Radio Times
type: channel
link: https://www.radiotimes.com
date: 2022-11-01T16:34:34.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Reece Prescod reveals how he became one of Team GB's sprinting stars
items: Who is Reece Prescod? Meet Team GB's newest athletics star aiming for gold at the European Championships 2018
items: Six Nations 2017: Lawrence Dallaglio on England’s new rugby superstar Maro Itoje
items: Stuart Lancaster and Eddie Jones on whether England can win the Six Nations
items: Guardiola is going back to Barça – to win
items: Rio Olympics 2016: Adam Peaty's mum reveals how she raised a world record holder
items: Could history be made at the Grand National?
items: Meet Eddie Jones, the Australian plotting to save English rugby
items: Mo Farah on Sports Personality of the Year, Christmas at home and his new son
items: Davis Cup captain Leon Smith: how Great Britain can win the World Cup of tennis
items: Clive Woodward: The Rugby World Cup trophy should return home to the northern hemisphere
items: Mo Farah is on course for a place in the record books – and a knighthood
items: Meet the new Usain Bolt (good news – he's British!)
items: Ryder Cup 2014: Will the Irish win it for Europe?
items: Why runners in the men’s Commonwealth Games 1500m final have big shoes to fill
items: Forget the Olympics – the Commonwealth Games is where sporting history is made

Reece Prescod reveals how he became one of Team GB's sprinting stars
type: item
date: 2018-08-07T16:24:19.000Z
creator: Brian Oliver
subject: Athletics
subject: News
subject: Sport
subject: TV
description: The 100m athlete is one of Britain's best medal hopes at the European Championships – but his journey to stardom wasn't without its hurdles
encoded: Reece Prescod set himself three targets for 2018. First, he wanted to establish himself as a genuine global competitor, to “start racing properly on the Diamond League circuit”. Second, he wanted to run the 100m in a sub-10-second time for the first time in his short career. Third, he wanted to win the European title. The stars to watch at The European Championships 2018 Why Team GB could win big in athletics at the European Championships RadioTimes.com newsletter: get the latest TV and entertainment news direct to your inbox View oEmbed on the source website And how is he doing? “So far, so good,” said Prescod, who has been tipped to beat Linford Christie’s national record of 9.87sec as his career progresses. Prescod, 22, was not even born when Christie ran his best time at the 1993 World Championships. The 6ft 4in Londoner is Britain’s best 100 metres prospect in years. If he caused a stir by winning the GB Trials last year he did the same at a global level in May when he won the Shanghai Diamond League race, with world champion Justin Gatlin in his wake. That race, in the rain, helped him to achieve his main aim for the year, and his next outing in Eugene, Oregon, gave him a further boost. In finishing third he ran 9.88 seconds, though the wind was too strong for it to count in the record books. He also retained his British title. Asked which race gave him most satisfaction, Prescod said, “Probably the British trials, retaining my title. But then again maybe the first time when I won it and it was a bit of a surprise (2017). Those were my big two races, the surprise and the back-up.” He says his “pivotal moment” came in 2016 when he thought he was going to be a 200m runner but, in only his second try at 100m, ran 10.06sec. “I thought, ‘Wow! That’s a world class time,’ and from then on I was a 100m runner.” His best chance of an international title comes in Berlin on Tuesday 7th August, in the European Championships. Prescod was born in Walthamstow, studied in Lou…

