Here’s to 2021. Sam Cunningham looks at a year of controversial sporting stories, frantic finales and remarkable achievements.
And for good measure, our chief sports correspondent Kevin Garside picks out his Tokyo 2020 highlights too…
The good, bad and bizarre of 2021
By chief football correspondent Sam Cunningham
Quitter who can’t handle pressure proved wrong by teenager he accused of quitting because she couldn’t handle pressure
Where virtually everyone saw a teenager struggling under the intensity of the spotlight when Emma Raducanu pulled out of her Wimbledon last-16 match against Ajla Tomljanovic after experiencing breathing difficulties and dizziness, Piers Morgan spied an opportunity to promote himself.
Raducanu “couldn’t handle the pressure and quit when she was losing badly”, tweeted Morgan, who a few months earlier had stormed off the GMB set after failing to handle pressure, then quit the show.
Three months later, Raducanu, 19, won the US Open becoming:
- The first British woman to win a singles Grand Slam in 44 years
- The youngest Brit to win a Grand Slam
- The first woman since Serena Williams to win the US Open without losing a set
- The first qualifier to win a Grand Slam in the Open era
- The youngest female Grand Slam winner since Maria Sharapova in 2004
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How Emma Raducanu and her team celebrated US Open win: ‘She hasn’t grasped the magnitude of what she’s done’15 September, 2021
Emma Raducanu provided the perfect response to critics who questioned her nerve13 September, 2021Woodward resignation nothing and everything to do with Super League
There are few times when failure should be celebrated, but seeing the Super League burn to the ground before it had barely got off it, humiliating the 12 teams who had signed up to break away from the rest to satiate their own greed, was one of them.
Less than 24 hours after the collapse, Ed Woodward became its first major casualty when he resigned as Manchester United’s executive vice-chairman. Word coming out of the club was that it had nothing to do with the fact Manchester United had been embarrassed by the failed coup, it had been planned all along.
Yet amid claim and counterclaim it was then audaciously suggested Woodward resigned because he couldn’t countenance the Glazers’ decision to join the Super League. Hmmm.
More on European Super League
You couldn’t stomach a breakaway Super League? The sorry truth is we already have one23 September, 2021
Who is Richard Arnold? Man Utd’s ‘choice of Ed Woodward’s replacement’ promises more of the same09 September, 2021
Champions League: Controversial 36-team reforms and plans to safeguard places for big teams could be abandoned17 August, 2021“He effectively tendered his resignation because he could not support the Glazers in taking Manchester United into the European Super League,” we were told by a Sky Sports News reporter stood outside Carrington who somehow managed to keep a straight face the entire time.
You couldn’t make it up
Race director Michael Masi took his title a little too literally in what was, nonetheless, an utterly thrilling and compelling conclusion to the F1 season. With Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen tied on points going into the final race, the British driver appeared in control and on course for his 8th title until Nicholas Latifi crashed with five laps remaining.
With a safety car leading the drivers to the race’s conclusion, events transpired — or were orchestrated by Masi, depending how you look at it — to leave Verstappen right behind his rival with fresher tyres and one lap to go, and he duly overtook to win.
When are the Oscar nominees announced?
Celebrating the English way
“We are thrilled that more fans will now be able to walk through the Wembley turnstiles and enjoy the final of Euro 2020,” said UK culture secretary Oliver Dowden after the government agreed to let 60,000 attend the European Championship final despite the Covid restrictions in place.
Little did Dowden know that, as a way to mark England’s first Euros final ever and a first final in half a century, fans would consume drink and drugs around Wembley from 9am and decide not only to walk through turnstiles but to run, push, shove and stampede through them, too. As well as ripping open emergency doors and piling through disabled gates. Oh, and they threw excrement at police.
Well done, everyone involved.
Erasmus finds himself in hot water — but not for carrying it
Bite was added to the Lions tour after head coach Warren Gatland accused South Africa’s director of rugby Rassie Erasmus of donning a bib and pretending to be a “water boy” in order to issue tactical instructions to his players.
“I think if you are the water boy carrier running onto the pitch you have got to make sure you are carrying water,” Gatland said.
There were calls for World Rugby to take action, but the governing body’s rules state only that head coaches are not allowed in the technical zone, and Erasmus was, technically, director of rugby (and water carrier, obviously).
