Sport – A word in your ear

I don’t look good in Lycra. I’m too thin; my stomach too round. I look like a snake choking on a tennis ball. Even the changing room mirror is embarrassed for me.

Drawing back the curtain I step out into the Brussels bicycle shop where Arthur Destree is waiting for me. Tanned and fit, Arthur looks perfectly happy in this outfit. He’s Belgian, and a professional bike rider. He probably wore Lycra nappies as a baby.

He’s to be my guide as I undertake the most ridiculous assignment of my professional travellingl life: I’m going to spend the next week riding across Belgium. Yes, all of it.

This will end badly, mark my words.

Continue reading “Bicycling across (all of) Belgium” →

Three tired punches before the bell rings, leather gloves glancing off sweat-slick skin. The crowd jeers as “Mighty” Mervin Hale staggers back to his corner, trailing sweat and blood, wishing it was over. Wishing he was already lying on the mat.

He drops onto the stool, bodies crowding him with sponges, tape, advice, ice. A flashbulb pops, a reporter tossing questions through the ropes. Hale’s cutman jumps down from the ring, pushing the reporter backwards – the two of them scuffling until they’re pulled apart. The cutman isn’t normally so hot-headed but there’s 20,000 people in The Garden tonight, and the air’s greasy with violence.

It stains everybody.

Continue reading “The boxer” →