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Who is Reece Prescod? Meet Team GB's newest athletics star aiming for gold at the European Championships 2018
type: item
date: 2018-08-03T07:12:49.000Z
creator: Brian Oliver
subject: Athletics
subject: News
subject: Sport
subject: TV
description: The 100m sprinter is set to be one of Team GB's best new hopes in Berlin during the European Athletics Championships
encoded: Team GB sprinter Reece Prescod set himself three targets for 2018. First, he wanted to establish himself as a genuine global competitor, to “start racing properly on the Diamond League circuit”. Second, he wanted to run the 100m in a sub-10-second time for the first time in his short career. Third, he wanted to win the European Championships title. How to watch the European Championships live on TV Sport on TV 2018 calendar Premier League 2018/19 full fixture guide and live TV matches And how is he doing? “So far, so good,” said Prescod, who has been tipped to beat Linford Christie’s national record of 9.87 seconds as his career progresses. Prescod, 22, was not even born when Christie ran his best time at the 1993 World Championships. Prescod, a 6ft 4in Londoner, is Britain’s best 100 metres prospect in years. If he caused a stir in Britain by winning the GB Trials last year he did the same at a global level in May when he won the Shanghai Diamond League race, with world champion Justin Gatlin in his wake. That race, in the rain, helped him to achieve his main aim for the year, and his next outing in Eugene, Oregon, gave him a further boost. In finishing third he ran 9.88 seconds, though the wind was too strong for it to count in the record books. He also retained his British title. Asked which race gave him most satisfaction, Prescod said, “Probably the British trials, retaining my title. But then again maybe the first time when I won it and it was a bit of a surprise (2017). Those were my big two races, the surprise and the back-up.” He says his “pivotal moment” came in 2016 when he thought he was going to be a 200m runner but, in only his second try at 100m, ran 10.06 seconds. “I thought, ‘Wow! That’s a world class time,’ and from then on I was a 100m runner.” His best chance of an international title comes in Berlin on Tuesday 7th August, in the European Championships. Prescod was born in Walthamstow, studied in Loughton at “a very sporty school” and tried many …

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Six Nations 2017: Lawrence Dallaglio on England’s new rugby superstar Maro Itoje
type: item
date: 2017-02-25T11:48:00.000Z
creator: Brian Oliver
subject: News
subject: Rugby Union
subject: Soaps
subject: Sport
subject: TV
description: The rise and rise of a remarkable talent
encoded: It was Valentines Day 2016 when England last played Italy and Maro Itoje came off the bench after 54 minutes of England’s easy victory to win his first senior cap. What has happened between then and now is so remarkable that no England player has ever matched it, and probably never will. Itoje was in the starting line-up for England’s next game against Ireland and, when fit, has played every time since. He has never been on the losing side and will be going for 10 out of 10 against Italy on Sunday. In November this remarkable talent was named the best young player in the world by World Rugby. At 22 he has many more stellar seasons ahead of him. But there is more. Before he made his senior debut Itoje had played at four age-group levels and captained England’s Under-20s to the 2015 Junior World Championship, where he was named player of the tournament. While doing all this Itoje, son of Nigerian immigrant parents, studied on a scholarship at Harrow and is now taking a degree in politics at London’s SOAS (formerly School of Oriental and African Studies). “It helps me keep my mind off rugby,” he says. “It gives you a chance to lead a balanced life.” When Mark Pougatch presents ITV’s rugby coverage he is surrounded by legends of rugby, World Cup winners such as Sean Fitzpatrick of New Zealand, Michael Lynagh of Australia, and Jonny Wilkinson and Lawrence Dallaglio of England. “What Maro Itoje did last year was phenomenal,” says Pougatch. “We had all these big names in the studio and it was remarkable to hear them all say the same thing. ‘Oh my god, he’s as good as everybody says he is.’ “I can’t recall there ever being so much expectation about an England player before.” At least Dallaglio knew what was coming. In his glory years for England he played alongside Richard Hill, who was Itoje’s mentor at Saracens. “I had heard a fair bit about him from Richard Hill before he started playing in the first XV,” says Dallaglio. “He has been on England’s radar for a long time. “…

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Stuart Lancaster and Eddie Jones on whether England can win the Six Nations
type: item
date: 2017-02-04T07:02:00.000Z
creator: Brian Oliver
subject: News
subject: Rugby Union
subject: Soaps
subject: Sport
subject: TV
description: The former England coach and incumbent talk sharing ideas, and the closing gap between the north and south
encoded: On the eve of last year’s Six Nations, England’s new coach Eddie Jones received an extraordinary phone call. The man he had replaced, Stuart Lancaster, was ringing with words of advice. Despite being at the lowest point of his professional career after being sacked following a disastrous 2015 World Cup, Lancaster still had something to give to England’s cause. “I contacted the RFU and said I thought it would be a good idea for me to meet Eddie,” he tells Radio Times. “It was fairly soon after he took over, before the Six Nations last year. I went through what I had learnt as coach of England and tried to pass on as much information as I could that would help him make informed decisions going forward.” After the pasting he’d taken in the media, and the personal hurt, it took a big man to do that. But Lancaster will not even take the credit for it. “At the same time Eddie was thinking of calling me, so we both thought it would be a good idea.” Jones has clearly made good use of his “debrief”, along with the skills and experience he picked up in his years in charge of Australia, Japan and various club sides. Because from that moment on, England under Eddie Jones have won 14 matches on the trot. One more in this season’s Six Nations opener at home to France on Saturday will set an all-time record for England of 15 straight wins, and put them in sight of New Zealand’s record of 18. Jones has a knack for making the right decisions, such as making Dylan Hartley, exiled by Lancaster because of his disciplinary history, the captain. And the versatile forward Maro Itoje, uncapped by Lancaster, was named Breakthrough Player of the Year at the World Rugby awards after stellar performances for England and his club, Saracens. “He has brought his own personality and style to the team and they have benefited,” Lancaster says. “I’m not surprised England have been successful, but a huge amount of credit should go to Eddie and his coaching team. It’s very, very positive for these play…

