PLAYER OF THE YEAR ...
Unsurprisingly it is Leicester players that dominate the PFA Player of the Year award which takes place at Grosvenor House in London on Sunday. Jamie Vardy, Riyad Mahrez and N’Golo Kanté are joined on the shortlist by Tottenham’s Harry Kane, West Ham’s Dimitri Payet and Arsenal’s Mesut Özil. Should a Leicester player win, he will become the first from the club to have taken the gong.
For the women, it’s Chelsea who have the whip hand, represented by Gemma Davison, Ji So-yun and Hedvig Lindahl. Manchester City’s Izzy Christiansen and Sunderland’s Beth Mead complete the shortlist, with the latter (also nominated in the young player category) having already taken a haul at the FA Women’s Football Awards in December. After only her first full season in the top tier with Sunderland she won the England Young Player of the Year, FA Women’s Super League One Players’ Player of the Year and the Top Goal Scorer - with 12 goals from 14 games – awards. Mead will be in action on Friday against Manchester City (BT Sport 2, 7.15pm).
YORKSHIRE BY BIKE ...
After a hugely successful inaugural event last year the Tour de Yorkshire returns with an impressive rider lineup and this year a welcome full women’s stage (Friday to Sunday, Eurosport 2/ITV4). Bradley Wiggins heads a strong British lineup that includes Pete Kennaugh, the national road race champion, Tour de France stage winner Steve Cummings, Sky’s Luke Rowe and Orica-GreenEdge’s Adam Yates.
The men’s tour covers three stages, the first from Beverley to Settle, the second Otley to Doncaster and the third, which features six categorised climbs, runs from Middlesbrough to Scarbrough.
The women’s single stage is on the Saturday before the men’s on the same route from Otley, the home town of Lizzie Armitstead who will compete in the race. If Friday is too long to wait, the world’s oldest one-day classic, the Liège-Bastogne-Liège, takes place on Sunday (Eurosport 2, 1pm).
OLYMPIC KIT ...
Team GB will unveil their newly designed kit for the Rio Games on Wednesday, with Stella McCartney, who gave a fine fashionable styling to the outfits that proved so successful at London 2012, again in charge. The launch will take place in London and will be available to view from midday at teamgb.com. McCartney began the job in 2014 working with Laura Trott and Jessica Ennis-Hill.
FIGHT NIGHT ...
Britain’s James DeGale will make the second defence of his IBF super- middleweight title on Saturday night (Sky Sports 1, 2.30am). He will fight Mexico’s Rogelio Medina at the DC Armory in Washington but the latter seems unlikely to really push DeGale who saw off former world champion Lucian Bute last November. Bute fights again on the same card against Badou Jack, who defends his WBC super-middleweight title. Should the latter win, DeGale wants to meet him for a unification bout in London in September.
ALI AND ME ...
A welcome chance to hear again Deirdre Pascall’s documentary recounting her meeting with Muhammad Ali as a child in 1976 in Ali: Me, My Family And Muhammad Ali (Radio 4Extra, 1.30pm/8.30pm, on Monday). A fascinating work, personal to the classically trained pianist, the daughter of the respected Grenada-born broadcaster Alex Pascall, who was interviewing Ali at the time.
