Grassmarket

Great point made here. At all these huge mega-events hosted by politicians and celebrities in the US, the guests are free not to wear masks. Yet for the poor serfs who surround them, it is compulsory, no doubt on pain of being fired and not being paid. And yet not one of any of the wealthy leftists who so love lecturing the rest of us about social justice ever complain about this Marie Antoinette-level hypocrisy. https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-masking-of-the-servant-class

Last big European track meet of the year is Zagreb tomorrow night - there's a special shot event tonight as well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9hTtUSA-Wc

teams for World Championships Elite Women’s Road RaceLizzie Deignan, Anna Shackley, Alice Barnes, Anna Henderson, Pfeiffer Georgi and Joss Lowden.Elite Women’s Time TrialJoss Lowden and Pfeiffer GeorgiMen’s Elite Road RaceTom Pidcock, Luke Rowe, Fred Wright, Jake Stewart, Connor Swift, Ben Swift, Mark Cavendish and Ethan HayterMen’s Elite Time TrialEthan Hayter and Dan Bigham And full teams for all the other races also. https://www.britishcycling.org.uk/about/article/Great-Britain-Cycling-Team-Announced-for-the-UCI-Road-World-Championships

Thrilling finish to the ToB as van Aert wins the final sprint and gets the bonus seconds he needs for the overall as well.

Hopefully Emma will now have enough money to buy a second dress.

Great moment! Little boy about 11 years rides a small climb on the pavement alongside the pros in the breakaway group, beats them to the top! Pascal Eenkhorn gives him his bottle!

World class cycling comes to my home town! So naturally I am sitting in a chair watching it on TV. Tour of Britain rolling into suburban Edinburgh, going to be a breakaway win.

Cyclo-Cross season starts today with Race 1 of the Ethias Cross series from Lokeren, Belgium. Men & Women’s races live on the ES Player this afternoon. Obviously, most of the biggest names are busy elsewhere…

BBC has live coverage, which I think is otherwise on the FEI’s pay-tv system https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/live/equestrian/58262817

Got £10 on that at 80-1, thanks for the tip.

Easy enough: just let transgenders & DSDs compete freely. You'll see records tumble every week.

Not quite the end of the season yet, but that was a great end to the DL.

Mboma is going to kill women’s 200m running.

I do think the reason why performances were down post-Tokyo is that people were targeting this meet. We’ve seen huge competition in practically every event. Think Femke Bol must have easily won whatever prize there is for most MRs in the course of the season.

Thompson-Herah another one glad to get an auto-qual; Jamaican sprint trials can also be tough if you’re on a bad day.

Americans have a huge incentive to go for the win here - automatic pre-qual to a home World Champs. It’s so difficult to peak twice in six weeks. Siderova joins Isinbayeva & Morris as the only 5.00 female PVers

Good news is that there are three professional football teams here in Edinburgh, so I am sure we will be able to find work for all these desperate & penniless refugees. Also, lots of bars are short-staffed post COVID, and our haidressers stand ready to give them modern haircuts. We will take care of these unfortunate people! https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/sportsnews/article-9972423/Plane-carrying-German-national-football-team-declares-mid-air-emergency.html#comments

See, it’s not just us. Karsten Warholm is also suffering a post-Olympic morale slump. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/58493871

Well, only gets a decent woman’s tennis player once every 50 years or so, so I guess we were due.

Lasitskene 2.05 for a WL!

Don’t think anyone can get their heads round this 5000m track: just going to wait for the bell & race it out, I reckon. There is surely no way these shot performances should be valid for record purposes because they are throwing from an elevated platform. Niyonsaba wins that pretty easily. We can look forward to seeing her at the Worlds in Oregon.

Alternatively you’ve got an exotic mixed team time trial relay in the European Championships at Trentino. Organisers have missed a trick to create drama by putting the nailed-on-certainty-to-smash-everyone team of in the first wave.

Queen stage in the ToB today, a long day in mountains (ie gently rolling hills) or North Wales. Wout van Aert was the pre-race favourite but at the moment is behind in-form Ethan Hayter & Ineos.

Like everyone else I have been either not watching so much sport, or watching non-Olympic sport, or trying to watch too much sport & having to watch on delay & fast forward. There's the natural break coming up from mid-September to mid-November, so will be getting back into a normal sequence at about Levi slalom time.

Two day Diamond League final coming up starting tonight and continuing tomorrow. Tonight's events are on a special city-centre facility for the field events and the two 5000m races, which won't be official counted for records. Tomorrow's events are a throw-back to the old "Olympics in a Night" three hour format of the classic 1980s Zurich meets at the Letzigrunde stadium. The good news is that the stupid and hated "best of one attempt" format for the field events will NOT be used. Here's the full schedule. https://zurich.diamondleague.com/en/programme-results-zurich/