Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2015 i Inside Sport

TO BE HONEST, I wasn’t sure what sort of response we would get for our Inside Sport/CAS Clubbie Awards when we kicked them off by inviting nominations back in July. It seemed like a feelgood idea at the time, so let’s put it out there and see who salutes ... Regular readers will know what I’m talking about: our recently launched sport awards aren’t aimed at the elite end of town – we wanted to recognise the contributions made at grassroots level by a legion of volunteers, and highlight these sports clubs’ vital, healthy role in our communities. But we were asking readers to do quite a bit to enter – no simple ticking of boxes here! We asked for nominations of between 50 and 500 words ...…

1 In 1994 and 1995, two Formula One Grands Prix were held in Japan. One was known as the Japanese Grand Prix; what was the other called? 2 Which two countries topped the gold medal tally at the 2015 World Athletics Championships? 3 Which team has overtaken Real Madrid as the most valuable sports team in the world? 4 Gary Ablett Jr and Greg Williams hold the record for most possessions in an AFL game with how many? 5 Who was the most recent Victorian-born Australian Test cricket captain? 6 What are the two types of wrestling at the Olympics? 7 Which is the only A-League team to win back-to-back titles? 8 Who did the Australian Wallabies play in their first match at the 2015 Rugby World Cup? 9 Which…

AMES don’t come much bigger in Australian motorcycle road racing than Gardner, and Remy Gardner has shown the optimism that greeted his arrival on the world stage is certainly justified. The eldest son of 1987 500cc world champion Wayne, 17-year-old Remy has taken his fledgling world championship steps in the entry-level Moto3 category this year, with the MotoGP series set to hit Australian shores at Phillip Island this month (October 16-18). WHAT’S HIS STORY? Sydney-born Remy Gardner started riding at four, but with laws in NSW forbidding riders under the age of 13 from competing in road racing, he first raced in Spain as a 12-year-old in October 2010. The Gardners commuted back and forth from Australia to Spain for Remy to compete in 2011, before moving full-time in 2013.…

ASPARTAN RACE is an obstacle course race designed to inspire teams and individuals to step outside their comfort zone, work as a unit and back their ability to overcome physical and mental challenges. They’re currently being run in more than 25 countries, with over half a million active racers. That makes it the world’s number-one obstacle race series. The scene here in Australia is lively – and actually great fun to be a part of. The next event is being held at Simonds Stadium in Geelong, Victoria on Saturday, December 5. We all need a reason, some kind of motivation, to get us through the hard parts of our training without faltering. Now functional training has a raison d’être. Spartan racers aren’t satisfied by fun runs. They want the challenge…

OFF THE GRID Just wanted to let you know that I really enjoyed the feature story in your October issue on the NFL and its crazy off-season just gone. This sport is a non-stop news producer, and your article certainly caught all the most sordid, bizarre and obscure happenings of the last few months ... and the season hadn’t even started yet. The ludicrous antics of their players, including blowing off their fingers with fireworks and toying with the inflation of their game balls, put our supposedly controversy-riddled football leagues to shame. The NFL’s automatic self-generating news machine in the background of your piece got me thinking about the cries heard from sports bodies in Australia who feel they are often forgotten by the media in terms of coverage. The…

“One day he’ll look back at the Ben Stokes dismissal at Lord’s on Saturday and realise he missed a great opportunity to strike a blow for the spirit of cricket ... By not withdrawing the appeal, [Steve] Smith showed his immaturity. He may live to regret it.” – NZ cricket captain Brendon McCullum, in a newspaper column about the dismissal of English batsman Ben Stokes for obstructing the field in the ODI against Australia. “It’s strange, you know. They are sisters. They live together. They grew up together playing tennis. Of course they love each other, but then they have to be professional and go out on the court and play each other so many times … Chapeau for that. But I don’t know if I’ll…

HORSE RACING The spring just won’t feel the same without Bart Cummings looming out there, ever poised to unleash some surprise on expert and mug punter alike. It should make for a nicely sentimental storyline coming into this Melbourne Cup (Nov 3), and maybe get a few people to forget what happened last year with Admire Rakti. There was no shortage of nominations for the nation-stopper, particularly from overseas, with 31 internationals in the frame. Four-time Cup runner Precedence will be Cummings’ last starter if it makes the field, and who would deny that chance? In the other big races of the season, the Japanese again have their eye on the Caulfield Cup (Oct 17), with Fair Game and Hokko Brave hoping to emulate the good result that Admire Rakti…

