A strange thing
happened 108
years ago this
week. Women
were allowed for the first time to compete in the
modern Olympic Games. They had been excluded from the inaugural Games in 1896. So entrenched was the misogynist movement that there was no female member on the International Olympic Committee until 1981. But the IOC was not in charge of the 1900 Games, and many of the proposed events were scrapped. Only 22 women (and 975 men) from 24 countries competed in Paris, but historians disagree on many aspects.
It will take a minimum of five years for six members of Eritrea's World Cross-country Championship team to gain UK passports and qualify to represent Britain. The process was not always so long. Twenty-four years ago this month,
Zola Budd had a passport processed indecently hastily, within weeks. Months later she raced in the Los Angeles Olympics, infamously but accidentally tripping home heroine Mary Slaney.
TODAY marks the 38th anniversary of Bobby Charlton's 100th cap for England. Saturday was the 50th anniversary of his first, just over two months after he had escaped with his life from the Munich air
disaster.
FIFTY years ago this month, a young Arnold Palmer is playing a practice round ahead of the Masters with Ben Hogan, Dow Finsterwald and Jackie Burke. Afterwards Palmer overhears the sport's icon, Hogan, inquire: "Tell me something, Jackie, how the hell did Palmer get an invitation to the Masters?"
Nearly 80,000 people squeezed into Ibrox 106 years ago this weekend to watch the 31st Scotland v England international, the first between wholly professional teams.
THERE have been collisions, sinkings, even two mutinies, but only one dead heat in the University Boat Race. Did the judge fall asleep under a bush 131 years ago today and call a tie to avoid embarrassment?
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