On November 4, 2009, this film was made to witness the private press-only Pacquiao training session at the WildCard Boxing Club in Los Angeles. This was prior to the Pacquiao vs. Cotto fight.
Manny Pacquiao, is a Filipino professional boxer who has also entered the world of politics and is revered by his many fans. He is an the first (and therefore only) boxer in history to win ten world titles in eight different weight divisions.
At the same time he is also the first boxer in history to win the lineal championship in four different weight classes. He was declared Fighter of the Decade for the 2000's by the Boxing Writers Association of America (BWAA). He is also a three-time BWAA and The Ring Fighter of the Year" in 2006, 2008 and 2009.
Here is the exclusive footage from that legendary day.
The four minute mile was an elusive ambition in the field of athletics. It had been a target for many years but has never been recorded formally.
Then one day in 1954 a young man by the name of Roger Gilbert Bannister was the first person to cross this important barrier. It was a symbol of humanity’s ability to improve upon itself and he was there first. For years it had been thought an impossible barrier.
Roger Bannister was born in 1929 (and is still going strong to this day) in Harrow, a small town outside of London famous for its private boy’s school.
Bannister, however went to City of Bath Boys’ School before going on to study at University at Oxford University, followed by a tenure at St Mary’s Hospital Medical School which now forms part of Imperial in London. Little did he know then that a movie would be made about his life one day.
Like many British gentleman of his day, Bannister’s start in the world of athletics was decidedly amateur – and this is not meant in a derogatory way, At 17 he had gone down to Oxford, a promising medical career lying ahead of him. Running was a serious hobby – so the young Bannister had for example never worn running spikes before that time or indeed run on a track.
Even by the standards of 1946 his training was light. Yet he showed an enormous amount of promise and the following year he ran a mile in 4:26:6. This was with just a half hour training session three times a week. Yet why was the mile such a target, such a dream? This video, although not directly about Bannister, goes a long way to explain its allure to athletes - even today.
The British Olympics Committee was certainly impressed and he was selected as a possible in 1948. The still teenage Bannister graciously declined. He felt that he was not ready for the Olympics, choosing instead to watch them.
Over the next few years he steadily improved his timing at both the mile and the 800m (run in European Championships where a defeat in 1950 spurred him on to train much more vigorously than ever before).
His reputation of invincibility grew (mostly at home in the UK, of course) but this came crashing down in the European Championships at Belgrade in 1951 on 25 August, He lost to the Yugoslav Andrija Otenhajmer – at 3:48:4 in the 1500m. It was only 1:4 behind the other runner but it was, nevertheless, a blow.
The 1952 Olympics saw a further blow where he came fourth in the 1500m final. Yet hope remained – he had at least set a British record of 3:46.30 (3:46.0) in the process.
Bannister spent several months dwelling on his defeat and deciding whether to stay with running or to give it up entirely. After all, he had his medical career to consider and athletics made a fraction of the money that it does today. He eventually shrugged off the idea of throwing in the towel and instead set himself a new target – to be the first man to run a mile under four minutes.
He trained incredibly hard and in 1953 he made an attempt at the British record, previously held by Sydney Wooderson at 4:04.2 who had created the record eight years previously. Bannister came in at 4:03:6 – shattering the record and instilling a new hope in himself – he knew now that the four-minute mile was not out of reach.
It was not as if he didn’t have competition. Other runners had their eye on the prize too. The American Wes Santee came close on 5 June 1953 with a time of 4:02:4. Then there was the Australian John Landy who ran 4:02:0 in December of the same year. He followed this up with several new attempts in the early months of 1954 but narrowly failed to better his time.
Bannister had nervously followed his Australian rival, convinced that at each attempt the four-minute mile would be broken. At the end of the Australian season in April Bannister knew that he had a short window of opportunity – his own attempt at the record had to come soon.
The date was chosen. It would be 6 May 1954 at a meet between the British AAA and Oxford University. The Iffley Road Track in Oxford was duly prepared and 3,000 spectators turned up in anticipation. Yet the day turned out to be windswept – a 25 mile per hour wind was blowing around the track. Bannister all but pulled out but then, just before the race was due to start the winds – as if by divine ordinance, dropped. The race would go ahead.
