1. On the track Hamilton talks with the greatest authority. At 36, he is the most accomplished Formula One driver of all time, with 98 grand prix wins, 100 pole positions and 171 podium finishes. The only meaningful record he hasn’t broken is the number of drivers’ championships won, where he is tied with Michael Schumacher at seven. Put bluntly, he’s the best the world has ever seen and is still at the top of his game.
But in the past year, off the track Hamilton has started to find a voice about his racial identity. He has been taking a knee; raising a clenched fist. Long dormant concerns about racism and discrimination have been rudely awakened following the Black Lives Matter uprisings. In the process, Hamilton has transformed the way he sees himself: from a compliant go-with-the-flow character to a change agent who is determined to make waves.
He has shaped the way others see him too, going from an inoffensive, if gaffe-prone, socialite focused only on his sport, to a politically aware role model conscious of his wider cultural significance. Now, he is about to take on the sport that brought him fortune and fame, with a commission demanding racial diversity and meaningful outreach to underrepresented groups – as well as more racial equality in general.
Gary Younge’s extensive interview with Lewis Hamilton for The Guardian.
2. It was a stunning end to what had been a stunning final day. All week the English had whipped themselves into a frenzy of anticipation and the day dawned with a sense of wonder at what the long hours leading up to kick off might bring. Early in the morning queues were already forming at pubs and beer gardens. By mid-afternoon it was clear we were witnessing a pre-celebration of truly historic proportions. The spirit of the day was personified by the man in Leicester Square who, noticing someone had lobbed a yellow plastic traffic cone in his direction, fearlessly headed it away.
The English army marched on Wembley in a riot of dangling nutsacks and flares stuck up arses, pausing only to scale tall objects and snort handfuls of white powder to the cheers of their comrades. At the stadium a scene developed which was somewhere between the Rio Carnival and the Capitol riots. Order broke down as groups of ticketless fans surged past security and pushed their way into the lower tier.
Ken Early’s take on the Euro 2020 final, with the first recorded entry of “dangling nutsacks” in the Irish Times. (€)
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3. For the last five of those years, Vialli was accompanied by what he calls “an unwelcome travel companion”: cancer.
Yeah, that’s what he calls it. A “travel companion” stalking him on his journey through life.
“I don’t see this as a battle,” he writes in his book, “Goals: Inspirational stories to help tackle life’s challenges,” which I helped curate and translate. “I am not a warrior. I am not fighting cancer: it’s too strong an enemy and I would not stand a chance. I am a man who is on a journey and cancer has joined me on that journey… my goal is to keep walking, keep moving until he’s had enough and leaves me alone.”
That journey has seen Vialli take on bouts of chemotherapy that ravaged his body, turning his chiseled athlete’s frame into skin and bones (and heart: that never went away). It saw him confront death, the end of existence (or, at least, this existence) and the effect it would have on his family and loved ones.
From Wembley and for ESPN, Gabriele Marcotti tells Gianluca Vialli’s story of resilience and triumph.
4. There’s always an uneasiness we feel making our way past the men’s toilet queue. If walking through the crowd wasn’t bad enough imagine a long line of men glaring at you and the odd one making an obscene comment or gesture. Nobody should ever make you want to feel invisible.
Do the men who have treated women in this way over the course of the past month want their own female family members to go through these kinds of experiences? No? Then why do they keep on targeting other people’s daughters?
The same goes for the group of England fans heckling a woman who was on her balcony overlooking the stadium. They sang “Get your tits out for the lads” on repeat until she disappeared back into her home.
Earlier in the tournament, a former England player was being interviewed outside the stadium and there was a man shouting “I shagged your niece” at him. This is not OK. None of this is OK.
There has been such a concerted effort to inspire women and girls to play football, to attend matches, to work in the game in recent years. Inspiration is all well and good, but what is actually being done about the practicalities of the environment in which professional male football operates in this country? If this experience is the norm, it’s not fit for purpose.
For The Athletic, Caoimhe O’Neill explains the misogyny and sexism she experienced among the English support at the Euros. (€)
5. For the three decades after the title was formally introduced in 1950, the grandmaster was a rare species. Other players knew not only their names but their playing styles, too. They were treated like stars at tournaments and appearances.
That all changed in the 1980s, when FIDE, the governing body for chess, started expanding into countries that did not have established chess cultures. To pursue its goal of having at least one grandmaster in each country, FIDE relaxed its requirements.
That change made the label more accessible, but also less exclusive: Nearly 2,000 players have become grandmasters since 1950. Gradually, the label ceased being a ticket to a great future in chess. Young players — and their often obsessive parents — needed something to set them apart. The title of the youngest grandmaster turned into one such springboard.