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Guardiola is going back to Barça – to win
type: item
date: 2016-10-19T12:40:00.000Z
creator: Brian Oliver
subject: Football
subject: News
subject: Sport
subject: TV
description: The Barcelona player turned Manchester City manager will have quite the homecoming at tonight’s match
encoded: There will be just under 100,000 people in the Nou Camp stadium on Wednesday for Barcelona’s Champions League tie against Manchester City. And Pep Guardiola – a Barcelona legend as player, coach and Catalan separatist – will get a hero’s welcome, even though he will be managing the Premier League visitors. There were some in the dressing room who were secretly glad to see Guardiola go when he quit as manager of Barcelona in 2012. But the fans will forever revere a man born within 50 miles of the city who left home as a 13-year-old to live at Barça’s La Masia training centre. The son of a bricklayer, Guardiola played 11 seasons for Barcelona, four as captain, and later returned as coach to create the team regarded as the finest ever to have played the game. Supporters were worried when he was promoted from manager of the B team in 2008, because they thought Jose Mourinho should get the job. But Guardiola was confident from the start, telling fans from the centre circle, “Fasten your seatbelts – you’re going to have fun!” They did. Guardiola’s luminaries, led by Lionel Messi, Xavi and Andrés Iniesta, won a heap of trophies, including the Champions League in 2009 and 2011, beating Manchester United in the final both times. Sir Alex Ferguson said they were “the best team I have faced”. City are still a work in progress and they need to improve on their dismal record of four straight defeats by Barça in the Champions League. In the fourth of those games, in 2015, City’s outstanding player was goalkeeper Joe Hart. The first thing Guardiola did when he arrived in Manchester this summer was to ditch Hart, England’s first-choice goalkeeper, and bring in Claudio Bravo – from Barcelona. It showed that Guardiola is ruthless. “No matter how he might appear, he is very hard with players. And he can be very prickly,” said a Manchester City insider. “To say he is controlling is an understatement – you can see that from the way he has banned phones and wi-fi at the training ground. …

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Rio Olympics 2016: Adam Peaty's mum reveals how she raised a world record holder
type: item
date: 2016-08-08T08:20:00.000Z
creator: Brian Oliver
subject: News
subject: Sport
subject: TV
subject: Olympics
subject: Rio 2016
description: He’s the golden boy of British swimming – but his mum says he’s still scared to go in the sea without shoes
encoded: When Rio 2016 Olympic star Adam Peaty was a child, he hated being in the water. It was so bad that when his mother, Caroline, sent him for swimming lessons, she couldn’t bear to be there. “He was petrified – he didn’t even like having a bath or a shower,” says Caroline at the family home in Uttoxeter, Staffordshire. “He was like Mark, his father. He’s not at all keen on water either. From the time he could stand, Adam would never sit down in the bath. "When he was four I started taking him to swimming lessons because his two brothers and his sister had done them and I wanted all my children to be able to swim. But it was breaking my heart to see him scream, so I asked a friend to take him. “Luckily Adam liked it. From then on he took lessons on a regular basis. Mind you, he still doesn’t like the sea, and if he goes in he likes to have shoes on, and wear a knee-length swimsuit. He can’t stand seaweed.” Don't miss a moment with your complete Olympics TV guide – on sale now There won’t be any seaweed to worry about in the Olympic pool in Rio, where Adam Peaty is the best hope for gold in a talented British swimming team. He’s arguably Britain’s biggest favourite in any sport. Peaty, 21, first came to prominence at the 2014 Commonwealth Games when he beat his great rival Cameron van der Burgh, the Olympic champion from South Africa. View oEmbed on the source website He has kept improving since then. Peaty holds three world records, and is the reigning Commonwealth, European and World champion at 100m breaststroke. He was named the male world swimmer of the year last year – and he wants Van der Burgh’s Olympic title. Adam Peaty, Chris Walker-Hebborn and Siobhan-Marie O'Connor at the 16th FINA World Championships Swimming gold medals do not come along very often for British men. Since the 1908 Games in London there have been three, all breaststrokers: David Wilkie over 200m in 1976, then Duncan Goodhew in 1980 and Adrian Moorhouse in 1988, both at Peaty’s favoured distan…

