on the verge of limping out of the league. As far as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers were concerned, however, he couldn’t limp fast enough. McCall was taking up time, space, and, most importantly, money.
Vice Sports’ Andrew Heisel writes on NFL running back Joe McCall and his allegations that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers used a truth serum in a bid to show that he was faking injury.
3. The IRB has done some peculiar things in its time, but lauding Steve Hansen as coach of the year was perhaps among the oddest. Sure, the All Blacks have had a good year – not as good as 2013, yet still pretty decent. But when you compare how much progress the All Blacks have made over the previous 12 months with the staggering advances of Ireland, then acknowledging Joe Schmidt’s work should have been a no-brainer.
All Blacks coach Steve Hansen was named World Rugby Coach of the Year but Mark Reason (of New Zealand website Stuff) believes it should have been Joe Schmidt.
4. Once banter could be written without asterisks, its definition encompassing the genuinely harmless gentle teasing given and taken between friends. It then progressed to single asterisk status, as it became slowly bastardised to include victimisation and bullying, and we felt dirty using the word in anything other than a sarcastic context. We have now entered the age of two asterisks – how long until “It was just b*****” is the defence?
Mario Balotelli’s Instagram post has landed him in all sorts of trouble with the FA but Football 365′s Daniel Storey believes that ‘lad culture’ is the real culprit of the case.
5. Here, gambling is important—six racing papers are published on weekends, and nearly everybody studied the form—but the banners, hats, and autograph seekers spoke to something else: a reverence for the horse and for the sport that hasn’t existed in the West for decades. There were sights I’d never seen before at a racecourse. Single women studying the form and checking the odds. Groups of attractive women betting the races. Parents pushing baby strollers or watching their children at the indoor playground. Teenagers hanging out in the grandstand, eating sushi on top of their programs. Couples sitting together, searching for a winner. The old men who had probably been there when Tokyo Racecourse opened in 1933. It costs 200 yen to get in—not even two dollars.
Deadspin’s Ryan Goldberg spends a day at “the world’s biggest and strangest horse race” — The Tokyo Cup.