Brasher and Chataway, running colleague had already agreed to provide the pacing for Bannister. Harold Abrahams (immortalised by his own career and the film Chariots of Fire) was there to do the commentary for the BBC Radio. Norris McWhirter who would later in his life edit and publish The Guiness Book of Records with his twin brother Ross was the stadium announcer. It was an all star cast, as it were.
Here is the race, with Roger Bannister narrating, explaining his feelings as one of the pivotal sporting events of the century progressed.
McWhirter was something of a showman. Once the race was run he teased the audience with a long preamble to the hotly anticipated result.
"Ladies and gentlemen, here is the result of event 9, the one mile: 1st, No. 41, R.G. Bannister, Amateur Athletic Association and formerly of Exeter and Merton Colleges, Oxford, with a time which is a new meeting and track record, and which - subject to ratification - will be a new English Native, British National, All-Comers, European, British Empire and World Record. The time was 3..."
There was no point at the stage in continuing. As soon as the stadium heard the magic word – 3 – it erupted with a deafening roar of triumph. Bannister's time was 3:59.04 and it was indeed a new World Record.
Of course this spurred on athletes all over the globe and it was less than two months later (46 days to be precise) that Bannister’s own record was broken. This time it was his rival, the Australian John Landy who ran 3:57:9 in Finland.
Bannister and Landy were to finally compete against each other, post record, on 7 August 1954 at the Commonwealth Games in Canada. Bannister won this epic clash of the titans, coming in at 3:58:8 with Landy less than a second behind him. Roger Bannister went on to gain a European Championship record for the metic mile (the 1500m) at Bern on 29 August – his time there was 3:43:8. Here is their miracle mile.
If it was today, Bannister would have been made for life with sponsorship deals and so on. However, for athlets 1954 was another world – if not universe and these options were simply unthought-of at that point. After Bern, Roger Bannister announced his retirement from athletics. He returned to his role as a junior doctor and pursued a successful career in neurology.
Anyone for cricket? Number 91 on our list of the top 100 sports stars is Adam Gilchrist, who otherwise goes by the nicknames of Church or Gilly. He is the first but not the last cricketer to appear but this guy is not yet retired from the game and has redefined the role of the Australian national cricket team.
Born in 1971, Glichrist is an attacking left-handed batsman but it is for his wicket keeping that he holds world records. He is the current holder of the record for the most dismissals by a wicket keeper by an Australian in test cricket and in One Day Internationals. He is generally thought to be one of the best ever wicket-keeper-batsman combinations in the history of the sport of cricket.
There is more – he is the only player ever to have hit 100 (that’s ONE HUNDRED) sixes in Test Cricket. Not only that, he has 17 Test centuries under his belt as well as 16 ODIs. As a player who was destined to be primarily a wicket keeper, that is some achievement.
He also has a unique record – the only player ever to score a minimum of fifty runs in successive World Cup finals (99, 03 and 07) and has actually won three titles – one of only three players to do so.
At the age of 17, Adam Gilchrist spent a summer with Richmond Cricket Club in London. He performed so well that he was interviewed by the regional BBC Sports Reporter, Michael Wale.
He has sometimes gone against the grain of the establishment in as much as he is a self-confessed walker. That is, occasionally he disagrees with the umpire, who says he is in – and walks off! Fair is fair, however, a player is more likely to know when they are out than the umpire yet many would make the contrary decision. Not so Gilchrist.
His first class debut was in 1992 and his first ODI (One Day International) debut followed four years later, with his Test debut in 99. He has played for his home nation in 96 test matches and getting on for 300 ODIs. In both forms he was Australia’s Vice-captain and captained the team when the regular captains were unavailable.
Here is Adam Gilchrist smashing a century in 57 balls in the Ashes 3rd test. He is the second fastest behind Viv Richards.
Although he has now retired from International cricket he still plays for the Indian Premier League with the Deccan Chargers. He was made captain in 2009 and led the team to the Twenty20 title in the same year.
