Jutta Leerdam’s fiance Jake Paul was moved to tears by her victory while Team GB are still waiting for a first medal
You couldn’t move for orange jumpers and coats in Milan’s speed skating stadium on Monday. Even the king was wearing one. Many Dutch people live for this sport in winter, when their waterways can freeze over, making it often more convenient to skate than walk.
Femke Kok has won the last three world titles over 500m. In November she broke the world record over that distance. On Monday she lined up alongside the 1,000m world record-holder, the 37-year-old Brittany Bowe, leaving her trailing in her wake and broke the Olympic record for good measure. King Willem-Alexander pumped his fists like a madman.
Continue reading...Fifa president will be under major scrutiny when he goes to Brussels to address the Uefa annual congress on Thursday
Assuming Gianni Infantino turns up on time, he is expected to make his customary address to Uefa’s annual congress on Thursday. The couple of hours spent in Brussels Expo Hall 3 will be largely procedural but the Fifa president’s messaging will be worth delegates’ attention. Even by the standards of relations between football’s major governing bodies, the past 12 months have been fractious. The fault lines hardly get narrower and there is certainly no reduction in the number of thorny issues simmering away.
At last year’s edition, in Belgrade, Infantino used the gathering of European football’s great and good to make a caveated case for Russia’s return to competitive action. If that was a rolling of the pitch, his comments on the matter in an interview last week amounted to letting the sprinklers loose. Infantino said the ban on Russian sides should be reassessed, at least for age-group teams, but there is little chance of his views gaining weight around Europe even if he elects to revisit the argument.
Continue reading...Photographers using compact thermal-imaging cameras have crafted eerie and ‘poetic’ results at Milano Cortina 2026
While most photographers are striving to ‘freeze’ motion using traditional cameras at the Winter Olympics this month, a creative trio from the photo agency Getty Images are seeking something much more unexpected: heat.
Equipped with compact thermal-imaging cameras – the kind typically reserved for scientific or industrial purposes – Pauline Ballet, Ryan Pierse and Héctor Vivas have been crafting eerie pictures of athletes on the slopes of Cortina and in the rinks of Milan. The Olympians’ bodies are rendered as spectral yellows and reds, while the ice and snow around them appears either cyan or indigo.
Continue reading...The 33-year-old Scot has overcome misogyny and abuse and is justifiably proud of becoming the first woman to take charge of a men’s Six Nations match
“I probably stood out like a sore thumb,” says Hollie Davidson as she reflects on the long hard road she has travelled to reach the point where, on Saturday, in Dublin, she will become the first woman to referee a men’s Six Nations game. Davidson leans forward in her chair and ticks off some of the doubts she has had to overcome amid derision and prejudice.
“At the beginning,” the 33‑year‑old says, “the big thing was, always, physically can she do it? Will she be able to keep up with the men’s game? What happens if she gets knocked over? Is her rugby knowledge there? How will players and fans react to her? That sexism is still there at points, but people now just want to see a game being well refereed.”
Continue reading...As Bad Bunny showed at the Super Bowl, español is the coming thing. No wonder it’s now the top GCSE language choice
“Now, Gary, repeat after me: Quiero una margarita, por favor,” my Spanish tutor instructs. I cringe at the butchered Spanglish my estuary accent produces. Like Del Boy Trotter ordering a cocktail: “Key – yeah – row oon margari’a, pour far four.”
It’s 2023, I’m 41, living in Argentina and battling the frustration and disempowerment of learning a new language at this age, longing for my elastic 11-year-old brain over this husked-out mush. I’m also wishing, for the umpteenth time, that I was taught Spanish instead of French at school.
Gary Nunn is a journalist and author
Continue reading...The beautiful game has a fast fashion problem, with clubs bringing out multiple kits every season. But a move towards upcycling old shirts and wearing vintage garments is on the rise
It may have been a quiet January transfer window, but even so, thousands of new shirts will be printed for Lucas Paquetá, returning to his former Brazilian club Flamengo, while his West Ham shirt instantly feels old. Not to mention the thousands of other players moving from one club to another. Uefa estimates that up to 60% of kits worn by players are destroyed at the end of the season, and at any one time there are thought to be more than 1bn football shirts in circulation, many of which are discarded by fans once players leave.
The good news is that lots of designers are bringing their upcycling skills to old kits, taking shirts and shirring them, sewing them or, as in the case of designer and creative director Hattie Crowther, completely transforming them into one-of-a-kind headpieces. “I’m not here to add more products into the mix, I’m here to reframe what’s already in circulation and give it meaning, context, and longevity while staying culturally relevant,” says Crowther, whose creations involving the colours and emblems of Arsenal, Liverpool and Paris Saint-Germain, are, she says, “a response to how disposable football product has become”.
Continue reading...The French architect, who once had her nose broken by Jean-Marie Le Pen, created apartment blocks with cascading terraces that seemed to have surrendered to nature. They are still loved by their residents
When the French architect Renée Gailhoustet died in 2023, the residents of Le Liégat, a social housing block she completed in 1982, put up a large handmade sign saying: “Merci Renée.” Architects are often accused of designing impersonal rabbit hutches that they themselves would never deign to inhabit, but when Gailhoustet died at the age of 93, she had been living in her Liégat duplex in the Parisian suburb of Ivry-sur-Seine for more than 40 years.
Outside her living room window, several storeys up, was a large cherry tree and a profusion of greenery. Characterised by their riotous informality, Gailhoustet’s free-plan apartment blocks invariably featured cascading terraces and loggias covered with a foot of soil, so residents could cultivate and enjoy un jardin derrière, a back garden.
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PARIJS (ANP/AFP/RTR) - De Amerikaanse dreigementen over de handel en de intimidatie vanuit Washington zijn niet voorbij, volgens de Franse president Emmanuel Macron. Hij waarschuwt in interviews in Europese kranten dat Europa lang uitgestelde economische hervormingen moet doorvoeren en de kracht van de EU wereldwijd moet verstevigen. "Het Groenlandmoment" is volgens Macron een wake-upcall geweest om tot actie over te gaan.
Hij doelt op het eerdere dreigement van president Donald Trump om Groenland in te lijven en bij de VS te voegen. Er is momenteel wat ontspanning in de Europees-Amerikaanse relaties, maar dat is volgens de Franse president maar tijdelijk.
De regering-Trump is "openlijk anti-Europees" en probeert de Europese Unie uit elkaar te trekken, aldus Macron. In de komende maanden dreigen volgens hem Amerikaanse importheffingen omdat Amerikaanse techreuzen problemen hebben met de Europese Digital Services Act.