World of Sport

At the 2015 European Championships in Dordrecht, Netherlands Christie claimed her first overall European title after winning gold in the 500m and 1500m and finishing second in the 3000m super final

ROFL

That wasn't sport, that was a movie.

Wilberto wrote: »

I've always fell for this moment (well, when I saw it later in life anyway as I was quite young at the time so I missed it live!).

Derek Redmond, a British 400m medal favourite, was visibly distraught after tearing his hamstring not long into the race and crouched to his haunches. He got back up moments later and limped about 100m when his father broke onto the track to all but carry him over the line. Another one of those, "It's the taking part/finishing that matters" stories.

I remember welling up a bit when I saw this alright.

Lots of great pics in this thread. The ones without an explanation can be a bit hard to appreciate though if you aren't into the sport in question!

Wilberto wrote: »

I've always fell for this moment (well, when I saw it later in life anyway as I was quite young at the time so I missed it live!).

Derek Redmond, a British 400m medal favourite, was visibly distraught after tearing his hamstring not long into the race and crouched to his haunches. He got back up moments later and limped about 100m when his father broke onto the track to all but carry him over the line. Another one of those, "It's the taking part/finishing that matters" stories.

I like it too, but I remember folk were skeptical about the whole thing and said he pulled up knowing he wasn't anywhere near winning, doesn't make sense to me.

On a similar theme, I never understood the anger directed at Sonia for Atlanta

The Zola Budd Mary Decker controversy.. Who stepped on who? Who closed in too soon?

Then Zola Budd was disqualified .....

It'd be great if people can give a little background to their picture, even if it is apparently obvious.

The whole Zola Budd Episode in sport is .... complicated, involved and best to read the wiki page... A victim of the British press, The Daily Mail, inexperienced and too young for international athletics???.... But, her Junior records still hold and Zola Budd did win two gold medals. for her distance.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zola_Budd

The first Olympiad was unofficial. For the 1924 Olympics an attempt was made to include chess in the Olympic Games but this failed because of problems with distinguishing between amateur and professional players.[1] While the 1924 Summer Olympics was taking place in Paris, the 1st unofficial Chess Olympiad also took place in Paris. FIDE was formed on Sunday, July 20, 1924, the closing day of the 1st unofficial Chess Olympiad.[2]
FIDE organised the first Official Olympiad in 1927 which took place in London.[1] The Olympiads were occasionally held annually and at irregular intervals until World War II; since 1950 they have been held regularly every two years.




There were 16 participating nations in the 1st Chess Olympiad, 1927. By the 41st Olympiad, 2014, there were 172 participating nations.

A group of chess enthusiasts had checked into a hotel, and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories. After about an hour, the manager came out of the office and asked them to disperse.

"But why?" they asked, as they moved off.

"Because," he said, "I can't stand chess nuts boasting in an open foyer."

Lee Trevino played a miraculous round of golf in 1972, beating Nicklaus and Jacklin to win the British Open at Muirhead.

and, it's beautiful to watch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urdUwammrEM

The last F1 race on the original spa francorchamps circuit in 1970 at the fearsome downhill flat out burnenville corner. The circuit was over 8 miles long over public roads, where average speeds reach >160mph.



From wiki:

"Spa was the fastest road circuit in Europe at the time, and it had a nasty reputation for being dangerous and very fast- it was a circuit known to be one for the brave, and most drivers were frightened of it. Entries in the F1 and sportscar races there were often smaller than usual compared to other circuits."

"The old Spa circuit was unique in that speeds were consistently high with hardly any let-up at all for 3–4 minutes. This made it an extraordinarily difficult mental challenge, because most of the corners were taken at 180+ mph and were not quite flat- every corner was as important as the one before it."

"The lap record of the old triangle-shaped track is 3 minutes and 13.4 seconds, held by the French driver Henri Pescarolo, driving a Matra at the 1973 Spa 1000 km World Sportscar Championship race at an average speed of 262 kilometres per hour (163 mph)"

" [Jackie] Stewart later compared the old Spa circuit in 1986 as being as ferocious as a tiger, and he later described Masta in an interview in 2011 as perhaps the hardest corner on any racetrack he raced on in his career."

Theres a great BBC4 documentary called "Grand Prix - The killer years" with shows alot of this and more:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x14el38_grand-prix-the-killer-years-do

When we talk of the all-time greats in Formula 1, we talk about Juan Manuel Fangio, about Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost, and about Michael Schumacher. Indeed, their greatness cannot be doubted. because each of them knew a thing or two about driving in their respective eras.

Fangio raced in the 50s, when racing cars were unreliable contraptions, which could reach 200 km/hr, then could break down at any time and kill you. Senna and Prost were associated with the mid 80s-mid 90s - which was possibly the most competitive era of motor racing, when turbo charged engines and driver aids produced some of the most technologically advanced cars of all time. Schumacher drove in the recent past, and broke almost every record that had been set before him.

However, there is yet another driver who could well lay stake to being one of the greatest of all times - only had destiny had been a bit forgiving.

After Stirling Moss, Jim Clark was the pride of British motorsports in the 60s. The Times put him at number 1 in the list of greatest racing drivers of all time, ahead of the aforementioned mavericks. It wasn't an exaggeration, because when he died in a Formula 2 crash at Germany, he had won more races and scored more pole positions than any other driver before him.

The Italian Grand Prix of 1967 is considered to be one of his most spectacular races.

The circuit at Monza has always been associated with sheer speed, and if there was one single grand prix which was a display of such eye-watering speed it was none other than Clark's in 1967.

Clark, driving for Lotus-Ford had scored pole position, with a time of 1:28.5. He was leading the race and was well on his way to scalp yet another win, but mid-way through the race - disaster struck in the form of a tyre puncture. In the pit-stop that followed, he lost one whole lap, and dropped to 16th place.

All hopes seemed shattered for the 31 year old Briton, which was when he decided to do something quite surrealistic. He tore through Monza's 'Temple of Speed', and systematically destroyed the competition. The fastest-lap time plummeted with every lap that Clark completed, till he went fast enough to set a fastest lap time which was equal to his qualifying pole time. Now when has that happened in Formula 1 before?

But that wasn't it. In the second last lap, he unlapped himself by blasting past his arch-rival Jack Brabham and then past John Surtees' Honda and into the lead. The crowd around the circuit looked on in disbelief. Jim Clarke, had just gone past the race leader, after being a lap down and in 16th place some time back.

However, Clark couldn't make it work till the end, as a faulty fuel pump problem in the last lap, made his car lose all engine power. Surtees and Brabham went past him and Clark coasted past the chequered flag in 3rd position.