Ivan Nechepurenko and Misha Friedman explore a darker side of chess for the New York Times. (€)
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Vialli's triumph, Wembley fallout, the darker side of chess and the rest of the week's best sportswriting
1. On the track Hamilton talks with the greatest authority. At 36, he is the most accomplished Formula One driver of all time, with 98 grand prix wins, 100 pole positions and 171 podium finishes. The only meaningful record he hasn’t broken is the number of drivers’ championships won, where he is tied with Michael Schumacher at seven. Put bluntly, he’s the best the world has ever seen and is still at the top of his game.
But in the past year, off the track Hamilton has started to find a voice about his racial identity. He has been taking a knee; raising a clenched fist. Long dormant concerns about racism and discrimination have been rudely awakened following the Black Lives Matter uprisings. In the process, Hamilton has transformed the way he sees himself: from a compliant go-with-the-flow character to a change agent who is determined to make waves.
He has shaped the way others see him too, going from an inoffensive, if gaffe-prone, socialite focused only on his sport, to a politically aware role model conscious of his wider cultural significance. Now, he is about to take on the sport that brought him fortune and fame, with a commission demanding racial diversity and meaningful outreach to underrepresented groups – as well as more racial equality in general.
Gary Younge’s extensive interview with Lewis Hamilton for The Guardian.
2. It was a stunning end to what had been a stunning final day. All week the English had whipped themselves into a frenzy of anticipation and the day dawned with a sense of wonder at what the long hours leading up to kick off might bring. Early in the morning queues were already forming at pubs and beer gardens. By mid-afternoon it was clear we were witnessing a pre-celebration of truly historic proportions. The spirit of the day was personified by the man in Leicester Square who, noticing someone had lobbed a yellow plastic traffic cone in his direction, fearlessly headed it away.
The English army marched on Wembley in a riot of dangling nutsacks and flares stuck up arses, pausing only to scale tall objects and snort handfuls of white powder to the cheers of their comrades. At the stadium a scene developed which was somewhere between the Rio Carnival and the Capitol riots. Order broke down as groups of ticketless fans surged past security and pushed their way into the lower tier.
Ken Early’s take on the Euro 2020 final, with the first recorded entry of “dangling nutsacks” in the Irish Times. (€)
3. For the last five of those years, Vialli was accompanied by what he calls “an unwelcome travel companion”: cancer.
Yeah, that’s what he calls it. A “travel companion” stalking him on his journey through life.
“I don’t see this as a battle,” he writes in his book, “Goals: Inspirational stories to help tackle life’s challenges,” which I helped curate and translate. “I am not a warrior. I am not fighting cancer: it’s too strong an enemy and I would not stand a chance. I am a man who is on a journey and cancer has joined me on that journey… my goal is to keep walking, keep moving until he’s had enough and leaves me alone.”
That journey has seen Vialli take on bouts of chemotherapy that ravaged his body, turning his chiseled athlete’s frame into skin and bones (and heart: that never went away). It saw him confront death, the end of existence (or, at least, this existence) and the effect it would have on his family and loved ones.
From Wembley and for ESPN, Gabriele Marcotti tells Gianluca Vialli’s story of resilience and triumph.
4. There’s always an uneasiness we feel making our way past the men’s toilet queue. If walking through the crowd wasn’t bad enough imagine a long line of men glaring at you and the odd one making an obscene comment or gesture. Nobody should ever make you want to feel invisible.
Do the men who have treated women in this way over the course of the past month want their own female family members to go through these kinds of experiences? No? Then why do they keep on targeting other people’s daughters?
The same goes for the group of England fans heckling a woman who was on her balcony overlooking the stadium. They sang “Get your tits out for the lads” on repeat until she disappeared back into her home.
Earlier in the tournament, a former England player was being interviewed outside the stadium and there was a man shouting “I shagged your niece” at him. This is not OK. None of this is OK.
There has been such a concerted effort to inspire women and girls to play football, to attend matches, to work in the game in recent years. Inspiration is all well and good, but what is actually being done about the practicalities of the environment in which professional male football operates in this country? If this experience is the norm, it’s not fit for purpose.
For The Athletic, Caoimhe O’Neill explains the misogyny and sexism she experienced among the English support at the Euros. (€)
5. For the three decades after the title was formally introduced in 1950, the grandmaster was a rare species. Other players knew not only their names but their playing styles, too. They were treated like stars at tournaments and appearances.
That all changed in the 1980s, when FIDE, the governing body for chess, started expanding into countries that did not have established chess cultures. To pursue its goal of having at least one grandmaster in each country, FIDE relaxed its requirements.
That change made the label more accessible, but also less exclusive: Nearly 2,000 players have become grandmasters since 1950. Gradually, the label ceased being a ticket to a great future in chess. Young players — and their often obsessive parents — needed something to set them apart. The title of the youngest grandmaster turned into one such springboard.
Ivan Nechepurenko and Misha Friedman explore a darker side of chess for the New York Times. (€)
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