1) Royal Ascot is on this week. The Gold Cup, held on Thursday, is the centrepiece of the week, and no horse has dominated the race like Aidan O’Brien’s Yeats, winner four years in succession from 2006 to 2009 . Frankel, perhaps the greatest of all flat horses, won his first ever Group 1 in the Juddmonte Royal Lodge Stakes in 2010 as a two-year-old. The following year, he had to cling to victory in the St James’ Palace Stakes, but in 2012, his final season, he utterly destroyed the field in the same race. The horse Frankel was compared to most in his era was the Australian filly Black Caviar. They never raced each other, so this simulation of them racing at Ascot and over Swinley Bottom and the rest of it will have to suffice. Black Caviar ran once at Ascot and won - but only just in 2012. Bettors need beware of the hype horse: here is the great Treve, a two-time winner of the Arc de Triomphe, getting nobbled by John Gosden’s The Fugue in 2014.
2) Queen’s Club has really been let down by the lack of David Nalbandian-style kicking of an official when things are not going well.
3) David Platt scored one of the most underrated volleys in World Cup history against Belgium in 1990, watching it drop over his shoulder before smashing across Michel Preud’homme in the 120th minute to send England through to the quarter-finals. Just look at Bobby’s face. The late Ray Wilkins scored this classic against Jan Ceulemans and co in 1980. Rather more forgotten are Alan Shearer’s overhead kick and Jamie Redknapp’s bullet into the roof of the net, both from a friendly at the Stadium of Light in 1999.
4) Hopefully, Marcelo Bielsa will not sit on a cup of Yorkshire tea while at Leeds.
5) If Panama defeat England, then there will be plenty more of this...
6) Lancashire’s Liam Hurt is a pretty slick bowler with some quick reactions.
Our favourites from last week’s blog
1) Jairzinho was among the very best of the Brazilians who have won the World Cup.
2) After naming our favourite World Cup theme, some of you had the cheek to question us, and claimed the finest is “clearly BBC in 78”.
3) There were even calls for the BBC’s theme from 1982.
4) Jay-Jay Okocha gubbing Oliver Kahn when Eintracht Frankfurt played Karlsruhe in 1993 shows off the great man’s genius even before he ever danced with Big Sam Allardyce.
5) An incredible analysis of the highest scoring NCAA basketball game of all time: Troy State 253 -141 DeVry in 1992
Spotter’s badges: Giles Skerry, GrahamClayton (again), PaperRoses
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