1. “‘I vaguely remember bits of the ambulance ride. It was very blurred. But one thing that really stood out was waking up. It was horrible. I didn’t like the fact I was still alive. There were lots of worries. ‘Am I going to a psychiatric ward because I’ve done this?’ But, most of all, I was thinking: ‘I’m going to do this again. I want to be free of everything.’
“My wife went through an awful lot…’”
Former Aston Villa favourite Lee Hendrie opens up to Donald McRae in The Guardian.
2. “Gay was a fan, and had often spoken well of my columns in The Sunday Tribune, but he hadn’t become the greatest Irish broadcaster in history by tickling bellies. And the chair was hardly warm when he stopped tickling mine:
“You have spat in the soup, a vulgar French expression meaning you’ve spilled the beans . . . let the cat out of the bag . . . given the game away . . . you’re a turncoat. And you talk about the drugs in the cycling scene.”
Paul Kimmage writes about his move from the saddle to sportswriting 30 years on, in the Sunday Independent.
3.
That was due to run on Saturday, May 25, but the Times thought that Kimmage might well give his piece to the Independent’s daily newspaper.“So they ran Keane on the Thursday. The fall-out led to one of the biggest stories in Irish sporting history. And it left Kimmage reeling.“I think the Times had a very poor grasp of our relationship with the daily. We fucking hated the daily,” said Kimmage.”
In The Star, Kieran Cunnigham speaks with Kimmage as he outlines regret over a Roy Keane interview that never quite made the splash it ought to have.
4. “There were woods all around Jordan’s house. That means he knows the wild pleasure of playing beneath their shade, of inventing whole worlds, becoming a cowboy or a cavalryman, his brother the sworn enemy. Mike and his brother Larry had BB guns. They shot them out in the country at their grandparents’ place and in the small patches of trees that pass for wilderness inside the city limits, always feeling bigger than they were, like farm kids who call a nearby ditch something grand like The Canyon.”
Wright Thompson’s Michael Jordan story is set long before The Last Dance, for ESPN.
5. “Over the next eight hours, Tanner headed back toward where he began the day, getting to within a mile of the campsite before shutting down after midnight due to the darkness and the physical toll claimed by the environment.
“Text messages indicate Tanner’s awareness that a dire situation was becoming increasingly dangerous.
“One text he wrote that was not sent: “I need help.”
Josh Gross retraces the last known steps of former UFC champion Evan Tanner, for The Athletic (paywall).
6. “I still don’t know what the free is for. Then he said he’d book me for being cheeky!’ O’Sullivan says.
‘I worked it out afterwards that he didn’t realise I was reared in London and that I was talking in my accent. He thought I was putting on an accent.’”
