Tennis and All That

Just about everyone is wading in on this year's doping cases in tennis. But there's no doubt that players are treated inconsistently and illogically. Tara Moore was banned for 19 months after eating contaminated meat in Columbia. She can't look that up on a website and see a 'don't eat this meat you'll fail a doping test' attached to the menu. Although the organisers knew about it but oh dear didn't quite inform the players soon enough. In which case it's the organisers fault and she shouldn't have been banned. Using common sense would help. I can understand Halep being rather annoyed because it's a parallel case with Swiatek. Both she and Swiatek take something which should be doping safe but has been cross contaminated and they fail a doping test. In both cases the amount is negligible so I don't see the need for banning players like this.  To ban a player due to a failed doping test should only happen when it's clear that the amoun...

According to Pink News, there's 5 gay women in the French Open providing us with LGBT+ representation in tennis. Click  here  to see their Facebook video of them. 🏳️‍🌈🎾 So, we have 5 sapphic women out of how many in the Grand Slam women's draw? There's 128 women in just the singles main draw alone!! But there are 240 singles players between the main draw and qualifiers. So the percentage is much worse than that because it's 4 out of 240 and 1 more, Demi Schuurs, from the doubles draw. The main draw is comprised of 104 women who, simply through their ranking, go straight to the main draw. The qualifying draw is also a draw of 128 players, 16 of whom won all their matches to become the qualifiers who go forwards to the main draw. Then there's 8 women who gain entry through gaining wild cards. That's called LGBT+ representation? 🤣  Yes, generically, it's LGBT+ representation 🏳️‍🌈, albeit miniscule, but they are only representing one category within the LG...

  Image from SMART-Servier Medical Art, Servier Laboratoires; freely reusable under Creative Commons Licence Here we have very nice diagrams of different levels of severity of ankle sprains: Top left: healthy Top right: grade 1 strain Bottom left: grade 2, depicting a partial tear of around 50%  Bottom right: grade 3: surgery level because the tear is 100%  Alcaraz stated that he was told that an MRI scan showed he has a grade 2 lateral ankle sprain.  Lateral means the outside of the ankle, near the ankle joint, as opposed to the ligaments on the inner side of the foot. These outside ligaments are vital for strength, stability, flexibility and mobility. Typically, the lateral ligaments sprain and tear more easily. As you can see in the chart, the lateral ankle ligaments are a combination of three connecting ligaments: posterior talofibular ligament (PTFL, top left of the three), anterior talofibular ligament (ATFL, top right of the three) and the calcaneofibular liga...

Today I read an article, which sensationalises some so-called fan comments that attacked Swiatek's analysis of her suprise loss to Kalinskaya. The article even repeats totally unacceptable, untrue, nasty comments made about Swiatek such as: she hates women. While it may be true that someone somewhere posted that comment, it doesn't mean that it's your job as a writer or journalist to amplify it, normalise it uncritically and potentially encourage others to read it and perhaps then see Swiatek in a different light, simply because you picked out that comment instead of the supportive ones I'm sure she would have also received from fans.  See  here  to read it.  I think Swiatek is right. It probably did have more to do with her than the opponent. We sometimes see a top 10 player suddenly lose to a much lower ranked player and we wonder why. The answer lies in 1) did someone other than their coach help them beat the top player by giving them certain tips 2) lower ranked ...