Category: Sport

Francis Morgan “Daley“ Thompson was a record-breaking decathlete in the 1980s. He was born in London in 1958 and won his first major championship in 1978 in the Commonwealth Games. He won it twice more, in 1982 and 1986.

He won the gold medal in the Olympics in 1980 (see video below) and 1984, and came 4th in 1988. By winning the World Championships decathlon in 1983 and the European in 1982, he became the first man to hold four major titles at the same time. He won the European gold again in 1986.

The decathlon consists of ten events:-

1. 100 metres running
2. 400 metres running
3. 1,500 metres running
4. Pole vault
5. Discus
6. Javelin
7. 100 metres hurdles
8. Long jump
9. High jump
10. Shot put

In retrospect, Thompson thinks he could have done better at the hurdles and discus, indicative of his high standards. He retired from competitive athletics in 1992 but remained a popular personality with the British public.

(Image: Andy Wilkes at Flickr.com / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

The game of snooker was devised by a Colonel in the British Army whilst based in India in 1875. ‘Snooker’ was the term used for a 1st-year cadet, so if someone missed a ball, they were called a ‘real snooker’, hence the name, allegedly.

Snooker has had phases of popularity but it was the BBC that gave it its first boost in 1969 when it televised games in the brand new colour format. With its fifteen red balls and one each of white, black, pink, blue, yellow, green and brown, it was a perfect showpiece.

The diagram below shows the starting positions of all the coloured balls. The white cue ball is then positioned anywhere inside the D by the first player.

(Top image of Steve Davis: Joni-Pekka Luomala at Flickr.com / CC BY 2.0)

Graham Hill, OBE (1929-1975) became Formula 1 racing car champion in 1962 and 1968. His son, Damon Hill (1960-), followed in his father’s footsteps and became Formula 1 champion in 1996. Like his father, he was born in London and he was also awarded the OBE after his achievement.

They were the first father-son pair to achieve F1’s top accolade. Graham Hill did not live to see his son’s career, as he died in a light aircraft crash in thick fog when Damon was just 15. Tragically, Graham had retired from driving just a few months earlier, in a period when the sport was much more dangerous than it is now, but he had survived.

Damon Hill is currently (2018) a Formula 1 commentator on the Sky Sports channel.

(Top image of Damon Hill in 1994: Martin Lee at Flickr.com / CC BY-SA 2.0)

Sir Alastair Cook, CBE (1984-) was born in Gloucestershire. He retired from Test cricket with England in 2018, with a brilliant  record behind him stretching from 2006. He captained England’s Test and One-Day International sides.

Among his record achievements are his 33 centuries and his 12,472 runs for England. These runs include an amazing 1,442 fours but, strangely, only 11 sixes. Alastair Cook played as an opening left-arm batsman. He also performed superbly in the slips.

He was awarded a CBE in 2016 for his services to sport and was knighted in 2019. He is now concentrating on playing for his County cricket team, Essex, and occasionally does some cricketing analysis for the media when he is not helping on his wife’s farm!

(Image: Kroome111 at Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0)

The sport of rugby began at Rugby School in Warwickshire in the 18th century. There was no limit to the number of players on each side and very few rules. In 1823, it is said that a Lancashire lad named William Webb Ellis (1806-72), who later became a clergyman, decided to run whilst holding the ball, which had not been done before. Other boys’ schools had their own forms of football, but it was Rugby’s version, with Webb Ellis’s variation, which caught on.

The winners of the Rugby World Cup tournament, held every four years, receive the William Webb Ellis Cup.

Considering its competitive school origins, it is not surprising that two separate codes or set of rules of rugby emerged, known as Rugby League and Rugby Union respectively. It is mainly a numbers-based difference, e.g. League has 13 players per team, whereas Union has 15.

Watch out for Henry C.A.D. Windsor (a.k.a. ‘Prince Harry’) and England rugby hero Jonny Wilkinson in this dramatisation of the foundation of the sport of rugby:-

(Top image: Pierre Selim at Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0)