It was his style of attack batting that was key to Australia’s ODI successes when he was a member of the team, and as such it was Gilchrist who invariably opened the batting. For a wicket keeper his batting average is more than reasonable – in the upper 40s in tests with a Test strike rate of 82 runs for every 100 balls and he is renowned for batting shots to every area of the field in a dynamic and consistent manner.
Outside of the sport Gilchrist serves as an ambassador for the World Vision charity in India – a country in which he is immensely popular.
Once upon a time there was a little boy who was afraid of water. His father, concerned that this hydrophobia might impact on to other aspects of his son’s life insisted that he went to the local swimming pool and learned how to swim. The rest is history. The frightened little boy grew up to be Alexander Popov, widely recognized to be one of the greatest sprint freestyle swimmers of all time. As such he makes it in at number 94 on our list of the world’s 100 greatest sports stars ever.
The fateful day with the pool happened in 1979 when Popov was eight years old. He started out by becoming expert at the backstroke and stuck with it till 1990 when he became part of Gennadi Touretski’s squad, urged on by the then Head Coach of the USSR National Team Glep Petrov. Standing high at two meters, Popov was always going to be a formidable opponent but it was this change of event that was to prove his making. If you prefer visual facts, try this video.
The change to freestyle paid dividends sooner than the young Popov expected. He won the gold medal in both the 50 and 100m freestyle in the Barcelona Summer Olympics of 1992. The following Olympics in 1996 at Atlanta saw him repeat those victories. This was quite a big deal as he was the first person to do so since Johnny Weissmuller (who played Tarzan in the movies) did so in the 1920s.
The victory celebrations were to be short lived however. After returning to Moscow from Atlanta he was stabbed in the abdomen in a street dispute. He was lucky to live – the knife went right through an artery, skimmed a kidney and even damaged the pleura (the membrane encasing the lungs). He had to spend three months recovering from this but was back to form the following year when in the 1997 European Championships he defended both titles – and kept them. Here are some facts about his style.
Barcelona proved to be a special place for Alexander Popov. Returning for the 2003 Barcelona World Championships he again dominated the freestyle events winning both the 50 and 100m – again.
The Athens Summer Olympics of 2004 proved to be a turning point. By this time he was thirty two and this is past peak age for a world class swimmer. He was the oldest competitor in the pool for his events and failed to make it in to the finals of either the 50 or 100m freestyle.
Yet all was not lost – like many an athlete Popov had made plans for when his time ran out as a competitor.
He was elected to the International Olympic Committee as a full member in 1999 and he also is the athlete’s representative on the IOC Sport for All Commission. This was by direct election so you can imagine the esteem in which Popov is held by his colleagues.
In the UK they have OBEs and Knighthoods. Being Russian, Popov was honored by his own country in 1996 when he received the Russian Medal of Honor.
The same year he was also declared the Russian Athlete of the Year and European Sports Press Union Athlete of the Year.
As a record holder he held a title for 10 years – the long course men’s 50 meter freestyle which he gained in 1998. It was 21.64 seconds and was only beaten by 0.08 by Australia’s Eamon Sullivan.
He made an appearance at the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics presenting flowers to volunteers. However, he has no plans to stay away from sports.
He has already been named as one of the Evaluation Commission for the 2016 Summer Olympics which will be held in Rio, Brazil.
So, there is number 94 on our list of the 100 Greatest sports stars of all time. Keep coming back to World in Sport for more!
Aleksandr Vladimirovich Popov, Alexander Popov, Александр Владимирович Попов
The lady whose graceful postered form plastered the bedroom walls of many a teenage boy back in the 1970s, Chris Evert is a former World Number 1 tennis player. From the US, she won an incredible eighteen Grand Slam singles championships. She holds a number of records, too - six wins at the US Open and a Magnificent Seven at the French Open. She was the world number one in at least five years (75 -- 77, 80-81) and according to some people she should have that title for 74 and 78 in to the bargain. As such, she makes number 97 on our list of the 100 Greatest Sports Stars - Ever!
Young Christine Marie (later to be called Chris) was born on December 21 1954 and comes from notable tennis lineage. Her father was Jimmy Evert who by the time Chris was born was a professional tennis coach but who had won the Men's Singles at the Canadian Championships in 1947.