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Could history be made at the Grand National?
type: item
date: 2016-04-09T06:16:00.000Z
creator: Brian Oliver
subject: Horse racing
subject: News
subject: Sport
subject: TV
description: Trevor Hemmings is aiming to win his fourth Grand National as an owner – he tells Radio Times the secret behind his success...
encoded: What do Gregory Peck, Sir Alex Ferguson and the Queen Mother have in common? They all tried and failed, along with thousands of others, to win the world’s most famous horse race as an owner. By comparison Trevor Hemmings seems positively greedy. He will set a record of four wins if his horse Many Clouds, favourite to repeat last year’s success, wins the Grand National at Aintree on Saturday. The spotlight in the aftermath of the race usually falls on the winning horse, jockey or trainer. Leighton Aspell would complete a Grand National hat-trick should he ride Many Clouds to glory, but if it happens top billing this time might go instead to Hemmings, one of the most popular figures in racing. Hemmings, 80, is much more than an owner and breeder of racehorses. He is a businessman, philanthropist, friend of the royals, and owner of Preston North End Football Club. He started his first business with £12 and is now one of the wealthiest men in Britain. “There’s no reason why Many Clouds won’t win again,” says Hemmings at his home on the Isle of Man, where his horses enjoy a long and relaxing retirement when their racing days are over. “He’s a very, very good horse.” He showed it by jumping superbly in his final prep race at Kelso, winning so impressively that he became outright favourite for the National at 8–1. Hemmings might set a record for celebrations, too, if Many Clouds wins. “Every time I’ve won the National I’ve had a special celebration in Kanturk in north Cork, that’s where my Irish stud is, the horses’ nursery. Then another near Chorley in Lancashire, that’s the infants and junior school where the horses develop. And one here in the Isle of Man. If there’s anybody left to invite I’ll have one in London too. I don’t mind a party.” There’s even a drink made for the occasion: Many Clouds is the name of a brown ale brewed in the horse’s honour near Lambourn, in Berkshire, where Many Clouds is trained by Oliver Sherwood. Hemmings has been a horse man all his life.…

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Meet Eddie Jones, the Australian plotting to save English rugby
type: item
date: 2016-02-06T09:00:00.000Z
creator: Brian Oliver
subject: News
subject: Rugby Union
subject: Sport
subject: TV
description: New England coach Eddie Jones begins Six Nations 2016 against Scotland in Murrayfield. What's the plan?
encoded: It took an Australian to tell it like it is. “The Six Nations is a dour affair and is built on the foundation of not allowing the opposition to score points,” said Eddie Jones, in an interview last year. “On the flipside, the Rugby Championship [New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and Argentina] is all about scoring more points than the opposition. “Compare and contrast Italy and Argentina. Italy have been part of the Six Nations for 16 years and their rugby has basically regressed. Argentina have featured in the Championship for four years and their game – in particular their ability and execution on attack – has grown exponentially.” Two days after that interview, Jones was appointed head coach of England, the first foreigner to take that role. The Australian is forthright, sharp-tongued and, he says, sure to be unpopular with the team. He started by culling nine World Cup players, who have nearly 300 caps between them, and drafting in seven uncapped newcomers to his initial Six Nations squad. Three of them are included in Jones’s 23-man squad for the game in Scotland on 6 February, the opening weekend of the 2016 Six Nations Championship. Those changes are not surprising, given that during the World Cup, in which he led Japan to a famous victory over South Africa, Jones said England were struggling because of “confused selection and strategy” and a lack of identity. Their use of Sam Burgess, recruited from rugby league, was “silly”. “No matter what happens on the rugby field, the press conferences will be entertaining.” So said Lawrence Dallaglio, the former England captain, after Jones announced the squad for his first tournament as coach of England. It is not a view anybody would have expressed about the first foreigners to coach England’s football and cricket teams, Sven-Goran Eriksson of Sweden, and Duncan Fletcher of Zimbabwe. “The sport needs character and personality,” says Sir Clive Woodward, friend and former rival of Jones – they were the coaches of En…