E POSED the same type of question to NBL legend Lanard Copeland that we throw at most former greats appearing in these pages: what are you up to now that your sporting career is over? His response was that his career is still a work in progress: “I’m coaching basketball at all levels. I coach kids very early in the morning. Then by midday I’m coaching young adults who we’re trying to send to college. Then later at night I’m coaching men – the Hume City Broncos in the Big V. So my basketball days aren’t really behind me at all.” Copeland was an absolute star of the NBL in the league’s halcyon days; his alley-oop play with legendary Melbourne Tigers team-mate Andrew Gaze among the lasting images of Australian…

IT WAS a cold London night at Millwall’s home ground in March 2014. Australia had stunned Ecuador in the first half at The Den, racing to a 3-0 lead on the back of bold pressing and dynamic play under new coach Ange Postecoglou. But in the second half things fell apart, as the South Americans pulled one goal back, and then a second after goalkeeper Mitch Langerak was red-carded. On 76 minutes Ecuador equalised and the rookie Socceroos wilted. On came a 21-year-old substitute from League One’s Swindon Town. A thinly built, baby-faced midfielder, he had little time to make much of an impact in his brief cameo; Ecuador grabbed a heartbreaking winner in injury time and the Socceroos went down 4-3. It was a friendly game the green and…

SCODY OPTIMISE A.I.R TRI SUIT TRI-ing to improve? The Scody Optimise A.I.R (Aerodynamics, Innovation, Research) Tri Suit will revolutionise the way you choose your non-drafting triathlon clothing. Developed by Scody’s research and development team, the Optimise A.I.R is of a zoned fabric construction for optimumreduction in drag in specific regions of the body. Scody has utilised the dimpled-fabric Matrix in regions of high-wind velocity such as the shoulders and forearms, while X-Opaque has been used in areas with less wind exposure, such as the torso, to achieve the highest moisture management and breathability. This zoned fabric construction has been found to reduce a 90km time trial effort by between 45 and 67.5 seconds. The A.I.R Tri Suit also features a triathlon-specific, Italian-made perforated chamois for optimal comfort. Dynamic mesh side…

TROUBLED, half-mad. An erratic genius. It seemed Gennadi Touretski ticked all the boxes. He was famously thrown off two flights in 1995 and 2002, for brawling and drunkenness. After the first, he was jailed for a month in Hawaii. He was also charged with leaving the scene of a car accident in Canberra. He attracted plenty of heat to Australian swimming when his safe was stolen in 2001. When it was found, quantities of Stanozolol were discovered near it. He was suspended, but charges were later dropped and he was reinstated as head coach. Only the protege who followed him out here from Russia, Alexander Popov, stuck with him, and he was fired by the AIS in 2002. The incident resulted in hundreds of unannounced testings, and a lot of…

• Gun halfacks win you grand finals. So do forwards. Defence wins you grand finals, too. And get this: you have to lose a grand final to win a grand final. You also can’t play the grand final in your head on Thursday (or, in this age of Sunday night deciders, on Thursday night). And you’ve got to enjoy grand final week because reaching the grand final is an achievement in itself. But don’t enjoy it too much – there’s still one game to go. And that’s the grand final. Grand Plans by Andrew Webster • Are we getting enough bang for our buck with the AIS? … Robert de Castella is in no mood to be apologetic. “We have business assistance programs and export and trade assistance,” he says.…

WINNER It was what the national comp dreamers of the ’80s and ’90s had envisioned, much to the chagrin of the Melbourne and Sydney establishments of Aussie rules and rugby league. But football nationalism ruled across the big codes in 2015, as the state of Queensland locked Sydney out of the NRL’s grand final for only the second time, while the vaunted Hawthorn dynasty proved the last line of resistance to a deluge rolling in from the top two out west. Cue the predictions of demise for the old metro cores of Victoria and NSW, doomed to divvy up fractions of a single city, while the one- and two-team markets go from strength to strength. Putting partisanship aside, the health of the non-Sydney and non-Melbourne teams is a good sign…

AUSTRALIA’S LATEST WORLDBEATERS Kim Crow is the women’s single sculls world champion, reclaiming the title she held in 2013. The Victorian-born rower won the event in windy conditions in France last month. In taking out her semi-final the previous day, she had booked her spot on the starting gates for the Rio Olympics next year; in winning the final, which she led from start to finish, she beat a powerful field that included the gold-medallist from the 2012 Olympics, Mirka Knapkova of the Czech Republic. “This feels really special” she said after the race. “It’s been a really fun year; I’ve got a great training group around me in Canberra, I’ve just got engaged, I’m getting married later in the year, and to round it off with a world championship…

