Jean-Paul Belmondo, the actor whose crooked nose and raffish grin served as signposts and emblems of the French New Wave, died on Monday at the age of 88 years old. Belmondo shot to fame in 1960 when cast as a petty crook in Jean-Luc Godard’s iconoclastic crime drama Breathless, and stood for several decades as one of the major stars of French cinema.
Belmondo was born in 1933 in the Parisian suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine, to parents who had met at the Beaux-Arts de Paris. His father Paul Belmondo was a Pied-Noir sculptor in the classical style, born in Algiers and possessing Sicilian and Piedmontese heritage. But though the young Jean-Paul was enrolled in some of the best schools, he proved an unruly pupil and turned his attentions to football and boxing.
After a brief flurry of knockout victories as an amateur boxer, Belmondo settled on a career in acting. He received private tutoring, studied for six months under the actor Raymond Girard, and was admitted to the Conservatoire National Supérieur d’Art Dramatique in 1952 at the third time of asking. But when he performed a farce by the playwright Georges Feydeau on his graduation from the conservatory, his louche style continued to vex his tutors, who halted his accession to the Comédie-Française. Belmondo was instead paraded about the stage on the shoulders of his fellow students.
He had already commenced a career on the stage, while on screen he appeared alongside Alain Delon in Be Beautiful But Shut Up and in Young Sinners by Marcel Carné, where he took the role of a gangster. But it was in Sunday Encounter, another comedy by the director Marc Allégret, that Belmondo drew the attention of Jean-Luc Godard, who was working on a treatment by his fellow critics François Truffaut and Claude Chabrol as he sought to embark on his first feature.
À bout de souffle, released as Breathless in the United States, made Belmondo an international star while defining the modes and tones of French New Wave cinema. Directors like Godard and Truffaut were inspired by the headlong pace and pulpy melodrama of popular Hollywood films and by the rough camerawork and earthy locales of Italian neorealism. They captured the cigarette smoke ambiance and cool ambivalence of film noir while adding more overt political and philosophical gestures, often within the frame of existentialism.
In Breathless, Godard and his cinematographer Raoul Coutard used handheld cameras and natural lighting for a stylised take on reportage, as they shot without permission on the streets of Paris. Dialogue was sometimes improvised on the spot, and jump cuts elided the ponderous boundaries between thought and action. With Belmondo still unknown outside of France, Godard cast Jean Seberg as his whirlwind muse and tormentor, fresh from her work with the acclaimed director Otto Preminger. In the role of the wanton criminal Michel, Belmondo bore a crooked charm and a self-reverential air of detachment.
Belmondo starred opposite Jeanne Moreau in the drama Moderato cantabile by Peter Brook, which won acclaim at Cannes but received a lukewarm reception from the public. He featured in Web of Passion by Claude Chabrol, in the gangster movie Consider All Risks, and opposite Claudia Cardinale in The Lovemakers. He was cast against type in the war film Two Women by Vittorio De Sica, where he played a bespectacled intellectual with communist sympathies, and as the title character in Léon Morin, Priest by Jean-Pierre Melville. And he reunited with Godard for the musical comedy A Woman Is a Woman, where he played alongside Anna Karina and Jean-Claude Brialy.
Still to international fans and some of his French admirers, Belmondo remained typecast as Michel from Breathless, uncouth and unkempt with a quickening glimmer. In a profile for The New York Times in 1965, the film critic Eugene Archer wrote:
‘Belmondo is a later manifestation of youthful rejection – and more disturbing. His disengagement from a society his parents made is total. He accepts corruption with a cynical smile, not even bothering to struggle. He is out entirely for himself, to get whatever he can, while he can. The Belmondo type is capable of anything.’
But while Belmondo exuded the raw physicality combined with a laconic air and hangdog expression which made him the French counterpart to Humphrey Bogart, Marlon Brando, and James Dean, he was also rakish and clowning, helping to establish the penchant for spy spoofs and popular comedies which persists to this day in the work of French stars like Jean Dujardin and Omar Sy.