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Mo Farah on Sports Personality of the Year, Christmas at home and his new son
type: item
date: 2015-12-20T09:00:00.000Z
creator: Brian Oliver
subject: Athletics
subject: News
subject: Sport
subject: TV
description: “Could it get better? Never say never... Even now I’ve done the “triple double” I’m still hungry for more. I can’t wait until Rio”
encoded: If 2012 was the all-time high for Mo Farah, 2015 has run it close. And there could be more to come because the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year has yet to be decided and then there is the small matter of the New Year Honours. It could be Sir Mo in 2016, when Farah goes for more glory at the Rio Olympic Games. In the World Championships in Beijing in the summer, Farah won a third straight long-distance double – 5,000m and 10,000m – to add to those at the London Olympics and the 2013 World Championships in Moscow. “We had our first boy this year, too, which was also an amazing achievement,” he says at the home in Portland, Oregon, he shares with wife Tania, baby Hussein, three-year-old twins Aisha and Amani, and Rhianna, nine. With a growing brood, Christmas will hardly be a time for peaceful contemplation of another successful year on the track. “The house is usually full of noise, but at Christmas it’s super- loud,” laughs Farah. “The kids get so excited, and obviously it’s our first one with Hussein – and now I’m not the only man in the house!” Will he take the day off? “Tania will cook, and she’s great in the kitchen, but I’ll still do some training and get a run in. Be somewhere in the region of ten to 15 miles – it’s a nice change as I have the roads and the track to myself.” Such dedication has been the key to Farah’s success. No runner has been Sports Personality since Kelly Holmes in 2004, back when Farah was still struggling to make an impact in top-level athletics. “I had just started working with my coach Alan Storey and was still training at St Mary’s University [in Twickenham]. The year before I visited my mum and brother in Somaliland and realised how much I missed them. “I was still taking part in competitions, but it wasn’t until I started living with other professional athletes the following year that I understood the dedication it takes to reach the very top, and I really stepped up my game. “I used to watch Sports Personality of the Year with f…

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Davis Cup captain Leon Smith: how Great Britain can win the World Cup of tennis
type: item
date: 2015-11-27T07:45:00.000Z
creator: Brian Oliver
subject: News
subject: Sport
subject: TV
description: The elite coach and Britain's Davis Cup captain explains how he turned around Britain's fortunes – and convinced Andy Murray he was worth listening to
encoded: It is the World Cup of tennis, Britain’s most important tie since the Lawn Tennis Association was founded in 1888. Tickets sold out within minutes, millions will watch on television and a nation will hold its breath. Can Britain beat Belgium in Ghent to win the Davis Cup for the first time since 1936? This unexpected chance for tennis to attract new fans, and players, is largely down to the efforts of a very talented Scot. If Andy Murray is the name on your lips, think again. His name is Leon Smith. Glasgow-born Smith likens his role as Davis Cup captain to that of a football team manager. He is the Jose Mourinho or Arsène Wenger of tennis, though without the tantrums or dramas. Like those two he never played at the top level, or at much of any level. He was a born coach, and he has revolutionised the way Britain plays. Davis Cup final: How to watch Day one (singles): BBC2 from 12:15pm, Eurosport 2 from 11:45am Day two (doubles): BBC1 from 2:05pm, Eurosport 2 from 1:45pm Day three (singles): BBC2 from 11:50am, Eurosport 2 from 11:45am He admires Alex Ferguson and Dave Brailsford, who brought so much success, respectively, to Manchester United and Britain’s top cyclists. Smith has a data analyst who assesses opponents both before and during matches, from the dressing room, tracking every shot and advising on tactics. Leon Smith with Andy Murray in 2006 “It’s especially useful with big servers, even more so on the big points,” says Smith, whose support team outnumbers the players and includes two physios, a nutritionist, a doubles coach and a doctor. “This approach didn’t happen before,” says Smith, who worked in elite junior coaching for the LTA before taking the Davis Cup role in 2010. “I was a complete rookie when I started, very much aware I hadn’t played on tour and wasn’t in a position to bark orders at the players. So the analysis helped. They like to see you’ve done your homework. “It was a big surprise when I got the job. We were in such a lowly place, in a r…