With all that in mind, spectators may have expected Erasmus to keep a low profile during the tour. But Erasmus had other ideas, recording an hour-long video criticising referee Nic Berry and his assistants for mistakes in the opening Test, including 26 highlight clips.
That didn’t wash with World Rugby and he was banned from all rugby activity for two months. Including water carrying.
Brave Invincibles redefine cricket
Cricket took a leap into the 21st Century with the launch of The Hundred. The idea was widely panned by cricket’s staunch traditionalists who took exception to the creation of a version of the game aimed at people who weren’t staunch traditionalists.
The ECB ploughed on, regardless, seeming almost to be mocking critics when it unveiled a neon pink and green competition logo and teams called names such as Oval Invincibles, Southern Brave and Trent Rockets.
The women’s tournament was won by the Invincibles (the men turned out not to be that Invincible) while hopefully men’s winners Southern Brave can use some of the prize money to design a logo that doesn’t look like it was based on the Windows logos of the 1990s.
Emma Hayes: what a hero
Far from being overawed by claims that AFC Wimbledon were lining Emma Hayes up to become the first woman to manage in the men’s game, the Chelsea manager, who would go on to win a domestic Treble by the end of the year, described the idea of trading the Women’s Super League for League One as “insulting” and pointed out that AFC Wimbledon wouldn’t be able to afford her, anyway. “I just don’t know why anyone would ever think that women’s football is a step down,” she said.
Saudi Arabia has nothing to do with Newcastle United, honest
April 2020: Amnesty UK director Kate Allen writes to Premier League chief executive Richard Masters warning that the league will become a “patsy” if it rubber-stamps an attempt by human-rights abusing state Saudi Arabia to buy Newcastle United for £300million.
Masters writes back: “I can assure you that these processes go beyond those required by UK company law and they are applied with equal rigour to every single prospective purchase of a Premier League club.”
October 2021: The Premier League signs off on the deal after being given “legally binding assurances” that the Saudi state will not control Newcastle despite the Public Investment Fund owned by Saudi Arabia purchasing the club, whose chairman happens to be Mohammed bin Salman, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia.
Football starts selling magic beans and fairy dust
The murky world of non-fungible tokens (or NFTs) and crypto found a perfect home in football.
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With the government edging closer to banning betting companies from shirt sponsorship, clubs have been in desperate need of someone else willing to throw silly money at them to advertise another product that could lead vulnerable people to lose an awful lot of money.
Clubs and stars have been falling over each other to push this exploitative unregulated industry to football fans. If you were lucky enough to buy an Arsenal fan token in October, for example, it was worth 50 per cent less two months later. And the Advertising Standards Agency just banned two Arsenal adverts promoting the “coins”, ruling that they were crypto assets even if Arsenal advert claims otherwise (Arsenal are contesting this).
For those unsure, here’s a genuine description of how a pyramid scheme, sorry, I mean cryptocurrency works: “Now we have the goal to get to a dollar, we have everybody kind of encouraging everyone else to buy more Dogecoin. Because now it’s like, alright if I get it, then I have it at a certain price, if you get it, you have it at a certain price, and then if we get more people to buy it, the value goes up, right?
“Soon as the value goes up, I make more money, you make more money, they make more money. Oh, wow! So let’s get more people to buy it, and then the valuation goes up, and then we all make more money . . . We’re all in this together. We’re all a part of a team. And we’re all trying to get it to a certain goal.”
Dogecoin happen to be advertised on Watford’s shirtsleeve.
Tokyo memories: My favourite Olympic moments
By Chief Sports Correspondent Kevin Garside
Star spotting
To best gauge the power of the Olympic ideal, ask a newbie, even a reluctant one. Ireland’s Rory McIlroy elected to swerve golf’s return to the fold in 2016 and was hardly brimming with enthusiasm at the prospect of four days in Tokyo under restrictive Covid rules. He wanted nothing to do with the Olympic village, preferring a hotel near the course. If he had to be here, he would treat it like any other tournament. And then he walked to the first tee.
By the close, he admitted having never tried so hard to finish third, such was the pull of an Olympic medal. Team GB’s Paul Casey and Tommy Fleetwood were converts from the start, wandering around starry-eyed and utterly plugged-in to the atmosphere in GB house.
