… “It’s the first time I’ve had such a long injury – four and a half months,” she explained, before describing the worst moment of all: “I had a relapse and that was very tough. There are always going to be downs and you have to try and get through them, because if you let it get to you, then things just get worse.”
The support of her family and team-mates got her through those difficult times, however: “You have to be strong-minded because you know things like that can happen to you any time.”
Once it became clear to her that she was unlikely to play for Barça in the closing stretch of the season, Guijarro turned her thoughts to the World Cup. “The aim was to be fit enough to go to the World Cup, whether I made the squad or not. I’m very grateful for the show of faith in me,” she said with a smile.
… Wide receiver Julian Edelman reflected on the first two years of his career during this week’s mandatory minicamp, and shared how veteran running back Fred Taylor would impart wisdom while they drove from the team hotel to Gillette Stadium in Taylor’s Range Rover. Now Edelman, 33, is taking it upon himself to be a Taylor-type presence to others, especially first-round draft choice N’Keal Harry, the 21-year-old wide receiver from Arizona State.
I watched it unfold during Thursday’s final practice.
… Stories about Leonard’s Herculean strength have long been whispered about around the league. There’s a machine in the San Antonio Spurs’ weight room that staffers referred to as “The Yo-Yo.” An athlete stands on a metal platform and straps into a harness around the midsection, which is attached by a thick wire that connects the harness to a steel wheel underneath the base. The athlete then performs a squat, anchored by the steel wheel that pulls the athlete down, making it more difficult to stand upright from a deep squat. (Hence, “The Yo-Yo.”)
For most pro athletes, this is a grueling exercise, like a super squat. But after several repetitions on “The Yo-Yo,” it was clear that this wasn’t a challenge for Leonard. Under close observation of strength coaches and teammates, Leonard took it to another level. The trainers added a steel plate that would create a downward force of two times Leonard’s body weight, which at the time was around 250 pounds.
Leonard kept going, with relative ease. Then suddenly, Leonard stopped. The room turned silent as Leonard looked down at his feet. He cracked the metal platform. He literally broke the machine. Said one Spurs staffer who witnessed it that day: “Too strong for it.”
… Mississauga and neighboring Toronto are rising fast by contrast, with 11 native-born players in the N.B.A., including Tristan Thompson, Nik Stauskas, Andrew Wiggins and Kelly Olynyk. Jamal Murray, a guard for the Denver Nuggets, grew up farther west, in Kitchener, Ontario. The Raptors have a Canadian, Chris Boucher of Montreal North, on their roster.
“I found Jamal dribbling hours before the game wearing gardener gloves to improve his feel for the ball,” said Sbiet, whose North Pole Hoops is a scouting and evaluation service. “He was playing kids two years older and dominating the court.”
Phil Neville said his England side have “nothing to fear” as they began their World Cup quest with a narrow victory against Scotland in which a convincing first half was slightly undermined by a less than ruthless second.
The result offered Shelley Kerr’s team a glimmer of hope on their World Cup debut amid the heat and humidity of the south of France, with Claire Emslie’s late goal restoring an element of Scottish pride after Nikita Parris and Ellen White had put the Lionesses two goals ahead.
“It was good to get that game out of the way,” Neville said. “It was always going to be emotional and it was really hot. We played really well in the first half, we knew Scotland would sit back and try to contain us but we started off playing very adventurously.
… I’ve been playing with the same crew of pick-up soccer players in Worcester, Mass. for three years now. We play on a local college’s field; I can’t say which because what we do is considered trespassing. If there isn’t an AAU baseball game going on in the complex, one of us has to hop the fence and open the gate, inserting a water bottle or rock into the lock so the next guy can get through.
We go through this trouble because the city is desperately lacking soccer fields. This isn’t to say that there aren’t suitable fields in the city where pick-up soccer could be played, but all the good ones belong to colleges and private high schools that lock their gates and enforce trespassing laws. Worcester is like many cities in America, a place that’s filled with people—many of them immigrants from Latin and South America, Ghana, and Southeast Asia—who have to scrounge for a place to play the sport they love for a few hours each week.
… She explained that positive aspects of American sports culture: “I believe we have a great sports culture in the USA. Also, our players have great mindsets. They want to work hard. Americans never give up. It’s in America’s DNA. Americans are tough. They have the drive and belief that you can achieve anything as long as you work hard and never give up.”
She continued, in her matter-of-fact no-nonsense style, “We can demand quality. That’s where we can use the ‘pay-to-play’ American system to our advantage. In Europe, youth coaches are still mostly volunteers. or are on part-time contracts. Most coaches have full time regular jobs, especially in the women’s game. In the USA, coaches and clubs earn their money. It’s a full time job. Here in the USA, players pay a lot of money to train and play. Therefore we are obliged to deliver quality. Of course you have to know what quality is. That is one of the biggest challenges here.” (More about that in future articles…)
Arno Hermans, together with Victor Beerkens and others, devised an accelerator programme especially for sports start-ups, under the name Sport eXperience. That was at the end of 2015. Hermans said that “there are so many beautiful and clever things going on in the field of sports, that it is a shame not to apply this in everyday life”. The first version of the acceleration programme started in January 2016. Six more followed, including two in Denmark. The Sport eXperience team also gives advice to Start-ups. In 2015, Hermans dreamt of a “physical stadium as a breeding ground for sports innovation”, today Sport eXperience launches a virtual platform: Sport Tech Campus.