Clive Woodward: The Rugby World Cup trophy should return home to the northern hemisphere
type: item
date: 2015-09-18T05:00:00.000Z
creator: Brian Oliver
subject: News
subject: Radio
subject: Sport
subject: TV
subject: audio
description: The World Cup-winning coach looks back at England's record in the competition as they make another bid for glory
encoded: Back when Clive Woodward played for England in the early 1980s, rugby union was very much an amateur game, and it was dominated by the teams from “down south”. “I generally thought that we could never beat New Zealand, Australia and South Africa; we weren’t supposed to beat them,” says Woodward, who ran an IT leasing business before coaching became a viable career option, one that would later enable him to prefix his name with “Sir”. “In coaching sessions when I was a player we were told this is what New Zealand do, this is what South Africa do. You were almost just copying them, and it really annoyed me, from a playing point of view, a business point of view. We were the most amateur country in world rugby, and the great underachievers in the sport.” The northern softies from the British Isles, many of them drawn from public schools, never stood a chance against the granite-jawed giants who wore the silver fern, the wallaby or the springbok on their jersey. The fact that the man named New Zealand’s player of the century in 1999, Colin Meads, was nicknamed Pinetree shows what England and the rest were up against. Throughout history, the All Blacks have won more than 400 of the 500 or so test matches they’ve played. When rugby turned professional in 1995, says Woodward, “the gloves were off ”. But the southern teams still landed all the punches at the 1995 World Cup, won by South Africa, and in 1999, when Australia lifted the Webb Ellis Cup. View oEmbed on the source website Looking back at England’s defeat by South Africa in the quarter-finals in Paris in 1999, Martin Johnson, then the team’s captain, echoed Woodward’s view. “That thing about the southern hemisphere being better than us really rankled,” he said. “You always felt a little bit second best. You want to be the best, not being beaten by these guys and being looked down on all the time.” So Woodward decided to do something about it. He thought he would be sacked after 1999, but he was kept on and became e…

Mo Farah is on course for a place in the record books – and a knighthood
type: item
date: 2015-08-28T16:00:00.000Z
creator: Brian Oliver
subject: Athletics
subject: News
subject: Radio
subject: Sport
subject: TV
subject: audio
description: The two-time Olympic champion is aiming for a World Athletics championships double when he contests the 5,000m final this weekend
encoded: Put the date in your diary: 12.30pm on Saturday 29 August. That is when Mohamed Farah will attempt to win the 5,000m world title for a third straight time, a feat no other runner has ever achieved. If, about 13 minutes later, he crosses the line first in Beijing he can surely expect to end the year not only as a triple world champion but as BBC Sports Personality of the Year and, if the Prime Minister’s support counts for anything, “Sir Mo”. There was some disquiet in 2012 when Farah, described by Lord Coe as “Britain’s greatest athlete”, was awarded a CBE rather than a knighthood after winning Olympic gold at 10,000m and 5,000m. Since then David Cameron has spoken in favour of Farah becoming “Sir Mo”. Victory in China, after winning the 10,000m on the opening day, would surely secure it. Farah, who lost out to Sir Bradley Wiggins as BBC Sports Personality in that golden year of 2012, remains hugely popular in Britain. He has run – and won – in all parts of the country on the track, on the road and in the mud. He has set records at several distances indoors and out, and one that will surely never be broken is for the highest decibel level at an athletics meeting, when he won the second of his gold medals in London’s Olympic Stadium. That Olympic double made Farah Britain’s greatest distance runner. Not since the days of Brendan Foster, Dave Bedford and Dave Moorcroft in the 1970s and 1980s had a British man challenged consistently for global medals in the longest track races. “He has millions of fans, and he has inspired thousands of people to think, ‘If he can do it, I’ll have a go.’ It’s wonderful to see,” says Moorcroft, whose 5,000m national record stood for 28 years before Farah broke it in 2010. View oEmbed on the source website Moorcroft, who was chief executive of UK Athletics for nine years, has known and followed Farah since he first saw him run in a schools cross-country race in Bedfordshire nearly 20 years ago. “If anybody deserves a knighthood, Mo does.…

