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Holmes’ (First) Place

by | 24th, August 2004

‘DO not adjust your eyes – that is a British female athlete taking the back pages by storm.

Kelly gets the call-up for next series of I’m A Celebrity…

Her name’s Kelly Holmes, and yesterday the woman who has so often mined for gold and come up with silver, bronze and injury ran the race of her life to take first place in the Olympic 800 metres.

The Telegraph’s photograph of Holmes taking gold proves the paper’s Jim White correct when he says, “The look on Kelly Holmes’ face as she crossed the line…was one of pure amazement”.

While her chief competitors push every fibre of their being forwards to be the first, Holmes looks like she’s the only one who’s spotted the alien space ship landing in lane 6.

But she soon recovered some composure to make sense of her achievement.

“I’ve dreamed of this moment for all of my athletics career and I didn’t think it was going to come,” says Holmes in the Independent.

“I still don’t believe I’ve won. It’s unreal. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.”

Chalk her indecision down to a lack of experience. Compare her to a winner like Paula Radcliffe who’d have known precisely what to do.

And there is the weeping long distance runner weeping once more in the Independent.

But she may yet smile again, as the paper reminds her and its readers that the runner in the school socks is still entitled to take up a place in Friday’s 10,000 metres final.

“I desperately want to get out there and redeem myself,” says Radcliffe. “But I’m not going to put myself into that arena if I’m not right.”

So much in sport is about timing. Get it right with injuries and preparation and you can race to glory; get it wrong and you’re yesterday’s news.

Mindful of the vagaries of a sporting life, we read the Sun’s headline that Newcastle have bid £20m for Wayne Rooney.

This is the kind of bid that can only be viewed as a way to appease the Geordie faithful who have seen the club sell Jonathan Woodgate and help turn Kieran Dyer into an unfulfilled talent.

As such, the bid was rejected by Everton. But the Sun likes a transfer saga to fill its pages each and every day and says that Newcastle will now come back with a £24m bid and could go as high as £30m.

But even the most ardent Magpie can’t really suppose that the boy wonder will move from one well-supported but underperforming club to another one.

As we say, this sporting life is over in a flash. That’s something young Rooney should bear in mind…’



Posted: 24th, August 2004 | In: Back pages Comment | TrackBack | Permalink