Left field
The Reuters global sports blog
London Olympics 2012 live blog
Click on the link below to find all the latest news, photos and gossip from the London Olympics 2012
from Photographers Blog:
NFL touchdown in London
By Suzanne Plunkett
British sports fans are a serious bunch. When it comes to football (they never call it soccer), many would rather lose their home than miss their team score a winning goal. Club allegiance is often demonstrated with tribal passion - influencing tattoos, clothing and even choice of marital partners.
When American football makes a rare appearance in London, it's somewhat of a surprise to see the seriousness of the sport replaced with a more frivolous obsession: cheerleaders.
That's not to say British fans have no interest in the sport. When the Chicago Bears took on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in a showcase game at Wembley Stadium in October, I spoke to plenty of Brits among the American expats paying homage to their national sport. Many professed as much fanaticism as the American supporters who had traveled from the States specifically to see their team.
But as a photographer who had covered both kinds of football matches on either side of the Atlantic and grown to love both sports, it's hard to ignore a few major differences in the fan experience.
Try as I may, I cannot understand soccer but la football! I am an impassioned fan and usually watch three games each Sunday (of course hoping for a Bills win). I enjoyed this article.
The Lineman: Week Seven NFL Picks
That was more like it, a very solid 5-1 effort in Week 6 after a very tough month of average results.
Could we be perfect in lucky Week 7? Feels good.
Record: 19-17. Last week 5-1
Pick of the Week: 5-1
PICK OF THE WEEK
Green Bay Packers (6-0) at Minnesota Vikings (1-5)
from Newsmaker:
Send your questions for Seb Coe and Hugh Robertson
To mark the one year countdown to the London Olympics, Thomson Reuters will hold a Newsmaker on July 21 at 18:30 BST with four-time Olympic medalist and chairman of the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games, Sebastian Coe and Minister for Sport and the Olympics, Hugh Robertson MP.
The event will begin with a speech by Coe, who won gold in the 1500m at the 1980 and 1984 Olympics, followed by a Q&A session with both guests, moderated by me, Global Sports Editor Paul Radford. The Newsmaker will be streamed live to the Reuters website and we'll provide rolling coverage of the event as it happens.
As well as questions from the audience, you also have the chance to put your questions to Coe and Robertson. Please join us on the day and leave your comments and questions below. You can also post your questions on the Reuters UK Facebook page or send them over Twitter using the hashtag #newsmkr or via @ReutersSports
Image -- The Chairman of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG), Sebastian Coe, poses with a prototype of the London 2012 Olympic Torch at St Pancras station in London June 8, 2011. REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth
Has Nadal’s career already peaked?
Rafael Nadal has electrified men’s tennis since bursting on to the scene in 2005 but there are worrying signs that the Spaniard’s career may already have peaked.
With six grand slam titles to his name already Nadal has already staked his claim as one of the greats of the game but the aura he used to bring to the court has vanished.
In his first round-robin match at the ATP World Tour Finals in London on Monday he was bullied by Sweden’s Robin Soderling, spending virtually the whole match on the run.
It was a similar story on Wednesday against Nikolay Davydenko, with the Spaniard losing his second match in straight sets to leave himself with no chance of making progress.
The match against Soderling was instructive. His shots lacked depth and menace, and were food and drink to his opponent, who had time to set up hisbig forehand and pin Nadal in the corners of the court.
The serve is a worry too — he is managing very few easy points there — and then there is the matter of his knees. Only Nadal knows how much the tendonitis that prevented him from defending his Wimbledon title is still bothering him.
So much of Nadal’s mystique was built around his physical attributes, his speed and his court coverage. Getting the ball past his racket looked a near impossibility at times as Nadal often seemed twice as big as he actually is.
What a shame for Rafa. I hope he gets better soon.
In which country other than UK is it praiseworthy to cheer for your countryman’s opponent?
Murray has the British public to contend with who are proud to be so bipartisan and support his opponents.
I hope DelPo’s winning streak against Federer continues .Why doesn’t he have a fansite-how can one wish him luck, offer to be his girlfriend etc. without one? He is so very sweet:)
The Perils of Paula
Pressure from the British public to win an elusive Olympic title on the streets of London three years hence may explain some atypical public emotion from world marathon record holder Paula Radcliffe.
Radcliffe, unfailingly gracious and an athlete who refuses to indulge in self-pity or to rail against the caprices of fate, is statistically the best woman marathoner ever.
However, illness forced her to withdraw from the 2004 Athens Games marathon and injury thwarted her bid in Beijing last year.
Radcliffe will be 38 in 2012 and, although she has talked of running in the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, the injuries mount and time slips away.
