Oui, PSG retained its leadership position in Ligue 1 by easily winning against the promoted Clermont while Angers continued their good start to the season.
Yes, Britain’s Emma Raducanu achieved a resounding feat when she became, at 18, the first player from qualifying to win a Grand Slam title.
Yes, Daniel Ricciardo took advantage of an impressive collision between Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton to win the Italian Grand Prix.
But there were other things that happened this weekend that you might have missed.
The three weekend lessons
- Your eyes to the sky you won’t look up
Twelve years after leaving it, Cristiano Ronaldo again set foot on the Old Trafford lawn on Saturday, the Manchester United jersey on his back. The five-time winner of the Golden Ball succeeded in his return by scoring a double which allowed his team to win against Newcastle (4-1). But the event represented by this great premiere of “CR7” was disrupted just after the kickoff of the meeting: a plane passed over Old Trafford, towing a banner with the following message written: “#Believe Kathryn Mayorga”.
An initiative of the feminist group Level Up, which said it wanted “Playing spoilsport” and recall the accusations brought by Kathryn Mayorga against Cristiano Ronaldo. The latter claims to have been raped by the Portuguese in 2009, in a hotel in Las Vegas. The player, who has always denied these accusations, would have reached an amicable agreement to the tune of 375,000 pounds (about 440,000 euros) with Kathryn Mayorga in 2010, so that she does not reveal anything publicly. But, after the outbreak of the #metoo movement in 2018, the young woman decided to pursue CR7. American justice, for lack of evidence, had announced that it would not indict the Portuguese striker.
- Bronze you will be satisfied
Well placed but not a winner. On Sunday, during the road race of the European Cycling Championships which took place in Trento (Italy), Benoît Cosnefroy went for a bronze medal, after the France team animated the race throughout the day. . Member of the final breakaway, the Frenchman let Sonny Colbrelli and Remco Evenepoel slip by in the last difficulty, ten kilometers from the finish, the Italian winning in the sprint ahead of the Belgian.
At the end of the race, the puncher of AG2R Citroën was satisfied with the bronze: “On a personal level, I would rather have a medal than nothing at all. Afterwards, we really came to seek the title with the team. We did everything, sincerely, I gave everything, even on the last lap, to get this medal. I couldn’t do anything against both in the finale. (…) Honestly, I think I’m at my level and couldn’t give more. “
It was only the second day of the Top 14, but there was already a scent of the finals on the synthetic turf of the Paris-La Défense Arena on Saturday. In front of its public, Racing 92 took the best on La Rochelle (23-10). A victory that necessarily counts in the standings, but which sounds above all like revenge for the Ile-de-France residents, beaten by these same Rochelais in June, during the semi-finals of the championship.
Solid in defense and surgical in attack, the Racingmen could still count on their pair of international centers to sign a second victory this season. It was first Virimi Vakatawa who scored the first try of the match (11e), then Gaël Fickou caused a penalty attempt at the end of a slalom in the opposing defense (70e).
Opposite, La Rochelle dominated for a long time, like last week against Toulouse, but did not find the solution to win. Last season’s Top 14 and European Cup finalists, Irish coach Ronan O’Gara’s men start the championship with two defeats. Before moving to Clermont. Not necessarily ideal for getting your head straight.
The weekend video
The real race we’re here for! Nicely done, @PascalEenkhoorn ? ? Watch stage seven live on ITV4 #TourOfBritain ?… https://t.co/vzJtPbpOxQ
What better way to get noticed by recruiters than to compete with champions in the midst of their efforts? This is the brilliant idea of Xander Graham, a young 12-year-old British cyclist, who stood out on Saturday in the 7e stage (and penultimate) of the Tour of Great Britain. While the breakaway of the day was in full effort about ten kilometers from the finish, the young Graham attempted an attack on the sidewalk a few meters from the professionals. For several tens of meters, the members of the breakaway were left behind before taking it back. His ambitious attack made the riders smile, in particular Pascal Eenkhoorn (Jumbo-Visma), who offered him his bottle, before finding him for a photo at the finish line.
The declaration of the weekend
“What PSG is doing is intolerable. “
Javier Tebas has never been a big fan of Paris-Saint-Germain. Since the departure of Lionel Messi in Ligue 1, the president of the Spanish Professional Football League has been increasingly virulent. Sunday, in an interview with the Catalan daily Sport, he once again attacked the club in the capital: “It is clear that what PSG is doing is intolerable. It’s the same for City and other teams. I repeat, it’s doping [financier]. “
Javier Tebas had already targeted PSG, the 1er September, in a tweet and qualified Paris as “Club -State as dangerous as the Super League”. According to the president of the Spanish League, the almost unlimited funds enjoyed by Paris and Manchester City, thanks to the support of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, prevent Spanish clubs from competing in sport. “If this continues, football will end up having 20 sheikhs in 20 different clubs dominating it all”, Tebas concluded.
The sports of the weekend
? WORLD RECORD ? Agnes Jebet Tirop ?? smashes the women’s 10k world record (for a women-only race) in a time of 30… https://t.co/06n8JatkqS
A record day at the Herzogenaurach athletics meeting (Germany). On Sunday, two world records fell in the same morning, with the Kenyan Agnes Tirop and the Ethiopian Senbere Teferi, respectively in the 10 km and 5 km events.
Agnes Tirop, fourth in the 5km race at the Tokyo Olympics, was the first to take the light, breaking a nineteen-year-old record. By covering the 10 kilometers in 30 minutes and 1 second, she won the world record for the distance – without a hare to accompany her at the start of the race – and broke by twenty-nine seconds the record held since 2002, Moroccan Asmae Leghzaoui.
A few minutes later, it was Senbere Teferi’s turn to beat the world record of the Dutch Sifan Hassan, which dated from 2019, by covering the 5 kilometers in 14 minutes and 29 seconds, or fifteen seconds better.
The weekend figure
12 697
Like the number of supporters present in the stands of the GGL Stadium on Saturday for the Top 14 match between Montpellier and Brive and who had not paid their place. The MHR had indeed launched this weekend, on the occasion of the second day of the championship, a marketing operation aimed at offering places to all its supporters.
Thank you all for having responded to the invitation of @MHR_officiel and Tresso Chabrier #TeamMHR ?⚪️ #MHRCAB https://t.co/xyW2JEx5RH
“The idea suggested by the president is to make the public want to come to the stadium to support the MHR. To thank him also, for his patience, his irreproachable attitude during the crisis ”, Jessica Casanova, Deputy Director General of MHR, explained to The team. A nice spotlight for the Montpellier club. As a bonus, the supporters savored the performance of their players on the field, with a clear victory for MHR against Brive (39-17).