Thursday 18 March 2010

I decided to tune in to Jonathan Ross last week due to the presence on the show of Amy Williams, the solitary gold medal winner from this country in the Winter Olympics recently held in Vancouver. I, like many millions around the country, had never heard of Williams until her astonishing success in the skeleton event that led to her achieving her lifelong Olympic dream.
I wanted to know more about Amy Williams and what she was like as a person and she seemed like an athlete completely unaffected by her extraordinary success. She seemed humble and somewhat overwhelmed by the fame and adulation that has quickly become part of her life.
It is so refreshing in this age of overpaid, arrogant sportsmen to see a genuinely world class talent appear so normal, and in the case of Williams I think that this is unlikely to change. People like John Terry and Ashley Cole should take a long hard look at somebody like Amy Williams and adjust their behaviour to match accordingly.

Wednesday 17 March 2010

New F1 season starts with a whimper

So after all the hype surrounding the first Formula One race of the season it turned out to be a bit of a damp squib. Over taking seemed virtually impossible, apart from on the first lap of the race when Fernando Alonso took advantage of a sluggish start by team-mate Felipe Massa to get into second place behind Sebastien Vettel.
The only way teams seemed to be able to gain an advantage over each other was when they brought their drivers in to change their tyres, and the lack of excitement doesn’t bode well for the rest of the season.
For the two British drivers on the grid it was a weekend of contrasting fortunes as Lewis Hamilton dominated his team-mate to gain an unlikely place on the podium while Jenson Button trailed home in seventh place.
It was also a difficult weekend for Michael Schumacher who found himself out performed by his team mate Nico Rosberg, in qualifying and then in the race itself. He also made his feelings clear that he was unhappy with the new regulations regarding fuels and tyres that make the car more difficult to manage and therefore make overtaking all but impossible.
And despite claims that this year could see one of the most closely fought competition for many years I think it is clear that the two best drivers on the grid this year are Fernando Alonso at Ferrari and Sebastien Vettel in the Red Bull, and the winner of the World Championship will be the one who has the most reliability from their car.
As a fan of the sport we can only hope that the next 18 races of the season are going to be more exciting than the first.