Continuing to spurn the advances of Hollywood, Belmondo scored a smash hit with the swashbuckling adventure Cartouche, and followed up with the comedies A Monkey in Winter and Banana Peel. He was back with Melville in the noirish Le Doulos and Magnet of Doom, before his career took a turn with the action adventure tale That Man from Rio. One of the box office successes of the year in France, the spy spoof indulged Belmondo’s own taste for Tintin comic and detective novels, and he became increasingly fond of performing his own stunts. Scorning some of his earlier work, he said:
‘I really prefer making adventure movies like Rio to the intellectual movies of Alain Resnais or Alain Robbe-Grillet. But with Francois Truffaut, I’d be willing to try. I played in one – Moderato cantabile with Jeanne Moreau. Peter Brook directed. It was very boring. Like Antonini’s films, Marguerite Duras’s script was full of sous-entendres. Everyone was looking for something significant in every expression. You didn’t just drink a glass of wine. You asked yourself, “Why does she want me to drink it?”‘
More success came courtesy of Greed in the Sun and Weekend at Dunkirk by Henri Verneuil, while the crime escapade Backfire saw him reunite with Jean Seberg. The adventure comedy Up to His Ears began a dalliance with Ursula Andress. And with Godard he again won critical acclaim, as the unhappily married Ferdinand in Pierrot le Fou opposite Anna Karina. At the urging of Andress, Belmondo spent several months in the United States but remained reluctant to pursue a career in Hollywood. He returned to France, and ended the decade with The Brain, a comic smash which co-starred David Niven, and Mississippi Mermaid with François Truffaut and Catherine Deneuve.
At the beginning of the seventies, Belmondo starred alongside Alain Delon as a pair of gangsters in Borsalino. The film was successful in France, but the relationship between the actors broke down amid disputes over screen time and billing. Belmondo responded by establishing his own production company, which he called Cerito Films. Directed by Claude Chabrol, its first picture was the black comedy Dr. Popaul, in which Belmondo played an abusive husband opposite Mia Farrow hell-bent on vengeance. But Stavisky by Alain Resnais proved a souring experience, as the film faced legal action and was maligned by the critics.
In 1975, Belmondo for the first time took the role of a police detective in the action flick Fear Over the City. Performing many of his own stunts, including a rooftop chase as metro cars hurtled over the Bir-Hakeim bridge and a daring descent by helicopter, the film was a resounding success at the French box office. Now affectionately known as Bebel by the French public, over the next decade Belmondo scored hit after hit in the occasional comedy and like-minded police thrillers. But when the audience’s appetite waned, he made a belated return to the stage where he revelled in works by Jean-Paul Sartre and his favourite dramatist Georges Feydeau.
In 1990, he played the title role in Cyrano de Bergerac to scores of spectators in Paris. In 1995 he was briefly on screen in the Agnès Varda comedy One Hundred and One Nights and took the lead role in Claude Lelouch’s version of Les Misérables. Back in the swing, Belmondo played an ageing Don Juan in the comedy Désiré, while in Une chance sur deux he was once more opposite Alain Delon as Vanessa Paradis embarked on a quest to find her father.
In the autumn of 2001, Belmondo suffered a stroke, which was followed by a long period of rehabilitation. It was eight years before he was back on the big screen, in A Man and His Dog by Francis Huster. A remake of the classic Italian neorealist drama Umberto D. by Vittorio De Sica, Belmondo played a pensioner forced out onto the streets of Paris in what would prove his final film.
Jean-Paul Belmondo received the César Award for Best Actor in 1989, cast against type in Itinerary of a Spoiled Child as an old circus entrepreneur who goes on the run in Africa. But Belmondo refused to accept the award in person, citing an old feud between his father and the sculptor César Baldaccini while continuing to rankle the professors and critics. In 2007 he was promoted to commandeur in the Légion d’honneur, in 2011 he received the Palme d’honneur at Cannes, and in 2013 he was celebrated at the Lumière Film Festival in Lyon by an array of star names including Quentin Tarantino.
Belmondo also received the Order of Leopold from Belgium and an honorary Golden Lion from Venice as he settled into a life of retirement. In 2019 he was elevated to grand officier in the Légion d’honneur. Married twice and fathering four children, his death at his home on the Quai d’Orsay on Monday brought tributes from across the world of cinema and beyond, led by Alain Delon and the French president Emmanuel Macron.
Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, the charismatic producer and restless pioneer of dub music, died on Sunday at the age of 85 years old. In a career which spanned more than six decades, Perry worked alongside artists from Bob Marley, Junior Murvin, and the Congos to Beastie Boys and The Clash, expanding the sound palette of popular music and stretching the loping rhythms of Jamaica to fill every corner of the map.
Born in the northwestern town of Kendal to parents who were labourers, through his mother the young Rainford Hugh Perry could claim Yoruba ancestry, which manifested at the time in Ettu, an ode to ancestors in the form of a celebratory dance. Compelled to move to Kingston, by 1961 he was working for the sound system of the producer Coxsone Dodd, first as a record seller then as an engineer, producer, and talent scout.
