1. “Heart rates during the mountain stages can be considerably higher (up to 170 beats per minute). This is because cyclists have to cycle up steep mountains which places extra strain on the body. The higher up the mountain they climb, the lower the oxygen pressure, and thus it is harder for the body to extract oxygen. To compensate, the heart will pump blood around the body at a faster rate.”
Mark Germaine breaks down the science behind what’s needed to compete in the gruelling Tour de France, for RTE.
2.“The Americans, who clearly had a more professional set-up, turned up with team outfits which Hagen described as “the finest dark blue knicker suits that you ever saw”. They also had “a sports outfit for lounge wear so that everyone will know us when we are off the links”.
“When asked what the home players would be wearing, Duncan was characteristically blunt: “They will wear what they like. The Ryder Cup is a golf match and not a mannequin parade.”
“And then it snowed.”
For the BBC, Peter Scrivener looks back at some long-forgotten Ryder Cup matches, before continental Europe joined their Irish and British peers in taking on the US.
3. “‘JFK’, as he was fondly known by many, spoke of family, Cork City FC, and his work with Foróige to everyone he encountered and he was incredible proud of all those strands of his life.
“Long before structured community programmes came into being in professional football, JFK knew and recognised the positive role any sports club could have within its community.
“A ‘club’ was not only a men’s senior team, it was about every person involved.”
In the Irish Examiner, Niamh O’Mahony recounts the impact John Kennedy had on Cork City FC.
4.. “Mohammed is the brother of Abdelhak, the prodigiously talented Ajax midfielder who collapsed on the pitch in July 2017, leaving him with severe and permanent brain damage. Van de Beek, Abdelhak’s Ajax team-mate and best friend, was at the end of the telephone on that fateful afternoon, talking through tears to Mohammed after watching that tragic and deeply upsetting scene unfold in Austria.”
How Donny van de Beek takes inspiration from the tragic tale of his friend, Appi Nouri, by Stuart James in The Athletic.
5. “Neither he nor his wife Dianna have watched the footage back. Partly because they can’t bear to, partly because they don’t need to. They know what happened, every beat of it. Shorapur came to a triple combination down a side of the arena where that gorgeous Long Island sun was throwing spikes of shade onto the ground.
“They cleared the first and the second but a shadow fooled the horse into thinking the third was closer than was the case. She took off too early and couldn’t get her front legs out in time to clear it. Immediately, the Shorapur was a tangle of poles and reins and Babington was gravity’s guest.”
The Irish Times’ Malachy Clerkin meets Kevin Babington ‘learning to live again’.