Golf offered this correspondent a shift outside the Tokyo bubble and some welcome exposure to green space. There, in the shade by the 17th green, as I watched Fleetwood’s closing holes, my phone pinged. “Is that you under the tree in a blue shirt?”. It was Claire Fleetwood rooting for her husband, eight time zones away. “Shouldn’t you be watching Tommy?” I joked. “I’m trying to,” she said. “Get off my bloody telly.”
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Day Three
While Britain slept, Adam Peaty flexed his pecs in the pool to ignite the Team GB gold rush. The Aquatic Centre was a 10-minute walk from the broom cupboard I called home. No, seriously. A bed and desk filled the floor space. The only spare inches were the three-metre corridor leading to the door, which I filled doing press-ups every day. No, seriously. The window opened on to a brick wall, one metre away.
Thus was there every incentive to get outta there. Peaty was just the ticket, rampaging through the breaststroke field in time to get me back to the MPC (main press centre) to watch Tom Pidcock win mountain bike gold and, later that afternoon, Tom Daley finally hit the top step of the podium with partner Matty Lee in the 10m synchronised diving. Peaty was a given, Pidcock a revelation and Daley’s the most beautiful triumph of the fortnight, gold finally arriving at his fourth Olympics.
Simone Biles
If any moment at these Covid-warped Games symbolised the dystopian vibe it was the point Simone Biles crash-landed in the vault. The hall crackled with anticipation, waiting for the moment the face of the American Olympic team, if not the entire Games, stepped forward. And then the combined intake of breath at the mangled execution, the immediate attendance of the US coach, her almost smuggled exit from the arena.
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Simone Biles wins bronze medal in balance beam final as she returns to competition in Tokyo 2020 Olympics03 August, 2021Up in the press seats, the seriousness of the episode was far from clear. All across the floor the competition continued, gymnasts oblivious to the unfolding drama. Minutes past. Still no Biles. She wouldn’t be coming back, at least to compete. The rest of the programme passed in a blur. Biles was the story, but not in a way any thought possible.
Her post-competition media conference was one of the most charged I had experienced in 30 years of sports reporting – the best in the world, the reference point for the sport, pouring out her soul to the world’s media. Her nerve, she said, had failed her.
With that sentence she arguably hit a higher note than with any routine for her words reached a far wider audience. She placed mental health at the heart of the agenda. It was OK to fail, OK to admit fear and weakness. It was OK to be human.
Glimpsing Fuji
After 14 days confined within the Olympic bubble, the prospect of a journey shared with members of the public and on something other than a bus proved irresistible.
And so it was that I boarded the bullet train and sped out to the Velodrome, an hour outside Tokyo. Having covered Formula One at the Fuji circuit I knew how uncooperative the world’s foremost volcano could be with tourists seeking pictures. Not for everybody do the clouds lift to reveal the snow-capped summit. And on this occasion not for me, though the vast silhouette of one side of basaltic rock did emerge as the train pulled into the station.
Ah well, the rock stars I had really come to see, British cycling’s golden couple, Laura and Jason Kenny, would surely compensate with the requisite hot metal. Not so. Despite setting world records, Laura in the women’s pursuit and Jason in the team sprints, on the way to the final, both would be downed when it mattered.
Once again I was plunged into a story of unexpected drama and pathos. The Kennys (left) were reminded that losing is as big a part of sport as winning, even for them. Though both would return to the Velodrome to add to their gold medal tallies, this experience was devastating.
A night on the town
Tokyo, the world’s largest metropolis, was a Covid ghost town past 8pm. I discovered this while walking its pristine central streets with colleagues to celebrate the end of quarantine. One bar after another closed to the world.
At moments like this you need someone in the know. In this business it is usually a photographer. Sure enough, the Mail’s snapper directed us to one of the finest underground street restaurants. It was heaving with Tokyo rebels, a flamboyant group half our age smoking and drinking, sans masks. We four, we band of brothers, slotted right in, knowing not what we ordered, only that it went down a treat with beer.
We wondered how the Games might have looked, how Tokyo might have felt had we been exposed to more of this. It was a moment of celebration and regret. A toast was raised to the Games, to the one handed down and the one all of Japan wanted but could never have.
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