Fansided, Pelican Debrief blog, Christopher Dodson from
The New Orleans Pelicans are beefing up their supporting staff, including the player performance and development division. David Griffin and Aaron Nelson have already started building out the program.
The New Orleans Pelicans are building a new culture, led by David Griffin, Aaron Nelson, and Trajan Langdon. The team has dealt with years of injury problems and limited player development. To counteract this, the Pelicans have hired Nelson to lead that effort.
The team is also building new facilities and forming partnerships to help with the expanded programs. In the newest development, Fusionetics has announced a partnership with the Pelicans, adding bodies to the team’s solution.
The case against processed food just keeps getting stronger. But, amazingly, we still don’t understand exactly why it’s so bad for us.
In two new papers published in the BMJ, the more ultraprocessed — or industrially manufactured — foods a person ate, the more likely they were to get sick and even die. In one study, they were more likely to suffer from cardiovascular problems. The other linked an ultraprocessed diet to a higher risk of death from all causes.
Those studies followed a first-of-its-kind randomized controlled trial, out of the National Institutes of Health: Researchers found people following an ultraprocessed diet ate about 500 more calories per day than those consuming minimally processed, whole foods.
The Conversation, Dave Little and Richard Newton from
… As farmed fish gets relatively cheaper but the price of marine ingredients to feed them continues to climb, the pressure to find alternatives is likely to continue.
Various plant sources such as processed soy and wheat products have emerged as major substitutes for fishmeal but as much of this has to be imported, local alternatives such as field beans are being researched and trialled in Europe. Outside of Europe, it is still very common to use byproducts from livestock production to feed farmed fish in aquaculture diets such as poultry byproducts, which are regarded as a highly nutritious and cheap protein resource.
Replacing marine oils – which are the only source of long chain omega-3 fatty acids – is a bigger challenge.
Lyon’s rampant form in the Champions League immediately carried over into France’s first game of the Women’s World Cup.
Friday’s 4-0 home win against South Korea saw the blue shirts of France run riot, just like many of them had done last month when Lyon crushed Barcelona 4-1 to win the Champions League for the fourth straight year and sixth in the past eight.
France’s lineup featured seven Lyon players, and how coach Reynald Pedros thoroughly enjoyed it at Parc des Princes.
… Durant’s workload, playing 12 of the first 14 minutes of a Finals game after not playing a game in over a month due to a soft tissue injury.
Durant’s minutes stunned many across the league who expected Durant to play “short bursts,” as coach Steve Kerr said just before the game.
However, Durant played the first 6:11 of the game but did not remain on the bench for the rest of the quarter. Instead, he re-entered the game at the 3:33 mark and played the rest of the first quarter. He finished with 11 points, more than any player in the game not named Stephen Curry.
Rather than sit Durant for the start of the second quarter and buy some extra time, Durant started the frame alongside three bench players and Klay Thompson. Draymond Green and Stephen Curry sat after playing the entire first quarter. And then, Durant’s leg buckled on a non-contact play.
“Just seems unacceptable,” said one longtime director of performance. “Doesn’t make any sense.”
1. The Warriors’ medical staff. After the 2018 season, the Warriors’ “head of physical performance and sports medicine” Chelsea Lane left the organization, reportedly because she wanted to be paid more than the team was willing to spend. Her replacement, Rick Celebrini, has an “impressive resume” and came recommended by team consultant Steve Nash, whom Celebrini worked with while Nash was becoming a two-time MVP in his 30s. But ESPN’s Rachel Nichols reported after Monday’s game that according to Warriors coach Steve Kerr, team doctors said that Durant “couldn’t get more hurt” by returning to action. Unless Durant’s right Achilles injury was completely unrelated to his right calf injury, it would appear that either the doctors were wrong or Kerr didn’t understand them correctly. (A doctor employed by another team told Bleacher Report’s Howard Beck that, as one might imagine, the calf injury could have made Durant more susceptible to hurting his Achilles. Incidentally, another Warriors forward, Kevon Looney, reaggravated an earlier injury on Monday.)
… There are 575 pitchers who, last year, threw at least 250 pitches. We put each pitcher’s fastest pitch into a spreadsheet — 575 lines, one for each pitcher — to try to answer some questions: What do we make of these fastest fastballs? When are they thrown, and why, and to whom, and to what effect? We will answer those questions, after giving you the chance to hypothesize with a game of multiple-choice: