populous magazine - issue 4
DESCRIPTION
The magazine of sports venue designers POPULOUSTRANSCRIPT
MA
GA
ZIN
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04
CHEERLEADINGAthletes AlwAys on the sidelines
SPORTS STATISTICSUsing stAts to scoUt for tAlent
BULL RIDINGsport’s eight seconds of hell
GOLFthe coUrses designed to rein in the big-hitters
POPart Over the last few years, Populous has been encouraging its employees to stretch their creative skills beyond architecture. The result is now a mini-art scene which includes bi-annual exhibitions, a regular book and a short-listing in the World Architecture Festival’s 2010 Art and Work Awards. Here are three POPart pieces recently exhibited.
Main image: Where I’m goingRod Sheard
“There is a long tradition of portrait painting, but this genre tends to examine the person, not the face. Most are images that include head and shoulders, sometimes down to the waist and often to the floor. They reflect age, status and profession. They are paintings about a person’s life and achievements, not about them as human beings. I am interested in what people’s faces say on their own; what they tell us about themselves. Or do they tell us nothing at all? Perhaps they just reflect what we want to see in them.
“There is no doubt that the face is the main means of human communication, everything from extreme emotions of happiness and sadness through to a subtle wink or a minute sneer. The problem is that faces can easily be misinterpreted. This painting is part of a series exploring that communication. What is the face saying to us? Does it say the same thing to all of us?”
POPULOUS MAGAZINE //
Top: Bent One lounge chairAdam Doak
“I designed and made the Bent One lounge chair at university after researching early 20th Century modernism. The body of the chair is made from birch-veneered Aeroply, while the arm-rests are laminated American white oak. It has been exhibited with Hidden Art in London and Milan.”
Above: POPfishSam Cocker
“My inspiration for this piece came from my own spiralling coffee habit and my observation of the amount of coffee we consume in the Populous office as a whole. I wanted to create a work that utilised non-recyclable coffee waste in a provocative way, while creating a positive reason to carry on drinking.”
There are so many intriguing sports in the world, and even more fascinating
are the people who practise them, driving themselves to the absolute limit to
achieve their personal bests. In this edition we bring you the Austrian free-
diver who has been over 200 metres deep below the waves and is aiming to
break the 300-metre mark soon. We also tell the stories of the bull-riding cowboys who break just about
every bone in their bodies in pursuit of excellence.
Some of the most unusual sports trace their roots back to the distant past. Take rackets, for
example. Played at speeds of up to 200mph, it originated in British prisons in the 18th Century. Then there’s
the brutal Italian horse race with its origins way back in the Middle Ages, but which is now under threat from
the health and safety brigade.
Much more modern are the team selectors in baseball, basketball, cricket and soccer who are
now choosing players purely on statistics. Having recently read a book called Moneyball, by Michael Lewis,
I was intrigued, but not surprised, to discover how this science is on the increase. We also cover golf in this
issue: ahead of the sport’s introduction into the 2016 Olympics, we talk to the golf course designers who are
balancing the needs of increasingly long-hitting professionals with the desire to create holes that are
spectator-friendly.
Finally, take a closer look at the inside front and back covers of the magazine. At the front are
some artworks produced by Populous people, while at the back we cover the science and statistics of sport.
Highly appropriate, I think, since good architecture is always a balance of both art and science.
Thank you for all your positive feedback from previous issues of Populous magazine. It is very
welcome, and it’s great to know that so many of our friends enjoy our stories about sport – always so varied,
as this edition demonstrates.
Enjoy reading,
Rod Sheard
Tel: +44 (0) 20 8874 7666Email: [email protected]: www.populous.com
Editor-in-chief: Rod SheardEditorial team: Nick Reynolds Tom Jones Patricia Fernandez
Populous magazine is published by:Alma Media InternationalLondon, United KingdomTel: +44 (0) 20 8944 1155Email: [email protected]: www.almamedia.co.uk Publisher: Tony Richardson [email protected]: Dominic Bliss [email protected] direction and design: Deep www.deep.co.uk
Images: Getty Images; Corbis; Agent; Giulio Andreini; Nathan Gallagher; Andy Watson; PBR.com; Emilio Fernandez Vadillo; Populous © Alma Media International Ltd 2011
All material is strictly copyright and all rights are reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without the written permission of Alma Media International is strictly forbidden. The greatest care has been taken to ensure the accuracy of information in this magazine at the time of going to press, but we accept no responsibility for omissions or errors. The views expressed in this magazine are not necessarily those of Alma Media International or Populous.
WELCOME //2
ISSUE FOURPopulous magazine is sent to our clients and friends around the sporting world.
HELLO
PEFC/16-44-002
POPULOUS MAGAZINE // 3
SCRUM AND BACKS4
LEFT FIELDPredicting future trends in the
technology of sports officiating.6 MEN IN A WOMEN’S WORLD
What drives young men to become cheerleaders? Surely it’s not just the
dating options? Andy Gray, from Sports Illustrated, finds out.
30 8 SECONDS OF HELL
Horns, hooves, and head over heels. It’s all in a day’s work for USA’s professional bull
riders. ESPN writer Keith Ryan Cartwright finds out how.
8JOCKS ON TOP
American university sport is now bigger than ever, with huge
sponsorship and thousands of loyal spectators. Franz Lidz, former senior writer at Sports Illustrated, explains.
10 IN DEEP
Deep below the waves free-divers risk blackouts, narcosis and lungs
squashed almost flat. Herbert Nitsch, the world’s greatest exponent, explains the joys of his sport.
34 PERFORMERS & AUDIENCE
ENTWINEDPatricia Fernandez, at Populous’s
London office, says her former life as a professional ballet dancer taught her how performers and spectators need to commune with each other.
12 10,000 HOURS
To breed a sports champion, should you start training your kids the
minute they can walk? Or should you let them have a childhood?
24 LIES, DAMNED LIES &
STATISTICSTeam selectors in many sports are using bizarre statistics to choose
formerly undervalued players. Jon Hotten, from Sky Sports magazine,
finds out how.
36 TRy, TRy AND TRy AgAINWhy on Earth do some cities and countries repeatedly bid for major sports events such as the Olympic Games even though they stand no
chance of winning?
20 gREENS WITH ENVy
As pro golfers get stronger, and courses attract myriad spectators,
the architecture of modern golf courses is changing radically. Ben
Cove, from GolfPunk magazine finds out how.
16 A DyINg TRADITION?
Italy’s Il Palio di Siena is one of the oldest sporting contests in the world. Yet modern health and safety rules
are changing all its traditions.
28 HARD BALL
Meet the eccentric sportsmen who play rackets, a sport with its origins in
British prisons and a rock hard ball that travels close to 200mph.
40 POP HISTORy
In 2008 Barack Obama delivered his presidential
candidacy speech, proving he was one of the greatest public
speakers of modern times.
BACKS
FORWARDS
LEFT FIELD //4
THE ARCHITECTURE AND TECHNOLOGY OF PUBLIC VENUES IS EVOLVING FASTER THAN EVER. HERE WE BRING YOU SOME OF THE MOST EXCITING IDEAS OF THE NEAR, AND SOMETIMES DISTANT, FUTURE.
LEFTFIELD //
Final whistle for refs?The writing is on the wall for sports umpires and referees. TV and computer adjudication, such as Hawk-Eye, will soon be so advanced, and so accurate, that it’s possible many sports officials will be out of work.
Video technology is already used in sports all over the world to cut down on referee error. For decades it has separated group winners in athletics and horse racing. More recently the NFL, the NHL, the NBA, Major League Baseball, the Canadian Football League and NASCAR have implemented TV replays to adjudicate in ambiguous situations. Other sports such as cricket, rugby union, rugby league and field hockey
rely on the technology to certain degrees. Soccer is the notable exception, but few doubt that once the various parties get their acts together, goal-line technology (see opposite for a great example) will be ubiquitous.
Computers will also contribute to the downfall of sports officials. Hawk-Eye, and another ball-tracking device called Hot Spot, were used at the recent Cricket World Cup as part of what is known as ‘the umpire decision review system’ (UDRS). Hawk-Eye is also used to adjudicate on line calls in professional tennis. Surely it’s only a matter of time before line judges are eliminated from tournaments for good.
“Currently the technology is not able to make calls instantaneously and so cannot replace line umpires,” said Andrew Jarrett, chief of officiating at the International Tennis Federation. “If this could be produced at a cost that is viable then there may indeed be a reduced need for officials in the future.”
Unemployment notwith-standing, many athletes and officials are unhappy about the rise of the machines. Tennis legend Roger Federer famously turned his Swiss nose up at Hawk-Eye, worried about occasional inaccuracies. Former cricket umpire Dickie Bird, one of the most respected in the game, believes cricket’s use of UDRS is
undermining the authority of match officials.
“In the old days, controversial decisions became talking points in the bars and clubs, but everybody respected the umpire’s authority,” he told British newspaper The Daily Telegraph. “I am in agreement with Roger Federer and [FIFA president] Sepp Blatter, who says that refereeing decisions are part of football. I would never have brought them in. They are taking the authority away from the on-field umpires.”
Yet the march of technology seems impossible to halt. Referees are quite used to being told to “get new glasses”. Soon they may be told to “get a new job”.
Far Left: Rafael Nadal awaits a Hawk-Eye decision on the big screen at Wimbledon.
Below and near left: England player Frank Lampard scores a clear goal against Germany in the 2010 FIFA Word Cup, yet it’s not awarded.
It may look more like a Christmas-tree decoration than a soccer ball, but this new invention could well eliminate major refereeing errors forever. Created by Mexican designers Agent, the Ctrus features electronic sensors that communicate wirelessly to officials beside the pitch. It’s designed to change colour when it crosses the goal line, is kicked out of play, or when players are off-side. With this type of technology, never again will we see erroneous decisions such as
England player Frank Lampard’s disallowed goal against Germany in last year’s FIFA World Cup [see story left]; or French striker Thierry Henry’s intentional handball to set up the decisive goal against Ireland in 2009’s World Cup play-off.
Both airless and transparent, the Ctrus claims to be the first ever soccer ball with “position-detection technology”. GPS and radio-frequency identification within the internal skeleton of the ball enable officials off the pitch to
ascertain exactly where the ball is at all times. They can also measure the force with which players kick it and the speed at which it travels through the air.
Ironically, had this technology existed during last year’s World Cup, the designers’ national team, Mexico, would have particularly benefitted. Against Argentina they initially went a goal down after striker Carlos Tevez scored from a blatantly offside position.
Where were you when your country needed you, Ctrus?
POPULOUS MAGAZINE // 5
Soccer’s shining light
Imag
es ©
Ag
ent
CHEERLEADING // MEN IN A WOMEN’S WORLD6
It’s noon on a sun-drenched Saturday afternoon and the 87,000 Tigers fans at Auburn’s Jordan-Hare Stadium can be
heard echoing throughout the state of Alabama. The Auburn Tigers are the nation’s top-ranked American college football team and are about to face off against Louisiana State University for top spot in the ultra-competitive Southeastern Conference.
Drew Petrey, a senior economics major, is stretching in the locker room while kick-off approaches. As the players rush out of the tunnel and race to the sideline, Petrey huddles with his own team for some last-minute instructions. He isn’t one of the 85 players
these rabid fans came to see. He is the man responsible for firing them up. Petrey is a cheerleader. And in the testosterone-filled, sexed-up world of big-time sport, the male cheerleader is the hardest working and most misunderstood athlete of all.
Cheerleading’s roots trace back to the 1880s when a group of male students at Princeton University took it upon themselves to coordinate and lead chants during the team’s football games. A tradition was born and spread west to the University of Minnesota and other large colleges. As World War I ended, these clubs started to incorporate females into the mix and shifted to a more visual presentation highlighted by gymnastics and tumbling. By
the 1950s, the women began to outnumber the men. Soon, the outfits shrunk, the sex appeal grew and the males faded into the background.
Today, there are cheerleaders at every level of sport – from middle-school basketball to professional football – and 97 percent of them are female. In college, however, there are equal numbers of guys and girls per team. It’s fair to say that few fans take time to appreciate the performance of the males.
“The guys play a very vital role in cheerleading,” explains Petrey. “While the females are certainly better to look at, the guys are the brawn behind them. We’re the ones holding them up in the air. It’s hard work.”
Petrey isn’t kidding. While they are
POPULOUS MAGAZINE // 7
CHEERLEADING //
MALE CHEERLEADERS? ARE yOU kIDDING? THEy MAy bE A TINy MINORITy, bUT THE STRENGTH THEy bRING TO THE GyMNASTICS IS CRUCIAL. AND THE
DATING OPTIONS ARE PHENOMENAL, RIGHT? Andy GrAy, fROM SPORTS ILLUSTRATED, fINDS OUT.
MEN IN A
WOMEN’S WORLD
Thanks to hundreds of thousands of spectators and massive sponsorship deals, some college sport in the USA is more popular than professional sports leagues in other countries. Franz Lidz, former senior writer at Sports Illustrated, finds out why.
At university colleges in the United States, the big revenue sports – basketball and American football – attract crowds that would have filled Ancient Rome’s Coliseum in its heyday. Indeed, some gridiron matches routinely draw more than 100,000 spectators. For the rest of the world, collegiate sport is lucky to draw a handful of fans.
One reason university athletes form such a major part of the American sporting scene is that collegians play hard and with lots of passion. The drama feels more heartfelt, whereas in professional sport it often
seems like choreographed theatre. College sport is also commercially successful – American football’s Bowl Championship Series games, for example, pay each team US$17 million. TV advertisers are beguiled by the age demographics of college sport’s viewers. Studies have found that most Americans make their product choices in their early 20s and stick to them, sometimes for the rest of their lives.
So American college sport is essentially professional, long ago importing all the emotional trappings of and loyalties to the country’s different almae matres. In 1852, the superintendent of the Boston, Concord and Montreal Railroad lured the Harvard and Yale rowing crews to Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire with the promise of “lavish prizes” and “unlimited alcohol.” The idea was to bring in spectators in the form of wealthy rail passengers.
Over the next two decades, sport had become such a formidable recruiting tool that the president of Columbia congratulated his rowing champions after a victory by saying: “You have done more to make Columbia known than all your predecessors. Wherever the telegraph cable extends, the existence of Columbia College is known and respected.”
American football quickly surpassed rowing in popularity, and by the late 1880s, Yale’s annual game with Princeton was averaging 40,000 fans and generating more than $25,000 at the gate. By 1890, Yale had a $100,000 slush fund to aid football, and the salary of its
often seen leading chants with a megaphone, the main role of the male cheerleader is to serve as the base of a pyramid for stunting. This requires an inordinate amount of upper body strength, which means endless hours training in the gym.
“The practice and weightlifting the guys have to do is crazy,” says Kristina Anderson, a former cheerleader at the University of Illinois. “During practice the guys are always lifting the girls. They don’t get a break. If they aren’t lifting girls, they are doing drills to build their strength or tumbling, which also requires a lot of endurance.”
Of course, cheerleading is not just hard work and little reward. Most guys would do anything to spend endless hours with a group of sexy and scantily clad females. It’s even the subject of the 2009 comedy film, Fired Up!, in which two high-school football players con their way onto the cheerleading squad so they can meet girls. But does it work in real life?
“Most of the girls on our team are not interested in dating the guys,” says Mackenzie Murphy, a junior female cheerleader at the University of Maine. “We see them as good friends and brothers. I’m sure the guys think the same about the girls.”
That’s not to say there haven’t been some successful love matches. Chrissy Spahr, who graduated from Michigan State in 2004, has a different take. “During my second year on the team, I started dating a guy who is now my husband. Many of my close friends either married a cheerleader or still have close relationships with cheerleaders.”
Jocks on top
CHEERLEADING // MEN IN A WOMEN’S WORLD8
Former male cheerleaders include actors Michael Douglas, Samuel L. Jackson, Steve Martin and ex-president George W. Bush.
Kodi Burns of the Auburn University Tigers.
coach had eclipsed those of its top professors. That same year future US president Woodrow Wilson, then the president of Princeton, boasted that his school was known for three things: “Football, baseball, and collegiate instruction.”
College football preceded its professional counterpart, the NFL, by around half a century. Indeed, until about 1960, the college game remained second to Major League Baseball as the most important sport on the American landscape. Saturday afternoon contests were part of the mating ritual for many college men and women. After graduation, alumni couldn’t drain it from their blood.
Lots of Americans attend college, and college graduates tend to be far more loyal and connected to their alma mater than to the mercenaries of their local professional team.
“The conviviality aspect of college sports, particularly football, is very real,” says veteran sports journalist Jack McCallum. “It’s not like the artificial atmosphere created in NFL stadia or NBA arenas. American fans love rivalries, and college sport – especially basketball and football – is made for them. The showdowns transfix entire states and always have.”
With basketball, the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) tournament is a flat-out spectacular, communal event, like a World Cup on speed, packed into three weeks instead of four, with twice as many teams, and with much more unpredictability. There has never been a time (except for the Golden Age of the NBA from the early 1980s to the early 1990s) when pro hoops was bigger than the college variety. This college basketball boom is traceable to 1979 when the sports network ESPN was launched. Europe, with its
state-controlled broadcasting dominant for so many years, never would have had a place to grow spectatorship for college sport.
Perhaps the most distinguishing feature of American college football and basketball is that they function as feeder systems for the NFL and NBA in way that doesn’t exist in Japan or Germany or the UK, for example. Future English Premier League stars aren’t playing for Oxford or Cambridge. They’re competing in the Manchester United or Chelsea youth teams. (Or, more likely, somewhere in France or Ghana.) If the next Wayne Rooney was striker for Oxford University’s top team, The Blues, you can guarantee you wouldn’t be able to move for fans at home matches. Right now there’s plenty of room.
Spahr and her husband Ryan later cheered professionally for the NBA’s Detroit Pistons after graduating from Michigan State. “I know from our school alone we have six couples that have gone on to get married over the last eight years,” Ryan says. “I was lucky to find my wife while cheering in college.”
For others cheerleading was a stepping stone to a successful career. Some of the bold-faced names that used to cheer include actors Michael Douglas, Samuel L. Jackson, Steve Martin and former US Senator Trent Lott. However, the most famous case of a male cheerleader is none other than George W. Bush. While a student at Phillips Academy, in Massachusetts, Bush became so revered as the school’s pep leader that students staged a formal protest when the Dean of Students asked him to tone down his antics.
So what can be learned from yelling into a megaphone and lifting girls into makeshift pyramids? “The main lesson I learned was the ability to focus on the task at hand, no matter what is going on around you,” says Curtis Hamilton, a former cheerleader at North Carolina State. “When you’ve got a girl flipping off the top of a pyramid and your job is to catch her, you can’t be concerned with the crowd.”
Add it up and it doesn’t seem that the reputation fits the crime. The male cheerleader spends hours in the gym, hangs out with beautiful girls, attends the best sporting events and counts former US presidents in its ranks. So why are they still the butt of so many jokes?
POPULOUS MAGAZINE // 9
Chicago Bulls cheerleaders, the Luvabulls.
Early male cheerleaders.
“I’ve had a handful of guys make fun of me for what I do, but I believe the majority of it is jealousy,” says Petrey. “I’ve had many more guys come up and tell me they wish they could do it. We’re surrounded by attractive girls all the time, we get to be on the sidelines for every game, travel all over the country, and it’s a fun way to stay physically fit in college.”
Populous works with the athletics faculties at over 120 US colleges, designing training, arena and stadium facilities for all sports. Recent projects include the 50,000-capacity TCF Bank Stadium for the University of Minnesota.
Jeff Robinson of the Seton Hall Pirates.
What drives humans to sWim hundreds of metres beloW sea level Where their lungs are squashed almost flat, and they risk blackouts and narcosis? herbert nitsch, the World’s greatest free-diver, tells Dominic Bliss about life in the deep end.
FREEDIVING //
freediving // IN DEEP10
populous magaZine // 11
It’s cold, dark and murky at 200 metres beneath the ocean waves. Life forms include plankton, shrimp, lanternfish, the odd tuna…
and occasionally an Austrian chap called Herbert Nitsch.
Nitsch is the world’s deepest free-diver. At various times during his career he has held 31 different world records in the various disciplines of his sport. He currently holds four world records, including the daddy of them all: a no limits dive to 214 metres that he achieved back in 2007, off a Greek island called Spetses. For this particular dive he used a weighted sled on the descent and an air-filled balloon to return to the surface, but other free-diving disciplines (constant weight, free immersion, dynamic etc) have varying rules. Competitions are regularly held at coastal venues all over the world.
“It’s a nice, peaceful loneliness down there,” Nitsch says. “A feeling of being far away. You’re very lonely down there and you can’t see anything because the camera light is shining right in your face. Behind it the sea is completely black.”
The pressure on the human body at these depths is frightening. The discomfort at the bottom of the deep end of a swimming pool is enough to put most people off diving. So imagine what it’s like, all alone at 200 metres below. In very basic terms, what happens is the body goes into survival mode. The heart rate drops, extra red blood cells are released, and blood is drawn away from the limbs to the vital organs, especially the lungs. A process known as ‘blood shift’ prevents the lung from collapsing totally. Add to this the dangers of narcosis, potential blackouts from oxygen starvation, and high carbon dioxide, and you realise this is no weekend snorkeling trip.
“If you don’t have the proper safety set-up it’s always very dangerous,” says Nitsch who trains with a partner. “Then again, it’s very unlikely you’re going to break an arm or a leg like in skiing. The worst injury I’ve had is jellyfish stings and fire coral.”
There must be something very enticing about swimming this deep. Over the next year Nitsch plans, by increments, to break the 300-metre (or 1,000-feet) mark. His aim is to reach 800 feet by this summer, 900 feet in the autumn and 1,000 feet in 2012. With training and competition costs as much as 300,000 Euros per dive, success all depends on the generosity of sponsors. Recently Nitsch packed in his full-time job as an airline pilot to concentrate on his diving which means money might be even tighter.
So how on earth does a pilot from land-locked Austria become the world’s greatest free-diver? His first toe in the water was 14 years ago on a scuba-diving holiday in Egypt. After the airline lost all his diving gear he was forced to resort to snorkeling instead. Every day he ventured deeper and deeper until a friend noticed he was only a couple of metres off the Austrian free-diving record.
Hailing from Vienna, hundreds of miles from the coast and high above sea level, Nitsch’s exploits were initially seen as rather eccentric. “In the beginning, maybe this was the driving factor,” he explains. “I was envying those who had the sea right in front of them. I pushed myself to prove that, even though I worked full time and did free-diving purely as
a hobby, I could still do it well.” Nitsch believes his totally fresh approach to the sport also helped him steal a march on his rivals.
His technique is radically different to that of his peers. A few weeks before a competitive dive he travels to the site and immediately starts training to the extreme, without any rest between dives. Even out of the water he is constantly practising breath holds, diaphram movements, pumping his adam’s apple, and “controlling the valves in his head”. Before a training dive he totally empties his lungs and submerges with just a mouthful of air, thereby tricking his lungs into thinking they are much deeper underwater than they actually are, which in turn increases the blood shift effect. This way he can use shallow training dives just as effectively as other divers use very deep dives. “I do 30 shallow dives every day during training, plus one very deep dive. My rivals train with only very deep dives which means they get to do just two dives every three days. So I get to train much more.”
Bizarrely, Nitsch knows of no other free-diver who uses his unique training methods, and he’s convinced his physiology is no different to that of his competitors. “I find it hard to understand why they don’t give it a try,” he says. “I am very open with my methods.”
The wrong side of 40 years old, he has no plans to hang up his goggles just yet. He says he feels stronger than ever. “Most competitors are younger, that’s true,” he says. “But I still haven’t reached my limits.”
The heart rate drops, extra red blood cells are released, and a process known as ‘blood shift’ prevents the lung from collapsing totally. Add to this narcosis, potential blackouts from oxygen starvation, and high carbon dioxide.
Herbert Nitsch has free-dived to 214 metres.
EQUESTRIAN SPORT // A DYING TRADITION16
EQUESTRIAN SPORT //
ARE mOdERN hEAlTh ANd SAfETy REgUlATIONS SOUNdINg ThE dEATh kNEll fOR ThE wORld’S OldEST hORSE RAcE?
A DYINGTRADITION?
POPUlOUS mAgAZINE // 17
Il Palio horse race sees thousands pack into the central square of Italian city Siena.
How to breed cHampions // 10,000 hours12
that’s how long it takes to train most champion athletes. so should you start them in sport the minute they can walk? or will this ultimately burn them out? using examples from top-level sport,
Joe Boyle investigates.
The police mug shot needed no embellishment. The dark eyes staring in defiance, the nose ring, the unkempt mass of hair save
for one loose curl. Just another grunge kid caught in possession, after a party went hard-core in a Miami motel. Three years earlier, the eyes had been brighter, the mouth a relaxed grin, the hair swept back. Three years earlier, Jennifer Capriati had been in the semi-finals at Wimbledon.
This young tennis player’s descent from sporting poster-girl to teenage drop-out spoke of the pain and sacrifices needed to get to the top. Her troubles, which continue to this day, raised questions about the demands of elite sport. Is an obsessive single-mindedness and exclusive focus on one sport the requirement for elite athletes? Or is it possible to lead a diverse sporting childhood and still rule the world?
Tennis has its share of players who, Icarus-like, rose and burned. The story of the young prodigy bullied and cajoled by a bawling parent tips into cliché. Andre Agassi, who also turned to drugs to escape the pressure, details in his autobiography, Open, the gruelling regime to which he was forced to submit. “My father says that if I hit 2,500 balls every day,” he writes, “I’ll hit 17,500 balls each week, and at the end of year one I’ll have hit nearly one million balls... A child who hits one million balls each year will be unbeatable.”
Agassi describes tennis in terms of fear and loathing, forced into a straitjacket. Tiger Woods, by contrast, appears to have donned the coat himself. There is something comic about the apocryphal tales of a nine-month-old Woods picking up a club for the first time. But there was no mistaking something prodigious when, as a five-year-
How to breed cHampions //
popULoUs maGaZine // 13
Andre, Age 6
How to breed cHampions // 10,000 hours14
Is an obsessive single-mindedness and exclusive focus on one sport the requirement for elite athletes? or is it possible to lead a diverse sporting childhood and still rule the world?
Woods is closer to Lewis Hamilton, in terms of a healthier sporting curriculum. Hamilton, the 2008 Formula 1 champion, was a good soccer player, as well as a karate black belt by the age of 12. Unlike Agassi, he chose his sport, rather than having it imposed upon him. By the time he had reached his teens he was karting virtually every weekend.
Whatever their route to the elite ranks, all three men provide evidence of the ‘10,000-hour rule’ popularised by Malcolm Gladwell in his best-seller Outliers. Gladwell, building on the work of psychologist Anders Ericsson, claims that success in any field, from chess to motor-racing, requires 10,000 hours of training first.
Even this figure is considered conservative by some within the coaching industry. “If you look at tennis now, the male players entering the world top 100 are about 23, 24 years old,” says Andrew Lewandowski, head of talent management at Britain’s Lawn Tennis Association. “Sports science has moved levels upwards and it’s a lot more difficult to break in. The mastery of skills now takes a lot longer, I would say 15,000 hours: learning the fundamentals, agility, balance, coordination and skills of the game.”
This might seem to support the methods of those who, like Agassi’s father, encourage exclusive focus on a single sport from an early age. Latest research indicates the opposite. “There is no evidence to support early specialisation,” says Dr Chris Cushion at Loughborough University, one of the most successful breeding grounds of
Lewis , 8
w
inning again!
Tiger’s f irsT eagle
old, he notched his first birdie on a regulation course. Woods, like many elite sportsmen, was talented at other sports, especially baseball and basketball, but chose not to pursue them because of the time they took away from his golf practice. Despite the influence exerted by his father Earl, there is little doubt that the decision to specialise on golf was Tiger’s. In this respect, Woods differs from Agassi, who yearned to play soccer, not out of any great love for the game but because it offered refuge from the loneliness of the tennis court. His father intervened: soccer, and the risk of injury, would not be allowed to get in the way of the plans he had for his son.
popULoUs maGaZine // 15
The laTe-sTarTersNot every world-class athlete needs to start training obsessively from the age of two. These famous examples were all well into their teens before they got going.
steve redgrave (rowing)It wasn’t until he was 14 that steve redgrave first climbed into a rowing boat. But from then on, he made up for lost time. During his 20-year career, which saw a staggering haul of five Olympic gold medals, the British rower trained four times a day, 49 weeks a year. That’s nearly 28,000 training sessions in all.
Bruno senna (Formula 1)although he dabbled in karting as a kid, the death of his uncle, Formula 1 legend ayrton senna, and later his father – both in motor crashes – dissuaded Bruno senna from racing himself. That is until he reached the ripe old age of 21. The Brazilian now drives for the hispania racing Formula 1 team.
Nick Faldo (golf)British golfer Nick Faldo was 14 when he played golf for the first time, inspired after watching Jack Nicklaus’s exploits on TV. Five years later he’d turned professional. There later followed six major championship wins and a world No.1 ranking for a total of 98 weeks.
Constantino rocca (golf)although he caddied as a youngster, it wasn’t until rocca was 24 that he first became a professional golfer. Then followed multiple tour wins plus second place in the 1995 Open Championship, making him the most successful male golfer Italy has ever produced.
Bernard hopkins (boxing)as a teenager, while his future boxing peers were all training, Bernard hopkins (below) was mugging people and getting stabbed. By 17 the american had been sentenced to 18 years in prison for multiple felonies. It was here that he first discovered his passion for boxing. On release, five years later, he joined the professional ranks, eventually becoming the first fighter to unify the WBO, WBC, IBF and WBa middleweight world titles.
athletic talent in the UK. Cushion, who runs a masters coaching course, spent ten years around the world in professional sport working on coaching and talent identification programmes. His work on markers of giftedness suggests that the majority of people who go on to be elite athletes previously participated in a range of sports, often focusing on one to begin with, before sampling others and then settling on their original choice.
“There are exceptions to the rule; people who start a sport aged four and never do anything else,” Cushion explains. “In fact, in terms of developing well-rounded athletes with physical literacy and all the requirements to perform at the highest level, perhaps a mixed economy is better at a young age.”
Lewandowski wouldn’t disagree, even while stressing that tennis is an early-start
In terms of developing well-rounded athletes at the highest level, perhaps a mixed economy of sport is better at a young age.
Dr Chris Cushion,
Loughborough university, uK
Tiger’s f irsT eagleJennIFeR AT SCHOOL
sport. Its high motor-skill requirements mean tennis fundamentals have to be developed before children reach puberty. Exclusivity, however, is not something he’d recommend. “The advice we give generally to parents is that between the ages of eight and 12 the kids do other sports. Football, running and gymnastics really transfer well. You have to do other sports from a general developmental aspect because children need to be with other children. Doing other sports is a really important social development.”
Popular public perception is shaped by the images of sporting prodigies captured on camcorders when they’re still toddlers. As is often the case, popular public perception does not reflect the wider reality. Sporting skills are widely transferable: defensive techniques learnt playing ice hockey can apply just as well on the basketball court; learning to work in a team is not the exclusive preserve of any single sport. “Athletic giftedness is a limited resource,” Cushion says. “It would be a shame to let it slip through our fingers if there was an opportunity to let kids switch sports.”
However, there’s no doubt that world champions are born with the basics. “The only thing we can’t give people is speed and power,” Cushion adds. “You have to pick your parents carefully.”
Many Populous-designed venues, including the new Ravenscraig regional sports facility in Scotland, have in-built facilities to encourage youth participation.
EQUESTRIAN SPORT // A DYING TRADITION18
Tracing its origins back to the Middle Ages, Il Palio di Siena is perhaps the oldest continuous horse race in the world. It’s also
one of the most fiercely contested. Yet, thanks to new health and safety regulations, its ancient traditions are now under threat.
Not surprising really, when you consider how deaths (both equine and human) have occurred over the centuries. According to Italy’s Anti-Vivisection League, since 1970 nearly 50 horses have died. The most recent was in 2004.
Witness this unique sporting tradition, staged in Siena, normally twice every summer, and you’ll understand why.
Lasting around 75 seconds, it sees 10 horses sprinting on a tight course three times around the city’s central square. Jockeys, all riding bareback, barge, shove and whip rival horses and riders in an attempt to gain an advantage.
Each horse and its rider represent one of the city’s wards, and rivalry between the thousands of supporters from each ward is intense. Fist fights sometimes break out between the different factions crammed into the middle of the Piazza del Campo. “People give vent to repressed passions and employ gestures and language which would be unthinkable in normal circumstances,” says Senio Sensi, a co-writer of a 2004 documentary about the race. “In Siena it is always the season of Il Palio which brings with it hope, faith, sacrifice, warfare and friendship.”
Since the 1990s, strict new rules have been implemented in order to make the race safer: the individual horses are subject to medical and anti-doping tests; the jockeys are tested for alcohol; a special volcanic ash is spread across the surface of the racetrack, and is constantly monitored to maintain the correct springiness; protective barriers are erected at the most dangerous corner; and a practice track has been built outside the town
so that, come race day, the horses aren’t surprised by the tricky course layout.
While the purists may disapprove, it’s certainly cut down on the number of injuries and deaths. But is it a watered down version of the real thing?
Populous has a long tradition of venue design in the equestrian sports from England’s premier racecourse at Ascot to Hong Kong’s famous Happy Valley and Keeneland in Kentucky, USA. As part of the London 2012 Olympic Games masterplan Populous is installing a cross-country eventing course in London’s historic Greenwich Park.
POPUlOUS mAgAZINE // 19
Since 1970 nearly 50 horses have died. The most recent was in 2004.
GOLF // GREENS WITH ENVY20
With prOFessiOnaLs reGuLarLy drivinG the baLL in excess OF 300 yards, and a universaL caLL FOr spectatOr-FriendLy Live venues, the LayOut OF mOdern GOLF cOurses is chanGinG dramaticaLLy. Ben Cove, FrOm GOLFpunk maGazine, expLOres the diLemmas FacinG the cOurse architects.
GOLF //
GREENS WITHENVY
21pOpuLOus maGazine //
November 2009 was a momentous month in the annals of golf. While Lee Westwood secured the first ever Race to Dubai winner’s
cheque and Tiger Woods thrust the sport onto newspaper front pages worldwide for all the wrong reasons, an equally significant development was being rubber-stamped inside a small boardroom in Copenhagen.
Thanks to staunch support from within the upper echelons of the game, and following a campaign spanning decades, golf was voted back onto the Olympic programme, and will now return in time for the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro. But the showcase in Brazil in five years’ time will be a far cry from the form of golf last seen at the Olympics more than a century ago. The Royal and Ancient game has gone through a transitional period, particularly in the last 20 years, sparking changes that have compromised the heritage and altered the very fabric of the sport.
First came the emergence of aerodynamic balls that fly further, followed by
giant club-heads that connect with greater velocity. And now, a new breed of muscle-bound long-hitter is threatening to leave classic course layouts behind. Golf is at an evolutionary crossroads. The only way of maintaining a level playing field is to extend existing courses, or build new ones that meet modern demands.
“It’s turning into a joke,” admits Robin Hiseman, chief architect at European Golf Design, and the man charged with creating a standout course for Madrid’s Ryder Cup 2018 bid. “Average driving distances have increased by more than 50 yards in 15 years. Tournament golfers are simply out-growing some of the world’s classic courses.”
As one of the largest participation sports in the world, golf has long-revelled in the traditional appeal of regular players taking on the same courses as their heroes. But the gap in strength and skill between Average Joe and top professionals is ever widening. This has seen a rise in what
GOLF // GREENS WITH ENVY22
Graeme McDowell of Europe is roared to victory by 45,000 fans during the 2010 Ryder Cup.
Hiseman calls “the TPC culture” – the notion, pioneered by the Tournament Players Club, of building one course for the pros, and a diluted version for the rest of us.
However, one man keen to retain tradition by developing courses that are equally challenging to all levels of player, is golf architecture guru Brian Curley. A native of Pebble Beach, California, Curley is in the process of building 12 very different tracks at the brand new Mission Hills resort on Haikan Island, in China.
“It’s a challenge, but I like it that way,” he admits. “If you have a ‘bomber’ who’s driving it 330 yards then he deserves to gain an advantage, as long as he’s accurate. I’m designing holes that offer those guys the option of cutting corners and landing in a narrow area, but also give the more conservative hitters a straight route to the fairway. This forces a decision on the tee box: it’s a risk-versus-reward scenario that makes for a great spectacle, which is just as important these days.”
If one could combine the toughest sections from testing golf courses all over the world, what would the resulting hole look, and play like? Ben Cove, from GolfPunk magazine, chooses his fantasy hole from hell.
THE TEE SHoT oN THE ExTENdEd Road HolE, ST aNdREWS lINkS, ST aNdREWS, SCoTlaNd.
already one of the toughest par fours in golf, the tee box on the 17th was moved so far back for the 2010 british Open that it ended up on another course. “it’s brutal,” announced english pro ross Fisher. “you can hit two great shots and still walk off with an 8 or 9.”
THE maSS of WaTER aT l’alBaTRoS, Golf NaTIoNal, GuYaNCouRT, fRaNCE.
With a four-shot lead and two to play, alejandro canizares would have strolled to victory at any other european tour course. but the mass of water hazards on L’albatros are not easily avoided under pressure. the spaniard splashed in three times in two holes and lost in a play-off.
THE RouGH aT YaloNG BaY Golf CluB, SaNYa CITY, CHINa.
this is deep, punishing and full of poisonous snakes, as melissa reid discovered when she was bitten while looking for her ball after a wayward drive during last year’s sanya Ladies Open. “i was calm at first,” she recalls. “but the potency of the venom made it very painful.”
THE SEaRING HEaT WaVE aT SouTHERN HIllS CouNTRY CluB, TulSa, oklaHoma, uSa.
there were calls for green-side air-conditioning units to cool the triple-figure temperatures at the 2007 uspGa (below). “the heat really takes it out of you,” sergio Garcia said. “i got weaker as the day went on and was constantly having to wipe sweat off my arms, hands and grips. then 15 seconds later, i was doing it again.”
HEll’S Half aCRE aT PINE VallEY Golf CluB, PINE VallEY, NEW JERSEY, uSa.
a giant, undulating pit that interrupts the 7th fairway, this is said to be the largest inland bunker in the world and sits menacingly, packed full of scrubby, twisting vegetation. Once you go in you rarely get out. even category-one golfers have been known to walk off the hole with double figures on their card.
THE SWIRlING WINdS aT PEBBlE BEaCH Golf lINkS, PEBBlE BEaCH, CalIfoRNIa, uSa.
set against the might of the pacific Ocean, this course sees gusts up to 50mph coming from all directions. “the difference between a windy day and a calm day can be 30 shots,” admits mike davis, the usGa’s senior director.
THE BaRRY BuRN aT CaRNouSTIE Golf lINkS, CaRNouSTIE, SCoTlaNd.
in probably the most famous collapse in golfing history, Jean van de velde (below) needed a 6 or better on the final hole to win the 1999 Open, but ended up with a triple-bogey 7 after pitching into the stream (or burn) that slaloms with intent across the 18th fairway. “i get reminded of it every day,” he admitted recently. “i think it’ll be another 20 years before people stop asking me the same question.”
THE lIGHTNING-faST GREENS aT SHINNECoCk HIllS Golf CluB, SouTHamPToN, NEW YoRk, uSa.
not a single golfer finished his final round under par at the 2004 us Open despite the fact green-keepers watered the putting surfaces in between groups to slow them down. after battling to a final score of 10 over par, tiger Woods let rip, branding the greens “out of control!” and “unfair!”.
average driving distances have increased by more than 50 yards in 15 years. Tournament golfers are simply out-growing some of the world’s classic courses.
Robin Hiseman, cHief aRcHitect at
euRopean Golf DesiGn.
THe HoLe FRoM HeLL
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Curley’s point is a pertinent one. Golf is a truly global game with mass appeal, and designing a new championship course is no longer solely a case of testing the best golfers. One of Curley’s latest tracks at Mission Hills – The Blackstone – is due to host the 2011 Golf World Cup this November. As such, he’s expected to make provisions for spectators, galleries and television cameras.
“The brief was to create a stadium environment. Fortunately the course sits on a bed of ancient lava rock, so we’ve been able to make the most of the steep banks, which will house grandstands and hospitality suites looking down on the action. It’ll be a real treat for the fans.”
Hiseman was also lucky with the natural terrain of his latest project. The Club de Campo Tres Cantos, Madrid’s potential 2018 Ryder Cup venue, is set to accommodate a 25,000-spectator capacity par-three hole known as Plaza de Toros (the Bull Ring).
“The design specifications for a Ryder Cup course are very different to 20 years ago,” he reveals. “You have to test players of all lengths and you almost need a crystal ball to predict how far the top guys will be hitting it in seven years’ time. But you also have to design a sporting arena. We had this bit of land that was due to be a practice ground but was too deep and rounded, so we’ve turned it into a signature par three of epic proportions. The green will be positioned in a giant bowl filled with 25,000 people. That ought to get the pulses racing.”
But before all that comes the 2016 Olympics, and golf’s induction into the wider public consciousness. With the likes of Jack Nicklaus and Greg Norman throwing their distinguished design hats into the Olympic ring, the Rio course promises to be a classic. A classic that facilitates a level playing field for all participants, no doubt.
XBH—EXTRA BASE HITS: D
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SPORTS STATISTICS // LIES, DAMNED LIES AND STATISTICS24
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POPULOUS MAGAZINE // 25
LIES,DAMNED LIES& STATISTICS
SPORTS STATISTICS //
INSTEAd Of fORkING OUT fOR EvER MORE ExPENSIvE STAR PLAyERS, MANy bASEbALL, bASkETbALL, CRICkET
ANd SOCCER CLUbS ARE NOw USING STATISTICS TO SELECT UNdERvALUEd bUT EqUALLy EffECTIvE
AThLETES. Jon Hotten, fROM Sky SPORTS MAGAZINE, fINdS OUT If ALL TEAM SELECTION MIGhT ONE dAy
bE LIkE ThIS.
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CRIC
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SPORTS STATISTICS // LIES, DAMNED LIES AND STATISTICS26
Billy Beane can still remember the moment when everything changed. It was 1993. He was sitting in the front office of the Oakland A’s
baseball team, where he had just been made assistant to the general manager. In his hand was a pamphlet written by a former aerospace engineer named Erik Walker.
“It was the first thing I’d ever read that took an objective view of baseball,” Beane said later. “It was different than just a lot of people’s subjective opinions.”
Walker’s pamphlet pointed out something obvious: that a baseball team could only score while it was batting, and it could only bat until three hitters had been struck out. So the key statistic in baseball must be the one that measured the likelihood of a batter not striking out. The stat already existed – it was called on-base percentage – but it was considered less important and was analysed less than lots of other stats in a sport obsessed by its numbers.
Billy Beane had heard enough subjective opinions to last him a lifetime. Growing up, he’d been the kind of baseball prospect to whom stats barely applied. Scouts who’d spent their lives looking at high-school hotshots looked at Billy and saw a superstar. His playing career ended after six seasons when he walked into the office of the A’s and asked for a job as a scout. He’d hit a total of three home runs. He knew all about the kind of illusions that professionals could see on a baseball field.
Billy discovered that Erik Walker’s pamphlet had been inspired by the work of a statistician called Bill James, who had been self-publishing an annual book, The Baseball Abstract. Like Walker, James was not a baseball insider – that was his greatest strength. Free from the conventional wisdom of major-league front offices, his work, which he called Sabremetrics, attempted to interpret the game in a new and modern context. Soon, the Oakland A’s, an unfashionable and financially challenged franchise, were heading up a revolution, fielding undervalued, underrated players to devastating effect. In 2006, a fairly typical year, the A’s finished fifth in the regular season, having ranked 24th in terms of player salaries paid. The same year, Bill James, by now working at the Boston Red Sox, was named by Time Magazine as one of its 100 most influential people. He had helped the Sox to their first World Series in 86 years. A bestselling book called Moneyball, written by Michael Lewis, had told the story of Beane and James; now clubs around the world in all kinds of different sports were looking for ways to ‘Moneyball’ their teams. All were taking to heart Billy Beane’s entreaty to scouts and managers “not to be victimised by what you see”.
Baseball is what statisticians would term a “closed sport”. Like cricket, golf, tennis and American football, it is made up of a series of short, measurable events. Other sports, for example soccer, rugby and basketball, are fluid, and yet even they are now being more accurately measured. “You would have a hard time finding any major sport in the world which is not using metrics in some way,” says Beane. “Each sport has a metric which is relevant. Basketball is much more similar to soccer, and many NBA teams are using metrics.”
Andy Flower, performance director of the England cricket team, became an enthusiast when his predecessor Peter Moores gave him a copy of Moneyball. “It opened my eyes to a different way of looking at stats,” Flower says. “I don’t think that we’ve tapped the potential of how stats could drive our strategy. Peter Moores and Hugh Morris built up a bigger analysis department in the ECB [England and Wales Cricket Board]. They’re doing some really interesting work.”
Although Flower doesn’t want to reveal too much, for fear that rival teams might steal a march, he explains how statistics were crucial when it came to batsmen scoring single runs. “Singles became very important in 50-over cricket. There was a stat at one time that in international cricket the sides that scored the most singles tended to win the games. In Twenty20 cricket, sides that score the most singles only win 30 per cent of the games. That’s an example of how the analysis can drive how you play.”
Rugby, although expensive to analyse, is also a growing market for statisticians. Sir Clive Woodward is said to have used some statistic-based key performance indicators during England’s successful World Cup winning campaign of 2003.
Yet it is soccer, with its nightmarish financial risks and precarious chances of success, where the concept of Moneyball and the use of metrics is perhaps most needed. At least baseball has its salary cap, golf its sponsors and cricket its niche markets. Soccer, unregulated and subject to the whim of super-rich individuals, has no such limitations, and it remains a magnet for investors eyeing its commercial potential.
One of the most recent entrants to the market is John W. Henry and New England Sports Ventures, owners of the Boston Red Sox. Having purchased Liverpool FC, one of their first appointments was sporting director Damien Comolli, a friend and follower of Billy Beane, and noted for his use of metrics in the transfer market.
“In the US, we’re thought of as Moneyball-type people in that we use statistics above everything else,” Henry says. “Yet our
philosophy isn’t that statistics mean everything, but that they’re a valuable tool.”
There is probably no killer stat in soccer like the use of on-base percentage that helped the scales fall from Billy Beane’s eyes. Yet it is very much an analysed sport.
Prozone is a company that started off selling massage chairs to soccer clubs. They now supply 15 Premier League teams and European giants such as Barcelona with statistical analysis of every game they play, and have a database of over 3,000 professional soccer players.
“The fluidity of soccer and the amount of variables make it more difficult to quantify,” says Blake Wooster, Prozone’s head of business development. “But there are people at soccer clubs and within the walls of our
While coaches might not need stats to buy superstars such as Lionel Messi, spending a precious £5 million on a consistent defender is an important area.
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red.
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verage (Ave): Tota
l num
ber o
f runs d
ivided
by total number of innings in which the batsman was out.
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0): T
he n
um
ber o
f innin
gs o
f 100
runs or m
ore.
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): The n
um
ber o
f runs sco
red p
er 100 b
alls faced. (SR = [100 * Runs]/BF)
Not outs (N
O): T
he n
um
ber o
f times b
atsmen
are not o
ut at the end of an innings they batted in.
CRIC
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POPULOUS MAGAZINE // 27
office who are doing some pretty exciting things. It’s not geared to ‘Moneyball’ soccer, but we can identify some key performance indicators closely linked to success.”
Player recruitment is a core plank of their business. While coaches might not need metrics to buy superstars such as Lionel Messi, spending a precious £5 million on a consistent defender is an area in which statistics can hold sway.
Imagine a club is trying to replace a key player, like for like. They might use Prozone to find 10 players who can dribble, cross and shoot on target with equal efficacity, for example. “We would never try and replace the experience and intuition of a scout, but we might be able to say, have you considered this player too?” Wooster adds.
Soon, the Oakland A’s, an unfashionable and financially challenged franchise, were heading up a revolution, fielding undervalued, underrated players to devastating effect.
And the data is being used where it matters: in the boardroom. “A very few clubs can afford to buy whoever they want,” says Wooster. “The rest need to find a way to draw a competitive edge. It’s only one piece of the due diligence process, but it does challenge the conventional scouting process because it’s impartial, it’s objective and it’s supportive.”
Now the ultimate nerd’s subject is about to receive a Hollywood makeover. Brad Pitt will play Billy Beane in the film of Moneyball, due later this year. It looks like 2011, for sport, will be the year of the stat.
Populous has designed 19 Major League ballparks and is working with the Boston Red Sox on a spring training facility, and with the Florida Marlins on a retractable roof ballpark.
RACKETS // HARD BALL28
RACKETS //
FRom 18Th CEnTuRy pRiSon pASTimE, To ExCluSivE pREppiE SpoRT, RACKETS iS ThE FASTEST And moST
dAngERouS RACKET SpoRT in ThE woRld. Dominic Bliss mEETS Top plAyER AlEx TiTChEnER-BARRETT (BElow).
populouS mAgAZinE // 29
Weight-lifting, ping-pong, playing catch with the soap in the showers and the odd fist fight. In modern British prisons that’s pretty much all there is on the sporting agenda.
It all used to be so much more civilised. In 18th-century debtors’ prisons there were dozens of respectable sports on offer including billiards, skittles, fives and something known as rackets. The latter, a precursor to modern squash, was particularly popular among upper-class gentlemen who found themselves locked up at His Majesty’s Leisure for failing to settle their debts. Two London prisons in particular, King’s Bench and Fleet, were renowned for their rackets courts and the vigorous matches played between inmates.
From its fairly indecorous beginnings, the sport quickly became popular among the country’s more exclusive private schools (or ‘public schools’ as they are known in Britain). Roll on a few hundred years and the sport remains just as exclusive. It’s estimated there are only 900 active players and 27 courts in the UK, and a few hundred players and just nine courts in the USA and Canada. Nowhere else is it played.
The world number two player is 31-year-old Londoner Alex Titchener-Barrett. He originally learned to play at Harrow School, one of Britain’s most famous public schools, and now trains at The Queen’s Club, an upmarket racket sports club in west London.
“A lot of people think the sport is old school and slightly dated,” Alex admitted after giving a display of his exploits on one of his club’s two rackets courts. “But funnily enough, when I’ve got people down here to watch it they get quite exhilarated and enjoy the speed of it.”
It’s certainly a very fast game: by Alex’s estimates, when he hits the small, hard ball with his long, wooden racket it can travel at speeds close to 200mph. The court is similar to a squash court, only larger, with concrete floors and higher walls – a legacy of the prison walls against which it was first played. Matches are contested in a similar way to squash, the victors being the first to win the best of three, five or seven games lasting 15 points. The speed of play makes for a very dynamic spectacle.
“There’s definitely a thrill from the pace of rackets,” said Alex. “You get just a split second to react to the ball. It’s one of the fastest games in the world, without a doubt. I think the only sports that rivals it in terms of speed are pelota or jai alai.”
The balls used are rock hard which means body shots are painful, potentially very dangerous. Although the sport’s governing body in Britain (The Tennis & Rackets Association) isn’t aware of any deaths, in the past there have been several players blinded, just as in squash.
“If the ball hits a muscle it’s like getting a cricket ball on the leg,” Alex explained. “If you’re unlucky and it hits the bone, you could crack something. But this is rarely seen.”
Alex, who works full-time in sports hospitality, tries to compete in as many amateur tournaments as he can. He recently had a shot at the world championship title but lost out to American player James Stout. Rather like in boxing, players have to be invited to compete for the world title. Alex’s next attempt will probably be in 2012.
Amateur status means he doesn’t earn a penny from rackets which begs the question of whether he ever wishes he had excelled in a more lucrative sport such as tennis. “You do get occasions where that thought creeps into the head,” he admitted. “But I don’t have any regrets. I played a lot of tennis as a kid and to play seriously I had to
make a decision as to whether I wanted to sacrifice my education. I wasn’t prepared to do that.”
Alex also knows that if he’d chosen tennis he never would have reached the dizzy heights of world number two as he has done in rackets. And can you imagine the world number two tennis player giving up a whole morning at his club to demonstrate the finer points of his sport?
“If I was as successful as Roger Federer, I’d like to think I’d be unchanged,” Alex joked.
English private schools (or ‘public schools’, as they are known) have traditionally been breeding grounds for many of the world’s more eccentric sports. some are so eccentric that they’re destined to remain forever obscure.
FivesPlayed on a small, indoor court, this involves hitting a ball against the front wall with a gloved hand. There are several variants, depending on which particular public school you attended: Eton fives, for example, features a court with a buttress, a step and sloping ledges; Rugby fives uses harder balls and thicker gloves; Warminster fives has two teams of three players known as the squi, the centre and the skunk.
Eton Wall Game Played on a long, thin pitch beside a brick wall at England’s most exclusive school, this sport, similar to rugby, sees players attempting to score ‘shies’ (against the wall) or goals (by throwing the ball against a door at one end of the pitch or a tree at the other). On average a goal is scored only once every 10 years. Prince Harry competed in his time at Eton.
Rossall HockeyPlayed exclusively at Rossall School, in Lancashire, this is similar to field hockey, except that it’s played on a temporary pitch marked out on the beach beside the school.
Harrow footballPlayed exclusively at London’s Harrow School, this sees two teams of 11 trying to kick a football the shape of a giant pork pie into goals on a quaggy pitch. The wetter the ball gets, the heavier it becomes.
Winchester college FootballAlso known as ‘Winkies’, ‘WinCoFo’ or simply ‘Our Game’, this soccer-style sport is played at Hampshire’s Winchester College, and features players known as kicks, hots and hotwatches who try to kick the ball into Worms – the area at either end of the pitch.
GEntlEmEn playERs
Although the sport’s governing body isn’t
aware of any deaths, in the past there have been
several players blinded.
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Bull riding is the sharp end of rodeo, a sport where injury is the rule, not the exception. Keith Ryan CaRtwRight, author of the official guide to the toughest sport on earth, explains why these cowBoys choose to antagonise huge, horned Beasts for a living.
BULL RIDING //
Eight seconds is a very short time. Unless, that is, you’re astride an angry, snorting, two-ton bull trying its utmost to eject you from its back.
In which case eight seconds can last an eternity.It takes an unshakeable nerve to be a
professional bull rider. In America’s leading bull-riding league, Professional Bull Riders, or PBR, there are only 40 cowboys with the courage and the skill to compete at the very top level – the Built Ford Tough Series, a 30-stop annual tour of the USA. “It’s America’s original extreme sport,” boasts the PBR. It’s also one of the most dangerous sports in the world.
The rules are simple: climb into a bucking chute, centre yourself on the back of a 2,000-pound bucking bull, tie your hand in the bull rope, nod your head for the gate to pulled, and then remain atop the bull for the next eight seconds. Eight seconds that, if everything goes well, can result in as much as a US$1-million bonus (for the PBR world champion); or, if one tiny thing goes wrong, can mean broken bones, life in a wheelchair or even death.
And should you last eight seconds – known in the sport as ‘making the whistle’ – then you still face the unenviable task of dismounting. Bulls never make this easy.
“It’s not a matter of if you’re going to get hurt,” says PBR co-founder Cody Lambert, whose own legendary career ended after a severe knee injury. “It’s a matter of when.”
Recently sports network ESPN examined the topic by comparing injuries sustained in American football, ice hockey and the PBR. Former NFL star Lomas Brown talked mostly of knee injuries. Former NHL winger Matthew Barnaby said his worst injury was losing the sight in one of his eyes after being blindsided with a sucker punch. Professional bull rider J.B. Mauney listened to his colleagues from these other sports, and when
bull riding // 8 SECONDS OF HELL30
populous MagaZine // 27
If one tiny thing goes wrong, it can mean broken bones, life in a wheelchair or even death.
populous MagaZine // 31
Brazilian bull rider Juarez Terra.
BULL RIDING // 8 SECONDS OF HELL32
it was his turn, the 23-year-old matter-of-factly told the story of a time he felt some discomfort after bucking off a bull and getting “roughed up.” Embarrassed that he hadn’t made a qualified ride he shrugged off the beating and went home. It wasn’t until a day later, when experiencing excruciating pain, that he discovered he had broken all the ribs on the right side of his chest, lacerated his liver and bruised his spleen.
Earlier this year Mauney suffered a dislocated shoulder and a partially collapsed lung. After a couple of months out of the sport he returned to competition and finished third in the world standings. He’s also been competing for the past few seasons with a torn ligament in his right knee.
“Oh shoot, it ain’t no big deal,” he says of the latter. “Sometimes it gets a little sore.”
Not that the PBR disregards its riders’ safety. As well as a first-rate sports medicine
programme, each bull-riding arena features special bullfighters whose job it is to save the riders from sharp hooves and horns. (The bulls’ names – Bushwacker, Major Payne, I’m a Gangster and Bones – give you an indication of their aggressive nature.) In its 17-season history the PBR hasn’t yet seen a rider killed. There have been deaths in other bull-riding leagues, however.
If you want the chance to wear the gold buckle of a PBR world champion and cash the $1 million bonus, then you have to be willing to put up with more than a few nagging injuries along the journey. In 2009, Kody Lostroh was leading the world standings when he hyper-extended his left elbow at an event in April. The resulting injury not only tore in half an elbow tendon, but occurred with such force that it ripped away a piece of bone, too.
Lostroh missed only one week of competition, briefly thought of switching
riding hands – a move best compared to a professional tennis player switching from left handed to right handed – elected to don a brace, put off surgery until November and eventually went on to win the world title. “When a guy gets that close it’s hard to just sit home,” he said afterwards.
Multiple injuries famously hampered another professional bull rider, Luke Snyder. But this didn’t stop him recording one of the most impressive winning streaks in modern US sport.
After making his debut in early 2001, Luke Snyder rode in 275 consecutive Built Ford Tough Series events over the next decade, as well as many other lower-level competitions. Nicknamed ‘Titanium Tough’, he has a medical report that includes a torn rotator cuff, a broken wrist, a broken leg, a handful of concussions, rib injuries, a laceration to his chin and knees that still need to be surgically repaired.
Five cowboys can’t tie down Sweet Temptations.
Titanium Tough’s medical report includes a torn
rotator cuff, a broken wrist, a broken leg, rib injuries, a
laceration to his chin and knees that still need to be
surgically repaired.
populous MagaZine //
“I think Luke’s [winning] streak doesn’t get as noticed or recognised because bull riding hasn’t become a mainstream sport,” says Chad Pennington, a football quarterback for the Miami Dolphins, but also a stock contractor who raises bulls. “If it had, or if it ever does, a streak like that would definitely be talked about more. I would say that bull riding poses a high risk of injury even more than playing quarterback in the NFL. Sometimes you can go through a game [of football] and not have to deal with too much physical contact. But there’s no avoiding physical contact when you’re bull riding.”
With all these thrills and spills, it’s no wonder bull riding enjoys a massive following. More than 100 million viewers watch over 400 hours of PBR on TV every year both in the States and around the world. Nearly two million fans attend Built Ford Tough Series and the lower-level Touring Pro Division events every year.
It’s a well-financed sport, too. Since it launched in the early 1990s, PBR has awarded over $100 million in prize money. A total of 23 riders have earned over $1 million, with the now retired Justin McBride topping the all-time winnings list at $5.5 million – more than any other athlete ever in western sports.
Work shifts may last just eight seconds in this sport, but to reach $5.5 million you need to put in a lot of shifts.
Populous has designed many arenas and fairgrounds in North America (including Reliant Stadium, home of the world-renowned Houston Livestock Show) that regularly host bull riding and other rodeo events. Clowns distract bulls from goring the riders.
33
Austin Meier wrestles with a two-ton beast.
Ryan McConnel shows off his injuries.
Ballet // PERFORMERs AND AUDIENCE ENTWINED 34
POPUlOUS MaGaZINe // 35
The relationship between performing artists and their audiences can be a very intimate one. It starts the moment the
curtain rises and the music comes on.“It’s a magical moment,” says
Populous’s Patricia Fernandez, who was a professional ballet dancer for seven years. “In performing arts it’s one of the most moving experiences there is.”
Patricia describes the communion between ballet dancer and spectator. “Imagine yourself in front of a whole concert hall of spectators who can feel every single movement you make,” she says. “It’s so quiet they can detect even the smallest vibration in one of your muscles. As the performance starts, the different tones and rhythms of the ballet steps start to reverberate through the stage, and the music spreads across the venue. Then, once the performance is all over, after the lights have gone off and the last dancer
has left the stage, there’s still a visual image in the mind of each spectator. It’s a cathartic moment, just before the applause starts. It’s also one of the most gratifying things I’ve ever experienced.”
Ballet dancers may make everything look very easy, but behind each performance there are hundreds of hours of rehearsal. “The fragility of the swans in Swan Lake, for example,” Patricia explains. “Or the ethereal look of Giselle. Or the passion and energy of Kitri in Don Quixote. All these involve months of preparation and teamwork.”
Patricia was just five years old when she started ballet dancing, in her home town of Cadiz, in southern Spain. She began with rhythmic gymnastics, and it wasn’t long before she was part of the competition team. “We would train for six hours every day, as well as having ballet lessons,” she remembers. “Right from the start I loved the concentration required, the interaction with the music, and the quest for perfection in every movement we did. To a dancer, a ballet class is as crucial as breathing air.”
From the age of 16 to 22 she was a full-time ballerina, performing at venues all over Europe. Roles included Carmen, Kitri (in Don Quixote) and the Bluebird (in The Sleeping Beauty). Nowadays, although she has a full-time job at Populous, she still practises ballet as much as possible. “I love going to classes,” she says. “The structure of them, the piano, the music, the silence in between, the breathing, the laughing. It’s very peaceful and relaxing. It’s the best way to start the day: stretching your muscles to ensure everything is in the right place.”
PERFORMERsAND AUDIENCEENTWINED
There needs to exist a real chemistry between ballet partners. The audience can always sense if this chemistry is there.
BALLET //
Patricia says ballet taught her discipline and mental strength form a very young age. “On stage, if you have a problem with your point shoes, or your costume, for example, you have to find solutions very quickly.”
On one occasion, while touring in Cyprus, the fog machine broke during a performance and started expelling toxic fumes across the stage. “It was tough to deal with,” Patricia remembers. “But fortunately I had the support of my partner and we both remained calm.”
She never underestimates the importance of a strong ballet partner. “You have to have mutual respect, mutual understanding and there needs to exist a real chemistry between you both. The audience can always sense if this chemistry is there.”
There’s a debate, currently, within the world of ballet about where exactly the art form is headed. Some people worry the dancing side of ballet is becoming obscured but the use of new technologies in set and lighting design, many of which upset the equilibrium of the performances. “I sometimes find the actual dance is not enriched when these new technologies are used,” Patricia says. “It ends up being just a mish-mash of multimedia.”
She worries that some modern ballet productions aren’t as focused on the audience as they used to be. “Provided choreographers and lighting designers use technology in a really clever way, the result can be very interesting,” she adds. “But they must never forget about the special relationship between the dancers and the spectators.”
IN her PrevIOUS career, Patricia Fernandez, Part Of the POPUlOUS MarketING teaM, waS a PrOfeSSIONal Ballet daNcer. It waS aN exPerIeNce whIch taUGht her hOw aUdIeNceS cONNect aNd INteract wIth the PerfOrMING artS.
Staging SportS eventS // Try, Try and Try again36
popULoUS MagaZine // 37
Staging SportS eventS //
What driveS SoMe citieS and coUntrieS to SeriaLLy bid for Major Sporting eventS,
even thoUgh they don’t Stand a chance of hoSting theM? iS it preStige, vanity or a drive
for financiaL inveStMent? and doeS the perSiStence ever pay off? RoRy SquiReS, froM
SportS WebSite SportS city, findS oUt.
In December, FIFA left many of the planet’s biggest sporting nations bewildered by opting to take its showpiece event, the
World Cup, to Russia in 2018 and Qatar in 2022. In a bruising contest, established sporting giants like Australia, England and the USA were left to lick their wounds as world soccer’s governing body decided to place pins in uncharted territories on the global map.
