Olympic gold medal performance with another stunning victory in the Men’s Long Jump. Shara Proctor was actually leading in the Women’s Long Jump with just one round to go before America’s Tianna Bartoletta deprived her of the gold medal. The women’s 4x400 metres relay team of Ohuruogu, Onuora, Child and Bundy-Davies ran a brilliant race to secure the bronze medal, as did the men’s team of Yousif, Williams, Dunn and Rooney. Rooney ran a tremendous last leg to catch Javon Francis of Jamaica right on the line to secure third place. As to the future, keep a close eye on our young women sprinters. Nineteen year old Dina Asher-Smith broke the British 100 metres record this summer (to add to her 200 metres record) and became the first Brit to run under 11 seconds; and she and her team mates in the 4x100 metres relay team Henry, Philip and Jodie Williams just might become serious challengers to the USA, Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago. Only a lack of fluency with the baton changes prevented a serious challenge for third place but even so the girls set a new national record. The GB women’s squad is indeed full of talent with Katarina Johnson-Thompson in the heptathlon, Shelayna Oskan-Clarke in the 800 metres, Laura Muir in the 1,500 metres, Lorraine Ugen in the long jump and Sophie Hitchon in the women’s hammer.
Swimming World Championships Team GBs swimmers set a record medal haul with five gold, one silver and three bronze medals in Kazan. Adam Peaty led the way with three golds and became the first British swimmer to do so in a single world championship. He is the world number one in both the 50 and 100 metre breaststroke, two events he won, and he added his third medal in the 4x100 metre mixed medley relay event. James Guy won the 200 metre freestyle gold, silver in the 400 metre freestyle and a further gold in the 4x200 metre freestyle relay team. Bronze medals were won by Siobhan-Marie O’Connor, Ross Murdoch and Jazz Carlin. Much praise has gone to Bill Furniss, the new head coach, and Chris Spice, the new national performance director. Their “cruel to be kind” methods seem to be working!!
Tennis Another Wimbledon and victories again for Novak Djokovic and Serena Williams. Djokovic was, once again, just a bit too good for Federer whom he beat 7-6 6-7 6-4 6-3 in the final, a score closely to be repeated in the US Open final when he won 6-4 5-7 6-4 6-4. Djokovic claims that marriage and fatherhood has improved his tennis. Federer with two sets of twins, and in that he still outperforms Djokovic, also believes the same, and at 34 years of age and still ranked number 2 in the world, who can doubt the reasons for these two players motivation and abilities. Andy Murray is looking to improve his game having married his long-term girlfriend, 28
American In Britain
Kim Sears; what next? Serena marched on with a 6-4 6-4 victory over Spain’s Garbine Muguruza who was playing in her first Grand Slam final. Although, like the Men’s singles, Serena was a firm favourite for the Ladies’ final, the women’s game is a bit less predictable with a whole host of new young players beginning to make their mark, a number of them from the USA. As an example of this, the eight women who contested this year’s quarter finals were all different to those who contested the quarter finals in 2014! One gleam of hope for America was that Reilly Opelka won the Boys singles title. Britain’s focus now turns to the Davis Cup, the semi-final for which will be held in Glasgow against Australia. Once again this will be predominantly Andy Murray vs the opposition, although occasionally an exceptional match from James Ward in a singles rubber has been a deciding factor in winning a match. We all hope that a fervent Scottish crowd will spur Team GB and Andy on to a Davis Cup final, something we never dreamt possible until Murray agreed to play in the team! Before leaving tennis, we would like to mention the exploits of Britain’s Johanna Konta. Prior to the US Open she was ranked world number 96 but she won two $100,000 tournaments in Canada and won through the US Open qualifier to reach the main draw. This created a winning streak of 13 matches. She then won her first round match 6-3 6-0 before defeating both world number 9, and Wimbledon finalist, Muguruza and then world number 18, Petkovic. This put her into the fourth round and second week at the US Open when she was narrowly defeated by world number 5, Petra Kivitova. Jo showed great ability, mental concentration and determination and looks to be our best woman player at the present time. It is interesting to note that at the age of 24 the LTA reduced Jo’s financial support. Being made more financially dependent on prize money and the organisation of her own coaching and tournament scheduling might just have given her the need for greater match success. Whatever the reason it was great to watch her US Open matches on TV and she almost became the last Brit standing in the championship; Andy Murray went out in the same round on the same day but an hour or so later!!
Golf After coming through a tough three man play off with Louis Oosthuizen of South Africa and Australia’s Marc Leishman, America’s Zach Johnson won the 144th Open Championship at St. Andrews. In doing so he also became only the sixth player to win at both Augusta and St. Andrews, those iconic and hallowed venues of golf, in the same year. It was a tremendous championship with five players finishing within one shot of each other. Apart from the three in the play off, who finished on 15 under par, America’s Jordan Speith and Jason Day of Australia (who went on to win the PGA title)
finished on 14 under par. It was exciting stuff and special congratulations always go to the winner of such close fought matches, whatever the sport, when that extra determination, concentration and will to win has to come to the fore. The Ryder Cup does not take place this year but two other team tournaments do. The Walker Cup is the equivalent to the Ryder Cup for amateurs, except that America play against Great Britain and Ireland rather than Europe. It resulted in another defeat for the USA in Britain, GB and Ireland winning by a massive 16.5 points to 9.5. Devon’s 21 year old Jimmy Mullen won four matches out of four and Cormac Sharvin won three out of three. The last two players to equal Mullen’s achievement were Luke Donald and Paul Casey and they went on to become world numbers 1 and 3 as professionals. Paul Dunne, who became the first amateur to lead the Open Championship going in to the last round, scored 1.5 points but had the honour of getting the winning half point to secure the Cup. The Americans are back this month, albeit in Germany, when their ladies set out to try to win the Solheim Cup from the European ladies whose record against the USA is almost as good as that of Europe’s Ryder Cup team. This is one occasion when the UK becomes true Europeans. If Britain ever left the European Union it would be an essential part of any agreement that GB would remain part of the Ryder and Solheim Cup teams.
Cycling This is a sport rarely covered in ‘UK Sports’ but our congratulations go to Chris Froome who became the first Briton to win the Tour de France twice. At the Arc de Triomphe, Froome gave his victory speech to the crowd and those watching on television and, in referring to the hallowed yellow jersey, “le maillot jaune”, he said it was “special, very special” and “I understand its history, good and bad, and I will always respect it, never dishonour it. And I will always be proud to have won it”. The words of a true champion.
Soccer Well, another soccer season is under way. The transfer market closed on 1 September. Last season’s Premiership runners up, Manchester City, spent another small fortune, around £154 million, closely followed by Manchester United (fourth last season) with £115 million. Chelsea, last season’s champions, spent a modest £72 million, and Arsenal who finished third got completely lost and bought only a goalkeeper (although a very good one) for £13 million. Arsenal were the only club in all of europe’s premier divisions not to buy one outfield player; their fans are not convinced.The remaining Premiership clubs all spent somewhere between £10 million and £50 million. It is very early days with clubs having played just five games at the time of writing, but it looks like Manchester City bought best having won all five matches. Manchester United and Arsenal have 10 points each from a possible 15 but wait a minute, which team has 11 points?