This month Radcliffe broke down in tears after finishing fourth in the New York marathon. She revealed afterwards that an injury she had described as a niggle had, in fact, been tendinitis of the left knee and had required a cortisone injection.
A reference from a sympathetic reporter to the number of injuries she had suffered then prompted a further flood of tears.
Before attempting a fourth New York title, Radcliffe reacted angrily to criticism of her decision to pull out days before her two scheduled international appearances this year at the Berlin world championships and the subsequent Birmingham world half-marathon championships.
from MacroScope:
Asking a banker about the Olympics
Henrique Meirelles, Brazil's highly rated central bank president, gave unusual insight into current thinking at the International Olympic Committee in a speech in Oxford the other night.
Diverging from his main theme on Brazil's remarkable journey from economic basket case to emerging market superpower, Meirelles said that he had gone to Copenhagen last month as part of Rio de Janeiro's successful bid for the 2016 Olympics. The reason: The IOC asked him to come.
Meirelles said that the IOC knew that Brazil currently had all the conditions needed to host the Games, but wanted to know about how predictable it was that this would carry through over the next seven years. "They wanted to know what is really happening," he said.
Essentially, the IOC wanted to check with the top economic manager that the country's finances will still be shining when the Games are held.
Perhaps they were thinking of London 2012.
from UK News:
Minister warns against “contaminating” 2012 Olympics
Clerics and police have expressed concern, and now the Olympics minister has - London could see a proliferation in prostitution and human trafficking during the 2012 Games.
Some have warned the Olympics could see a repeat of the "mega brothels" set up in German cities for the 2006 World Cup in Germany.
Tessa Jowell said: "I am concerned about that. I certainly became aware of it in the run-up to the World Cup.
"We need to send the strongest possible message that our Olympics will not be contaminated by this exploitation."
In January, two Church of England dioceses set down a motion for discussion at the General Synod, or clerical parliament, for a government crackdown on human trafficking in the run-up to the London 2012 Olympics, saying "anything like slavery is wrong".
They pointed to the World Cup in Germany, where they said city officials adopted a "pragmatic" approach towards catering for the sexual desires of the estimated three million football fans who attended the tournament.
"Sex huts" or "sex garages" for prostitution were set up, filled with 40,000 extra prostitutes, while special licences were issued allowing prostitutes to offer sex on the street, they added.
from The Great Debate UK:
Government must deliver on Olympic legacy promise
- Hugh Robertson is the opposition Conservatives' Olympics spokesman. The views expressed are his own. -
With three years to go, it is remarkable that London 2012 is going so well.
London’s Olympics were launched with a massive government miscalculation that resulted in the budget having to be increased threefold, were based on a plan that required us to build two Terminal 5s in half the time and have had to contend with the worst economic recession in living memory.
Despite this, the construction process remains on time and nearly on budget, the organising committee have raised more than £500 million in sponsorship and our athletes have given London 2012 a considerable boost by winning a record haul of medals in Beijing.
However, among all the plaudits, it is sensible to sound a note of caution.
The construction process is only just over one third complete and much remains to be done to a tight and immoveable deadline. Many of the major operational challenges for The organising committee lie ahead such as balancing the budget, finalising the venues, ticketing and the content of the opening and closing ceremonies. Finally, it is a considerable challenge to get our athletes to replicate, or exceed, their performance in Beijing.
In short, if you were writing a school report, you would probably conclude that London 2012 has started well but much remains to be done. You would also warn against too much self congratulation!
Super Bowl in London? Bring your brollies…
Having been based in China for the last few years, I am no stranger to the giddy ambitions of visionary sports administrators trying to ”grow” their “brands” outside their heartlands.
We’ve had them all here. NBA, Major League Baseball, NFL, the Asian Cricket Council, Leicester Tigers rugby club, a string of Europe’s top soccer clubs, world snooker, both professional tennis tours and various professional golf tours – all aiming to stake a claim to a share of China’s 1.3 billion-strong market.
Generally there is a big press conference, the launch of a Chinese website, investment in a youth development scheme (cash amount undisclosed), a wildly over-inflated estimate of their fan base in China and a promise to bring their big name stars to Beijing or Shanghai.
Some have had more success than others, but several have joined the ranks of the thousands of foreign businessmen who arrive in China with high hopes and leave chastened by the experience with their pockets substantially lighter.
Even having witnessed the birth of so many of these visionary schemes, I was still shocked at the story in the English papers at the weekend that the NFL was considering allowing London to host the Super Bowl .
Quite apart from the central place Super Bowl Sunday has in American sporting culture, there is one key factor mitigating against the plan that even the mighty NFL can’t change – the great British weather.
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Resident Left Field Expert
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