Vonn’s Olympic comeback gathers pace with third in Val d’Isere downhill

Lindsey Vonn’s expectations have shifted so dramatically during her Olympic comeback that even a podium finish now comes with a sense of frustration.The 41-year-old American finished third in Saturday’s women’s World Cup downhill at Val d’Isère, France, extending a blistering start to the season that has already included a victory and a runner-up finish in the space of nine days. But after a small mistake on the lower section of the course cost her valuable time, Vonn left the finish area convinced she had let a potential win slip away.Austria’s Cornelia Huetter produced the cleanest run of the day to claim her first World Cup victory of the season, clocking 1:41.54 on the Oreiller-Killy course

Harry Brook’s moment of madness a fitting epitaph for England’s flawed cult of Baz | Barney Ronay

Tough on Harry Brook, yes. But we must also be tough on the causes of Harry Brook. No child is born playing performative reverse-hoicks with a Test match to be saved, just as most acts of cult-like behaviour have their roots in a smooth-talking cult-like instructor.For England the beginning of the end of the age of Baz started when the disciples of Baz began to deny such a thing even existed; to insist that the buckle-up-and-enjoy-the-ride stuff didn’t actually exist at all, but was instead a creation of another, much worse cult, also known in this world as “the outside”.With this in mind, Brook’s dismissal in Adelaide was at least a tell, a moment of anti-gaslighting

Pat Cummins primed to pop the corks after bursting England’s fragile bubble | Geoff Lemon

On a redundancy scale, attending the Adelaide Test and noting that Pat Cummins was good is in the realm of noting that the Torrens was wet or the cathedral was spiky. Still, on day four, any one of those obvious things might justifiably have caught an observer’s eye.Perhaps it’s more notable just how natural, how inevitable, it felt that Cummins was indeed bowling at his best in his first match back after a stress fracture cost him the first two Tests of this Ashes series and any match preparation before that.England supporters will spend four years until their team’s next visit pondering explanations for this poor showing, inevitably including much examination of the lack of chances for their bowlers to adjust to Australian conditions. Cummins spent five months in the gym and the nets without once seeing the middle of a ground, latterly powering through what might have been a few months of rehab in the space of a few weeks, then hit the pitch for a Test match like he had never been away

Crawley admits England ‘staring down the barrel’ but vows ‘we’ll never give up‘

Zak Crawley has promised England will still be hunting for victory on the fifth day of the third Test in Adelaide, despite slipping to 207 for six in pursuit of a record fourth-innings target of 435. “It’s an uphill battle from here,” Crawley said. “But the boys are going to give it a good crack tomorrow. We’re staring down the barrel, so it’s disappointing. But we’ll never give up

Red Roses and Lionesses made 2025 a watershed year for women’s sport in England

England women’s football and rugby teams did something they had never done before in 2025: win major trophies in the same year. The Red Roses lifted the Rugby World Cup and the Lionesses retained the Euros. And it was not just these two triumphs that underlined English prowess in women’s sport, with Arsenal winning the Women’s Champions League and Charley Hull reaching a career-high of fifth in the golf world rankings – the highest for an Englishwoman since the rankings began in 2006.The ripple effects of these victories and achievements have been felt across the country. Grassroots participation is rising, media coverage is expanding and more young athletes are aspiring to follow in the footsteps of the current stars

Australia close on Ashes victory over England on day four of third Test – as it happened

Ok, that’s enough from this page for one day, I’ll see you back here when the caravan pitches up in Melbourne. Time to redirect you to the more considered content from the likes of Geoff Lemon, Barney Ronay, and first, Ali Martin.“Maybe I’m clutching at straws but surely managing to take the third Test into the fifth day constitutes a moral victory for England in the Ashes?” pleads Colum Fordham. “Ah how sweet is the taste of victory!”Jim Lines asks the question that once began as a taunt but must now be given serious sporting (if not financial) consideration. “With the anomalous exception of 2010/11, the Aussie-hosted Ashes have been embarrassingly one-sided for decades