Perry would produce almost thirty recordings for Studio One, including the theme song ‘Chicken Scratch’, before a dispute with Dodd led him to Joe Gibbs at Amalgamated Records. In early 1968 he released ‘I Am The Upsetter’, a complaint record aimed squarely at Dodd, and when he also fell out with Gibbs later that year, he formed his own record label called Upsetter Records. Perry soon scored his first hit, as ‘People Funny Boy’, sampling a crying baby and skewering his time with Gibbs, sold 60,000 copies on its first pressing in Jamaica.
Perry began to record with his studio band, which became known as the Upsetters. With a steady grounding in the walking basslines and offbeat rhythms of ska and rocksteady, having already made the acquaintance of bands like the Heptones and the Wailers, now Perry was well positioned to capitalise on the fledgling sounds of reggae. His first albums with the Upsetters also seized on the popularity of Spaghetti Westerns with titles like Return of Django and Clint Eastwood, while Perry encouraged Bob Marley to tackle spiritual and political themes as he produced the early Wailers albums Soul Rebels and Soul Revolution.
As Bob Marley and the Wailers embraced roots themes, the band also incorporated members of the Upsetters, with Aston and Carlton Barrett leaving to form a new rhythm section. In 1973, the next phase in the life of Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry commenced upon the construction of the Black Ark in the backyard of his home in the Washington Gardens neighbourhood of Kingston. Named after the Ark of the Covenant, utilising basic four-track recording equipment, the studio became the hub for Perry’s rapidly evolving blend of reggae, makeshift sound effects, and experimental electronics.
Perry applied thick swathes of echo and reverb after stripping down popular reggae recordings to harness the sound of dub, with its wobbling bass rhythms and cavernous atmospherics. He buried microphones at the base of palm trees to produce walloping drums, shot pistols and broke glass, and developed the spooky sound replete with ghastly wheezes and sighs which had made its first appearance on the Wailers record ‘Mr. Brown’. And with the aid of just a Mu-Tron Phasor and Roland Space Echo, he filled his four-track with multiple overdubs, a freeform kinescope of reggae riddims, tape hiss, and music and film samples. Of the Black Ark studio, Perry said:
‘The studio must be like a living thing, a life itself. The machine must be live and intelligent. Then I put my mind into the machine and the machine perform reality. Invisible thought waves – you put them into the machine by sending them through the controls and the knobs, or you jack it into the jack panel. The jack panel is the brain itself, so you got to patch up the brain and make the brain a living man, that the brain can take what you send into it and live.’
The seventies brought a slew of classic albums from Lee Perry and the Upsetters, including the Blackboard Jungle Dub mixed alongside King Tubby, Revolution Dub, and Super Ape. In 1976 he produced the smash single ‘Police and Thieves’ by Junior Murvin, which was swiftly covered by The Clash in a style they called punk reggae. Together with War Ina Babylon by Max Romeo and Party Time by the Heptones, the album Police and Thieves by Murvin is often considered part of the ‘holy trinity’ of Perry’s production work at Black Ark in the mid-seventies.
But a distribution deal with Island Records proved short-lived, as external pressures and excessive alcohol and marijuana consumption took a toll on his health. By 1983, the Black Ark studio had burned to the ground, with Perry claiming responsibility for excising unholy spirits as the artist showed his penchant for mythmaking. Perry subsequently moved to London, and in 1989 he married the record store owner Mireille Rüegg, with the couple basing themselves for the next thirty years in Switzerland.
In the late eighties, Perry featured on the song ‘Dr. Lee, PhD’ as Beastie Boys paid tribute to one of their idols. He began a series of fruitful collaborations with Mad Professor, and his music remained in the spotlight as he was sampled by hip hop artists and the burgeoning field of electronica. In 2003 he received the Grammy Award for Best Reggae Album for Jamaican E.T., and by the end of the decade he had settled in alongside stars young and old, as he released albums with Andrew W.K., George Clinton, and Keith Richards. The Rolling Stones guitarist described him as ‘the Salvador Dalí of music. He’s a mystery. The world is his instrument. You just have to listen’.
The staggered rhythms and deep chasms of space conjured by his music echoed his cosmic aura and celestial pronouncements, as Perry cut a figure in robes and prints, bedazzled jewellery, neon-dyed hair and richly emblazoned hats. One of the most revered and inimitable producers on wax, there is scarcely a genre of music which his style has not touched, as his early recordings helped to lay the foundations for hip hop, dancehall, and contemporary R&B while instigating the course of techno, trip hop, and so many other off-kilter movements in dance and electronics.
