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2 days ago | 
straitstimes.com | Rohit Brijnath
“Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare.” Muhammad Ali said this and who’d dare argue with The Greatest? But impossible in sport isn’t just a sublime feat, or a piece of revolutionary equipment. Sometimes it’s just a building. Like this gigantic, temporary, blue box constructed on a car park filled with 3.9 million litres of water.
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5 days ago | 
straitstimes.com | Rohit Brijnath
Bryson DeChambeau’s US Open starts at just about half-past seven on a Thursday morning with a loud call of “fore left”. The American has the muscle to audition for the Reacher series, but this course doesn’t care about power only precision engineering. “Every shot you’re on a knife edge,” says Robert MacIntyre. This course cuts. “These guys are good” is the old US PGA Tour line and they most certainly are, but Oakmont Country Club, with a sneer, is asking, but how good?
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1 week ago | 
straitstimes.com | Rohit Brijnath
UPDATED Jun 09, 2025, 06:02 PM
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2 weeks ago | 
livemint.com | Rohit Brijnath
From fencers to swimmers, and boxers and tennis stars in Paris, it's feet we should be looking at"Stick it.”“Keep dancing.”Muhammad Ali never did just one thing. If he’s skipping, then he’s also talking, offering defiance, poetry, prediction. The video is from October 1974, days before he fights George Foreman in Zaire. Rope taps ground, sweat drips, words rain.
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2 weeks ago | 
htsyndication.com | Rohit Brijnath
New Delhi, June 1 -- "Stick it.""Keep dancing."Muhammad Ali never did just one thing. If he's skipping, then he's also talking, offering defiance, poetry, prediction. The video is from October 1974, days before he fights George Foreman in Zaire. Rope taps ground, sweat drips, words rain. "I'll be dancing all night."Of course once the fight starts, he decides instinctively not to dance and leans against the ropes and fools everyone and exhausts Foreman but that's another story.
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2 weeks ago | 
straitstimes.com | Rohit Brijnath
Sport isn’t fair, this is the plain truth, this is the deal athletes accept. Not everyone makes it, not everyone’s haircut like Carlos Alcaraz’s makes the news, not everyone’s bank balance swells like Novak Djokovic’s (US$187,086,939 or S$241,500,000, at last count), not everyone gets on centre court. Players shrug, it’s OK, but what everyone desires is a chance. That’s all. To be somebody. To get a shot. To be one of 128 in the French Open draw. This is harder than you think.
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3 weeks ago | 
straitstimes.com | Rohit Brijnath
Soon the emotion would flow, but for a brief moment he was awkward on this court he made history on. He was a creature of action not words, defined by his duels, and yet now during the ceremony he stood alone. It felt strange yet fitting. For in a way Rafael Nadal in Roland Garros had no rival. He wept and so did some in the crowd as he spoke to them in English, French and Spanish. His words we mostly understood.
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3 weeks ago | 
straitstimes.com | Rohit Brijnath
Every World Cup it was tugged from the bookshelf, a coffee stain on one page, pen markings on another, a book as dishevelled as an old companion. Into its learned chapters we dived and invariably emerged sounding smarter. The man who wrote The Story of The World Cup (published 1993) was born a year after the first Cup in 1930. Once it was impossible to know football and not him. Now Brian Glanville, the writer, is gone, up there in some celestial field, keeping notes on Maradona’s cunning.
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1 month ago | 
straitstimes.com | Rohit Brijnath
In Rome’s ancient amphitheatre, almost 2,000 years old, dusty, armoured gladiators fought for the public’s entertainment. Almost a century ago, another dirt-filled arena was built in that city, where warriors in shorts tussled before animated crowds. Both sites involved combat under strict rules but with a difference. In the first, lives were lost; in the second, only reputations. The Colosseum was a dangerous place, but the Foro Italico, site of tennis’ Italian Open, is no Sunday picnic.
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1 month ago | 
straitstimes.com | Rohit Brijnath
UPDATED May 16, 2025, 06:46 PM