Onward and upward for the NBA – the money, that is. The Association is on the cusp of a financial windfall that will push each team’s salary cap from $100m to $128m after this season, then $150m-plus the next. This inflation saw the likes of Aussie backup big man Aron Baynes sign a $28m, three-year deal (just to underline how things have grown, MVP Stephen Curry, who signed his contract three seasons ago, is the 54th-highest-paid player in the league). Imagine, then, what the stars might get, as they hunt titles along with dollars. SAFE BET The way in which a short-handed Cleveland pushed eventual winners Golden State in the Finals made a convincing case for the Cavaliers as this year’s favourites. LeBron James needed a second year in Miami…

WARNER TURNS THE CORNER David Warner has been given a leadership role. That in itself is a remarkable thing. Warner carries more contradictions than Muhammad Ali – without so much of the complexity. When he got into trouble off the field, even venturing into taboo territory by punching a member of an opposing team, that was kind-of expected. When he mouths off at opposition on the field, that’s expected. When he acts as the straight-talking mouthpiece for the entire Australian team, often speaking the unspeakable, that’s expected, too. Telling opponents after only one Test of a series that he could smell their fear, accusing them of cheating and hypocrisy, pointing out their inferiority and annoying them once play began ... that was Davey’s metier. But vice-captaincy of the Australian team?…

CANTERBURY PRIZE PACK Our Freeze Frame Freebies caption comp winner will score for themselves this awesome bundle of goodies, which includes a Packaway gym bag, three sock packs, a Packaway jacket and a cap. That’s almost $160 of high-quality gear! “I TOLD THE BLOKES AT THE BAR THAT I ALWAYS ATTRACT THE BIRDS.” September’s Freeze Frame Freebies caption competition was won by Paul Smyth of George Town, Tasmania. Email your entries for this month’s Freeze Frame comp on page 18 to iscomps@insidesport.com.au, or check out the website: www.insidesport.com.au. If, however, you are still “analogue”, and resist the march of technology, you can still post your entries the traditional way to Freeze Frame Comp, Inside Sport, PO Box 5555, St Leonards, NSW 1590. For enquiries about this…

QUESTION FOR hardcore sports fans. Why WOULDN’T you enter the FOX SPORTS WOW card competition? Let’s ask Todd Pengilly, from Sydney. Over to you, Todd? Todd scratches his head. He can’t think of a single reason. Why? Well, listen to what he got up to back in August. Yup, he was one of the lucky monthly winners. Todd’s prize included pitchside seats for the Bledisloe Cup in Sydney. That meant he was even able to take part in the Wallaby warm-up – well, kind of. But you can see in the pics how close he got to the action. He also got to go head-to-head with John Eales in the World’s Largest Scrum Record attempt (they got it!). And he got to hang with George Gregan before the game. And…

as good as it gets a keeper worth considering ho-hum in the bin BOOKS RICHIE: THE MAN BEHIND THE LEGEND EDITED BY NORMAN TASKER AND IAN HEADS, STOKE HILL PRESS, $39.95 THOSE SUMMERS OF CRICKET RICHIE BENAUD 1930-2015 HARDIE GRANT, $45 Summer without Richie Benaud just won’t be the same, as we embark on the first domestic cricket season in a long while without the iconic player, captain and broadcaster. So rich and varied was Benaud’s career, and the personal links he made so fascinating, that a retrospective could have run into multiple volumes. These two tomes are similarly structured, relating Benaud’s tale over time and career phase. Richie is told as oral history, as it assembles a roll call of famous names and lesser-known but significant acquaintances to produce…

Footy tipping comps are computerised and automated these days; all the person organising the season’s festivities has to do is register their workplace’s name with a website that operates thousands of comps concurrently, and invite colleagues to play. It never used to be this simple, though. Winning my first rugby league tipping comp in 20 years a month back got me thinking about the time I stupidly let out my inner sports administrator and volunteered to run such a comp at a previous work place. The experience still haunts me; even the nation’s top quacks weren’t skilled enough to remove the mental scarring caused by one horrific mid-winter Monday in the early 2000s. I’m in the fetal position just recalling this, but I’ll push through the trauma to share it…