Meet the new Usain Bolt (good news – he's British!)
type: item
date: 2015-08-21T11:41:00.000Z
creator: Brian Oliver
subject: Athletics
subject: News
subject: Radio
subject: Sport
subject: TV
subject: audio
description: Zharnel Hughes is Team GB's best sprinting hope for the World Athletics Championships 2015 in Beijing. He even gave Bolt a run for his money during Jamaican training camps – how much faster does he think he can go?
encoded: All the talk about Usain Bolt this year has been of an athlete in decline, a superstar who has lost his mojo. On current form the 100m and 200m world record holder is no longer the fastest man in the world. But Bolt did show signs in his 100m victory at the Anniversary Games in London in July that he’s on his way back to his best. He could yet retain both his titles at the World Championships in Beijing, which start on Saturday, the day after his 29th birthday. His millions of fans will hope he does, along with the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) – and not just because the favourite to beat Bolt at both distances is the American Justin Gatlin, who has twice been banned for drugs violations. Bolt at his best has star quality. A few weeks ago Sebastian Coe, elected as the IAAF’s new president on 19 August, put into perspective just how important Bolt is: “He has captured the imagination like no sporting figure since Muhammad Ali in the 1970s.” But whatever happens in Beijing, athletics needs new stars. Gatlin, more pariah than hero, is 33 and won’t be around much longer. Among the fastest of the young pretenders is a 200m sprinter who is flying, both on and off the track. Zharnel Hughes Zharnel Hughes, aged 20, has put in a string of impressive performances, including a second place behind Bolt in the Diamond League in New York, victories in Lausanne and London, and a 200m national title. Remarkably, that title wasn’t won in Jamaica, where he lives and trains, or Anguilla, where he was born and raised, but at July’s British Championships. Anguilla, sitting between the British Virgin Islands and Antigua in the Caribbean, is a British overseas territory, just like Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands. It competes at the Commonwealth Games, though no Anguillan has ever won a medal, but isn’t recognised at the Olympics. As Anguillans hold British passports, the “new Usain Bolt”, as Hughes is known, was able to apply to compete for Britain and North…

Ryder Cup 2014: Will the Irish win it for Europe?
type: item
date: 2014-09-25T09:50:00.000Z
creator: Brian Oliver
subject: Golf
subject: News
subject: Sport
subject: TV
description: McIlroy, McGinley and McDowell are our greatest hope in the Ryder Cup, says golfer Darren Clarke
encoded: As the Ryder Cup comes to Gleneagles, nine days after the referendum, the focus will be very heavily on Scotland. It is only the second time in ten decades of the world’s most popular transatlantic sporting contest that Scotland, known globally as “the home of golf”, has hosted the Cup. There is a local hero to cheer, too, after the late selection of Stephen Gallacher, whose home is less than an hour away from Gleneagles. So far, so Scottish. But look deeper and this European Ryder Cup team is far more about Ireland than Scotland. The star attraction is Rory McIlroy, fresh from winning back-to-back Majors and undisputedly the world’s best golfer now and, probably, for many years to come. McIlroy, who after his Ryder Cup debut in 2010 described it as “the best golf tournament in the world,” will be playing alongside his great friend and fellow Ulsterman Graeme McDowell. And, for the first time since the Cup started in 1927, an Irishman, Paul McGinley, is captain. “It’s wonderful, isn’t it? I’ve never had so many ticket requests,” says Christy O’Connor Jr, the popular Irish golfer who hit one of the most famous shots in Ryder Cup history when Europe retained the Cup at the Belfry in 1989. “Men, women, children – everybody wants to be there. There will be thousands of Irish fans at Gleneagles, and when you’re on that first tee they make a deafening roar. They lift you up.” Among McGinley’s vice-captains is Padraig Harrington, who started a trend when he won the 2007 Open Championship. That was the first Irish win in 60 years in any of the sport’s four Majors – the Masters, the US Open, the Open and the USPGA. It has been followed by eight more since then, a sensational achievement for an island whose population is far less than that of New York. Harrington, McDowell, McIlroy and Darren Clarke are the men who won them. All four have contributed hugely to Europe’s successes in the Ryder Cup, as have several more Irish players. Since the fixture changed in 1979, from the …