It was inevitable that Chris would chose tennis, then - drag racing was hardly going to be an option in the Evert family home!
In 1971 she made her Grand Slam tournament debut at the ripe old age of 16 - after she had won the national sixteen-and-under tournament.
It was a walk in the park at first - straight sets over Edda Buding. However, she then had a much harder task against the more experienced Mary Ann Eisel and Leslie Hunt. However, she lost out to the then indestructible Billie Jean King. This meant an end to a fantastic 46 match winning streak but she was playing with the big girls now.
1974 was a good year when she won her first Grand Slam singles title (beating her previous winning streak with a remarkable 56 matches unbeaten. As much focus was placed at the time on her relationship with fellow tennis professional Jimmy Connor as her victory - although this particular love match would prove to be a short live one.
She played with him in the mixed doubles finals that year but as her career progresssed Evert spent more time concentrating on her singles career.
Chris Evert wins the 1980 US Claycourt Championships.
Evert dominated the women's game for the next five years, defeating the likes of Evonne Goolagong enough times to secure her place in the annals of tennis as the best female player of that era. She was a very cool player - receiving an ice maiden reputation, but then someone came along who would challenge her composure.
Although good friends off the court it was Martina Navratilova who would prove to be Evert's on court nemesis. Their rivalry on the tennis court would become the stuff of sporting legend and while Evert bested Navratilova (seen together left) during their early encounters, Navratilova would ultimately prove the superior player in the 1980s.
Evert was a great player on all surfaces but it was on clay where she was most at home. From August 1973 she won an unbeaten 125 consecutive matches on clay - and only lost seven sets. This remains to this day a record. Incidentally, this streak was broken by Tracey Austin at the Italian Open in 79. She then went on to win a further 72 matches on clay before Hana Mandlikova beat her in the 81 French Open.
In one of their all-time greatest barn-burners, Chris & Martina went to 7-6 in the 3rd set in the '87 Houston final.
Chris Evert retired from professional tennis in 1989. After all, 157 singles titles was not a bad amount on which to leave - neither were her eight doubles titles.
Even her semi-finals history is staggering - out of the 303 tournaments she entered she got through to the semis in no less than 273 of them.
All in all, Evert won at a minimum of one Grand Slam singles title each year for thirteen consecutive years.
What is Chris Evert doing now? She is currently operating a tennis academy (which bears her name) in the town of Boca Raton in Florida. She also contributes to Tennis magazine.
A tennis legend, she will continue to be one of the role models that young players look up to for many decades to come.
Nicknamed the Thorpedo or Thorpey, Ian Thorpe, the Australian freestyle swimmer, comes in at number 99 on our list of the top 100 greatest sports stars ever. All told he won five Olympic gold medals which is a record for an Australian and he was also the first person ever to win six gold medal in a single World Championship. His results are staggering, 11 World Championship golds (the second highest ever by a swimmer). The pool was his natural home and as well as being made Australian Swimmer of the Year for four years in a row he was also given the title of Young Australian of the Year in 2000.
He started young, too, first representing his country at the tender age of 14. Plus he was the youngest individual World Chamion when he won the 400 meter freestyle in 1998 (when he was 16). From that point there was no stopping the boy wonder and he dominated the 400 meters until his break after the Olympics of 2004.
He had 13 individual long course world records to his name and with teammates five relay world records, When he won the bronze in Athens for the 100m freestyle it made him the only man to have ever won medals in the 1-2-4 hundred meter combination. It is unlikely that this track record will be beaten any time soon.
In this video, Thorpe shows the five major strokes important to success in the freestyle event.
Sri Lankan spin-king cricketer Muttiah Muralitharan bowed of internation test cricket today, breaking the World Record of wickets taken. Muralitharan reached the milestone of 800 wickets. the 38 year old went into final day of his last test facing India, needing two wickets to reach the milestone.
Harbhajan Singh was first of the day of Muralitharan leaving the Sri Lankan on 799 wicked, but later Mahela Jayawardene had edged to slip sparking wild celebrations around the ground, with fireworks going off as Murali reached the 800 milestone of wicket-taking.
