Sports Poets Society

http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/the-snow-hit-paris-roubaix-of-1994/ Procycling’s contributing editor Peter Cossins remembers an epic edition By Peter Cossins April 07, 2016 11:26am Updated: April 07, 2016 11:26am Race: Paris-Roubaix Looking back, I wonder whether I put some kind of hex on Johan Museeuw . The weekend prior to reporting on my first Paris-Roubaix , I’d covered the Tour of Flanders for the first time. I’d bagged a ride there with Belgian journalist Noel Truyers in a car driven by Paul Wellens, whose illustrious palmarès featured a sixth place finish in the 1978 Tour de France. I had absolutely no idea who Wellens was and, in fact, barely knew where I was, as he guided the car through a warren of tiny lanes heaving with boisterous fans. But at the finish I gained an illuminating insight into what the race meant to those fans as Gianni Bugno beat Museeuw by a tyre’s width, the Italian’s success completing puncturing the festive atmosphere. Sitting on...

http://www.cyclingnews.com/paris-roubaix/preview/ By Patrick Fletcher April 07, 2016 5:30am Updated: April 07, 2016 8:05am  Race: Paris-Roubaix The Ardennes may await later in April, but across the Franco-Belgian border, Paris-Roubaix  brings the curtain down on the spring's cobbled Classics on Sunday. It's one of the oldest, perhaps the most prestigious, probably the most iconic, of the lot. From the merciless sectors of pavé that cut through the bleak, war-torn landscape of France's Nord département, to the finish on the concrete banks of the Roubaix velodrome , the dirt-encrusted faces of the riders, and the post-race open shower block where that grime is washed away; it is a race replete with idiosyncrasies. Now in its 114th edition, the race was first held back in 1896 , stopping for both world wars , and it was due to devastation wreaked by the first of those wars that the moniker ' The Hell of the North ' was born. Thanks to the self-...

http://www.marca.com/futbol/barcelona/2016/03/25/56f49fec22601d26498b4647.html Johan Cruyff reinventó este deporte Es imposible imaginar alguien más influyente en la historia del fútbol que Johan Cruyff Santiago Segurola Es casi imposible imaginar una figura más trascendente en el fútbol que Johan Cruyff, cuyo legado comienza en un país norteño, sin tradición futbolística, y se extiende 50 años después por todo el mundo, y principalmente en el Barça y sus alrededores, que no son otros que la Liga y la selección española.  Su muerte priva al juego de una mente privilegiada y oblicua, transgresora y brillante, astuta y orgullosa. Se va mucho más que un hombre que hizo historia como jugador en los 70, antes de recorrer un ciclo casi idéntico como entrenador. Abandonó los banquillos en 1996, a los 49 años, una edad temprana, pero su huella era indisimulable, especialmente en el Barça, el equipo que aún hoy levanta con orgullo la bandera cruyffiana. Y con razón....