Why runners in the men’s Commonwealth Games 1500m final have big shoes to fill
type: item
date: 2014-08-02T05:35:00.000Z
creator: Brian Oliver
subject: Athletics
subject: News
subject: Sport
subject: TV
description: Roger Bannister, Filbert Bayi, and John Walker all made history at the Games
encoded: Leave the best till last – it’s never a bad policy. After a week and a half of sensational sport at venues all over Glasgow and beyond, the athletics programme of the 2014 Commonwealth Games closes with ten medal events on Saturday evening. The last individual race of the Games is, fittingly, the men’s 1500m. In its original, imperial, form the mile provided the most famous race the Games has ever staged in its 84-year history – the head-to-head in Vancouver in 1954 between England’s Roger Bannister and Australia’s John Landy, the only two men at that time to have run a mile inside four minutes. Touts charged a fortune for tickets, and besides the full house of 35,000 lucky enough to be there, the race drew what was then a world-record broadcast audience for a sporting contest. Bannister won, and both men broke the four-minute barrier again. In 1974 Bannister was in Christchurch, New Zealand to watch the final of what by then had become the 1500m. The home crowd roared on their great hero, John Walker, who ran faster than the world record time that had been set nearly six years earlier by Jim Ryun of the United States. But even that was not enough to win. Filbert Bayi, a 20-year-old from Tanzania, went even faster. In perhaps the greatest front-running performance ever seen over 1500m, Bayi led all the way to better Ryun’s record by nearly a second, finishing in 3 minutes 32.16 seconds. “That was the greatest run I have ever seen,” said Bannister. Brendan Foster broke the UK record and yet he was beaten into seventh place, five and a half seconds behind Bayi. “It was an amazing race – one of the greatest in history,” says Foster, who will be commentating on this year’s final for the BBC. “We knew from the way he was running the year before that he might do it.” Bayi had set a succession of national records and had beaten the great Kenyan, Kip Keino, in 1973. Bayi, whose parents were cow herders and who had been running long distances from his early childhood, went o…

Forget the Olympics – the Commonwealth Games is where sporting history is made
type: item
date: 2014-07-23T15:03:00.000Z
creator: Brian Oliver
subject: News
subject: Sport
subject: TV
subject: Commonwealth Games
subject: Olympics
description: “There will be more women’s medal events than ever before,” says Brian Oliver
encoded: Almost two years to the day, here we go again. Britain is preparing to host an international sporting extravaganza, on the athletics track, in the pool, the velodrome, the boxing arena and out on the streets. But Glasgow 2014 is not London 2012, and the Commonwealth Games is not the Olympics. In some respects it’s better than that, because the Commonwealth Games is where things happen first. Usain Bolt and Mo Farah will be running more than six feet off the ground at Hampden Park, the home of Scottish football, which has been transformed – with the help of 6,000 steel stilts – into a world-class athletics venue. This ground-breaking technology, never before used for an entire track and in field, is known among Games organisers as “the Glasgow solution”. There are other “firsts” in Glasgow. There will be more women’s medal events than ever before, and the male-female split among competitors will be closer to 50-50 than in any previous global multi-sports event. London 2012 was hoping to be the first Games with an even split but fell short, with 56 per cent men and 44 per cent women. Then there are the 22 para-sport events, the most to be included on the main programme. And a new event, the mixed relay in triathlon, is described as “fresh, exhilarating and innovative” by the president of the sport’s governing body. It’s not the first time the Commonwealth Games have led the way. Few people are aware that the medal ceremony, with athletes standing on a podium, was not an Olympic invention. It was first used at the first Commonwealth Games, then called the British Empire Games, in Canada in 1930. A couple of International Olympic Committee presidents were there in Hamilton, Ontario, to see it and liked it so much they pinched the idea for their own Games. Another innovation in Hamilton was the athletes’ village, which has been a fixture every since. At a stretch one might even say the Games are responsible for the birth of Nike sportswear. Who says? Brendan Foster, the …