The USA, which had received the best technical rating among all the 2022 bidders in the pre-vote report, was irked by losing out to the ambitious, but tiny emirate of Qatar. Fellow 2022 bidder Australia, the host of numerous hugely successful major events in recent years such as the Olympics, Commonwealth Games and Rugby World Cup, was left furious after picking up a solitary vote.
However, the brutal manner of England’s defeat in the 2018 bid race was
particularly savage. It didn’t matter that the UK’s future king, its current prime minister and its biggest soccer icon (David Beckham) flew out to Zurich to present a passionate and articulate last-minute pitch. It didn’t even matter that, like the USA’s bid for the 2022 edition, England’s technical report received the top mark of the candidates.
Having garnered the support of only two members of the 22-man executive committee, England, the home of the richest league in world soccer and the birthplace of the game, tumbled out at the earliest stage of the voting process. It appeared that not all of the lessons had been learned following the country’s similar – if slightly less humiliating – defeat in the 2006 World Cup tender, when England was accused of arrogance in its pursuit to bring soccer “home”.
However, if England weren’t paying attention in class, Morocco’s recent bidding
Try,
try and try
again
Staging SportS eventS // Try, Try and Try again38
history suggests the African country didn’t bother turning up to school at all. Morocco tabled unsuccessful bids for the World Cup in 1994, 1998, 2006 and 2010, and ahead of the vote for the 2006 World Cup, Morocco’s bid leader Driss Benhima made an extraordinary statement. “We know our weaknesses: a lack of facilities and a lack of stadiums,” he told startled journalists. “If FIFA is trying to raise the most money possible from sponsors and the media, then Morocco is not the place for the World Cup.”
Morocco’s unusual approach, though, is not unique, and it is increasingly common for major events to attract bids from countries that are patently unsuitable at that moment in time. A lack of relevant infrastructure is not necessarily a reason for automatic failure as long as the situation is rectified before the big kick-off. For example, few doubt Qatar’s ability to transform ahead of the 2022 World Cup. On the other hand, a lack of financial support from a national governing body, local authority or government – as was
the case recently with Indonesia’s bid for the 2022 World Cup – wrecks any hosting ambitions from the start.
Most “no-hoper” bids would never admit to their deficiencies. However, why would these countries even bother to throw their hats into the ring in the first place? Scott Bowers worked on successful bids for the World Cup and Olympics during his time as head of sport at British PR giant Weber Shandwick. He explains how cities and countries are increasingly aware of the benefits of bidding for a major sporting event, even if there is little chance of winning.
“Nowadays there is value in kind for a bid whereas previously the value would only have come from organising the event,” he says. “Bidding can be a two-year promotional campaign to tell the world what you are about. When you’re looking to bring investment into tourism, regeneration or grassroots sport programmes, there’s no reason why you can’t use a focal point such as a bid. I think the fundamental reason for bidding is prestige.
When you’re looking to bring investment into tourism, regeneration or grassroots sport programmes, there’s no reason why you can’t use a focal point such as a bid. i think the fundamental reason for bidding is prestige. it shows you are aspiring to be at the top table, whether that is in sport or otherwise.
Scott BowerS, BritiSh SportS pr
who worked on olympic and
FiFa world cup BidS.
Despite using David Beckham as an ambassador, England’s bid to host the World Cup failed.
South Koreans weep after losing the chance to host the Winter Olympics. The Qataris celebrate winning their bid to host the 2022 World Cup.
popULoUS MagaZine // 39
SeRial biddeRSWhen it comes to staging major sporting events, some countries have all the bad luck. yet like stubborn boxers they keep coming back into the ring for further beatings.
SpainThe hugely successful 1992 olympics in barcelona didn’t quench Spain’s thirst for major sporting events. However, Seville failed to reach the candidate city stage for the 2004 and 2008 Games, and Madrid was unlucky to finish third for the 2012 edition and then second for the 2016 olympics. Spain’s joint bid with Portugal for the 2018 FiFa World Cup also fell short last year, with Russia winning the tender.
Switzerlanddespite being one of the key winter sports countries in europe, Switzerland has failed with five bids for the Winter olympics since the event was last held in the country in St. Moritz in 1948. after the city of Sion failed with two consecutive bids for the Games in 2002 and 2006, Switzerland’s frustrations reached a crescendo when bern withdrew from the race for the 2010 olympics following a referendum vote against public funding for the bid.
MoroccoThe african country bid for four editions of the FiFa World Cup between 1994 and 2010. despite coming second in the tenders in 1994, 1998 and 2010, Morocco was widely considered to be making up the numbers as the overwhelming favourites from each year, united States, France and then South africa, galloped home. The 2006 bid was a disaster, with Morocco winning only two votes.
It shows you are aspiring to be at the top table, whether that is in sport or otherwise.”
It is also common for cities to test the water ahead of a full tilt at a major event. For the Olympics, this could mean becoming an applicant city, but not progressing to the candidate city stage, where costs increase sharply. The candidate cities for the 2016 Olympics splashed out an average of £34 million on their bids. However, it costs less than £100,000 to register as an applicant city.
Prague followed that route to become an applicant city for the 2016 Olympics, but the city’s Mayor, Pavel Bem, implied early on that the ultimate hosting aspirations were not immediate. With financial guarantees not forthcoming from the government, Prague did not progress to the candidate city stage, and Bem immediately insisted that the Czech Republic capital would prepare for a future bid “with greater ambition”.
In total, Prague’s campaign cost just £2.5 million – a small price considering the possible future benefits of the political and administrational relationships that were nurtured. “There’s a difference between an outsider and a no-hoper,” says Bowers. “I worked on Sochi (site of the 2014 Winter Olympics) which started out as the outsider behind Pyeongchang and Salzburg, but Sochi had the resources and the political support to win. The Russian city had a dry run for the 2002 Winter Games by entering the bidding, but not becoming a candidate city. Similarly, Rio was an applicant city in 2004 and 2012 before winning the right to host the 2016 Olympics. Bidding is an example of international diplomacy. With
after a bid defeat it helps if you can stage smaller events to show the hosting capabilities of your country.
Scott BowerS, BritiSh SportS
pr who worked on olympic
and FiFa world cup BidS.
Prague, for example, they have a long-term plan and needed to establish links within the Olympic movement, so I think they got a lot out of the 2016 bid.”
For those repeatedly denied their dream sports event, it is essential to maintain a diplomatic stance at all times, even in the wake of the latest morale-crushing defeat. When Nigeria lost out to Glasgow for the 2014 Commonwealth Games, Goodluck Jonathan, then the country’s vice-president, complained that the Commonwealth Games Federation had been “unfair to the Nigerian and African bid”. This sort of reaction, though, is counter-productive if there are future bidding ambitions.
“It is crucial to carry yourself correctly at all times as you are always being judged,” Bowers advises. “In defeat, you have to ask difficult questions and listen to feedback, particularly from people like your country’s International Olympic Committee representative. It also helps if you can stage smaller events to show the hosting capabilities of your country.”
Therefore, despite the recriminations following the recent World Cup vote, the losing countries will eventually return to the bidding table, because the benefits on offer are too enticing to resist. “Even if you aren’t successful, you need to ensure there is a by-product of the bid investment,” Bowers says. “But with the Olympics and the World Cup, as the prize is so big, it is always worth going for it.”
Populous has a long history of helping bidding nations and cities including the successful London 2012 and Sochi 2014 Olympic Games bids.
FIFA president Sepp Blatter announces Russia as the host of the 2018 World Cup.
HISTORY // BARACK OBAMA’S ACCEPTANCE SPEECH40
POPUlOUS iN HiSTORy
Barack Obama’s Democratic nomination acceptance
This was when all the excitement over Barack Obama first started. To an adoring live audience of 84,000, plus more than 38 million watching on TV, the future leader of the world’s most powerful nation delivered his 44-minute acceptance speech for nomination
as the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate and instantly proved he was one of the greatest public speakers of our era.
“America, we cannot turn back,” he said in the closing stages of his moving address. “Not with so much work to be done. Not with so many
children to educate, and so many veterans to care for. Not with an economy to fix and cities to rebuild and farms to save. Not with so many families to protect and so many lives to mend. America, we cannot turn back. We cannot walk alone. At this moment, in this
election, we must pledge once more to march into the future. ”
It was Populous who designed and built the impressive stadium overlay, and a stage with more than a nod to The White House, all forming the backdrop to Obama’s speech.
WHERE? INVESCO FIELD, DENVER
WHEN? 28TH auguST 2008
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POPULOUS // THE TEAM London14 Blades CourtDeodar RdLondonSW15 2NUUnited Kingdom
Tel: +44 208 874 7666Fax: +44 208 874 7470Email: [email protected]
Kansas City300 WyandotteKansas City MO 64105USA
Tel: +1 816 221 1500Fax: +1 816 221 1578Email: [email protected]
BrisbaneGround Floor418 Adelaide StreetBrisbaneQLD 4000Australia
Tel: +61 7 3839 9155Fax: +61 7 3839 9188Email: [email protected] www.populous.com
THE TEAM // 41
PIETERSEN’SDOUBLE CENTURY
THE ‘WAGON WHEEL’ DIAGRAM OF ENGLAND CRICKETER KEVIN PIETERSEN’S INNINGS OF 227 RUNS
AGAINST AUSTRALIA IN THE 2010 ASHES SERIES.
COLOURS