I briefly served as goalkeeper, a role in which I displayed astonishing thespian, if not athletic, skills as I pretended to miss the ball by inches as it pelted toward me at breakneck speed.
Mostly, though, I just loitered about on the outskirts of the field with my best friend, gossiping away and admiring our imaginary nail varnish as the ball and the rest of the players went whizzing past. Never, then, in my wildest teen dreams did I expect that one day I would be gossiping away and having my nails done alongside one of the most admired and lauded soccer players in America.
Morgan is understandably dumbfounded by the pitiful trajectory of my soccer odyssey, with its pattern of resistance to the sexist norm. I confide in Morgan that I am being forced into the sport again now, for the first time since those early teenage mortifications. The assignment would be tolerable were it not for the childhood traumas keeping me awake at night. My friend Simon Doonan was able to provide further reassurance: He is currently writing a book about soccer through the lens of fashion and style, a project that I am at least half-interested in.
The ultimate football fashionisto, of course, is David Beckham, who practically minted the concept of the metrosexual male with his unquestioning embrace of fashion. As it happens, I recently found myself at an intimate Manhattan dinner party with Victoria Beckham and her husband, and I thought that I would seize the day and ask the glamorous soccer legend impeccable that night in Savile Row tweeds and elaborate tattoos what advice he might have for me.
David is a man of few words, but they are usually well chosen. They know better than most of the guys. Listen to them—and run fast!
Heeding his advice, I begin my odyssey by flying to Los Angeles to work with Dawn Scott, the revered trainer responsible for keeping the U. In the spirit of that person who does a spring clean before the housekeeper arrives, I book in for some pre-training sessions beforehand.
He has set up a floor ladder, cones, and a series of nets and goal posts under the shade of a spreading maple tree next to a pit in which a prehistoric sloth was once trapped, an ominous metaphor for my own speed if ever there was one. The athletes, based all around the country with their local teams when they are not training for the U.
Press does the movements with sleek balletic grace and a fifteen-pound weight held aloft as though it were a dandelion clock. Scott coolly assesses my form and hands me a shoe to work with instead. We follow up with trap-bar work, power cleans, dead lifts, squats, kettle bells, Bulgarian splits, down slides, mountain climbers, and box jumps. Like Yee, Morgan Pearson is a relative newcomer to triathlon, but the American certainly turned a few heads as he arrived onto the scene.
He grew up as a competitive swimmer and an impressive cross-country runner, and his talent in the latter has certainly carried over to tri. While only finishing 41st in the latter, he demonstrated his running power, with only five of the top six finishers running faster than his time of His time of was only beaten by fifth-place finisher and Brit Alex Yee.
While the three men above are supreme runners, a number of other athletes are also known for their ability on the 10k. Swiss supremo Nicola Spirig goes into these Olympics with the chance to become both the oldest Olympic triathlon champion and the most decorated. The mum-of-three won the Olympics at London and followed that up with a silver at Rio At the former, her run split of was the best in field, while her time of was the second best in Brazil.
She races sparingly on the world circuit these days, but has shown that she still very much has the legs with recent She also raced and won the World Triathlon Cup in Lisbon in May with the fastest run split of the day , beating both Vicky Holland and Summer Rappaport who herself is no slouch!
If she carries that form, along with her experience, into the Olympics, we could be set for a monumental battle in the final leg. In fact, it was her running prowess that saw her secure bronze at the Rio Olympics in , finishing just three seconds ahead of friend and fellow Brit Non Stanford and five seconds behind runner-up Nicola Spirig. For example, she won the sprint-distance Mooloolaba ITU Triathlon World Cup in March last year with a run time of , which was bettered by no one else that day.
Looking back further, her wins at World Triathlon races in Edmonton and Montreal in saw her post the best run splits of the race. She looked set for total domination back in after being crowned world champion in both and , winning gold at the Commonwealth Games in and then kicking off the race season with a win in Bermuda and Yokohama. Two of his goals were the direct result of his pace, as he nonchalantly streaked past Terry Phelan and the rest of the City defence with aplomb.
The man with the oddest shaped head in world football never really set the Old Trafford pitch alight with his talents. Obertan collected the ball from a Patrice Evra throw-in, drove at the Wolfsburg defence and then shimmied his way through, before laying the ball back for Michael Owen to score. Dunne played in every round as United progressed to the final, and he was tremendous as the Red Devils overcame Benfica at Wembley. Steve Coppell had a clever footballing brain too, which made him seem even faster, and he constantly marauded down the right flank for eight seasons until a horrendous knee injury forced him to retire.
This season, Patrice Evra has shot back into form with a series of terrific displays at left-back, whilst he has also added a goal-scoring element that had been missing from his game. Chelsea However, on his day, he can be as influential as any Red Devil, and his preposterous speed is uniquely coupled with a rolodex of tricks that has bamboozled many a defender.
Maybe the greatest player to ever play for Manchester United, George Best had everything you wanted in a footballer. Best was skillful, strong, composed and quick, and he deployed these attributes throughout his illustrious, but short, playing career.
There are numerous instances that involve all of these traits, but the most impressive came against Chelsea in , when the Northern Irishman escaped a dangerous tackle from Ron Harris, to round the keeper and then score.
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