In 2011, the documentary feature The Upsetter: The Life and Music of Lee Scratch Perry was released, with narration by Benicio Del Toro. There were collaborations with Bill Laswell and The Orb, and Perry began to exhibit his art in the form of sculptures, collages, and scrawls of text at galleries from California and New York to Zurich and Schaffhausen. In the meantime his music reached a new generation of fans through the radio stations of the video game Grand Theft Auto.
Anniversary tours and album reissues did nothing to halt the steady flow of new music. His death in the coastal town of Lucea in northern Jamaica was announced by local media, with the prime minister Andrew Holness sending his condolences as colleagues and admirers lined up to pay tribute.
Hard on the heels of an historic Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, the stars of track and field headed over to Europe as the Diamond League season races towards a climax. The newly renovated Hayward Field saw a slew of world leads and meeting records, with Elaine Thompson Herah, Athing Mu, and Norah Jeruto winning some of the fastest races of all-time. Anticipation remained high then as world athletics swung into the Olympic capital of Lausanne, followed less than 48 hours later by the French capital of Paris.
These days every race is a classic in the women’s 100 metres, as Thompson Herah and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce continue to forge the greatest rivalry in the history of women’s sprinting. With two Olympic and four World Championship gold medals to her name, Fraser-Pryce still stands tall despite her diminutive height as the greatest ever female sprinter, an accolade increasingly under threat as Thompson Herah enjoys a record-breaking season.
In Tokyo it was Thompson Herah who rounded into form at just the right time, scoring an unprecedented double-double by retaining her Olympic titles over both 100 and 200 metres. Her time of 10.61 in the final of the 100 metres was the second-fastest on record, leaving Fraser-Pryce trailing for silver. Then on Saturday in Eugene, Thompson Herah went faster still, as her time of 10.54 closed the gap on the controversial world record set back in 1988 by Florence Griffith-Joyner.
The rivalry between the two Jamaican athletes never shows through hostility or impropriety out on the track, where Fraser-Pryce is always full of smiles and the pair indulge in the customary post-race congratulations no matter the winner. But if familiarity has not quite bred contempt, the close proximity of Jamaican sprinting leaves little room for personal differences, with Fraser-Pryce moving on from the illustrious MVP Track Club while her former coach Stephen Francis has been credited for providing Thompson Herah with her newfound vigour.
While the backstory only adds to the drama, the differences extend to their explosive performances out on track, where Fraser-Pryce tends to be quicker out of the starting blocks while Thompson Herah holds her form better in the latter part of the race. In Lausanne, Thompson Herah was unable to make up the difference, as Fraser-Pryce held on to claim a memorable victory. Her mark of 10.60 was the third-fastest of all-time, bettering her previous best of 10.63 which she set earlier this year ahead of the Jamaican trials in Kingston.
That time was all the more impressive owing to the wind which swept across La Pontaise in Lausanne. In the 400 metre hurdles, the Olympic bronze medalist Femke Bol still managed a meeting record as she finished ahead of Shamier Little in a time of 53.05. But the transatlantic journey and all the exertions of Tokyo and Eugene were causing some athletes to flag, as the Olympic silver medalist Dalilah Muhammad finished down in fourth position.
The 200 metres featured Olympic medalists from three separate disciplines, as the 200 metre silver medalist Kenny Bednarek prevailed over the 100 metre silver medalist Fred Kerley and the new 400 metre champion Steven Gardiner. With a winning time of 19.65 and a second-placed finish of 19.77, both Bednarek and Kerley would have scored new personal bests if it wasn’t for an illegal tailwind.
Marileidy Paulino continued her run of form over 400 metres, while Wilbert London edged the men’s race ahead of Isaac Makwala as the hurdle champion Karsten Warholm languished in fourth. And in the 110 metre hurdles, Devon Allen recovered from an early knock to hold off the local favourite Jason Joseph and the leggy French athlete Pascal Martinot-Lagarde, at the end of a ragged race which saw the Olympic champion Hansle Parchment fall to last position.
In the middle distance events, Marco Arop led from the front to beat Emmanuel Kipkurui Korir and Ferguson Cheruiyot Rotich over 800 metres, before Jakob Ingebrigtsen held on despite a late challenge from the young Ethiopian Berihu Aregawi to win the 3000 metres in a season’s best time of 7:33.06. Over 1500 metres, Freweyni Gebreezibeher kicked past Linden Hall to take the victory.
As athletics seeks to broaden its reach by traipsing into shopping malls and city centres, the high jump event in the centre of Lausanne saw Ilya Ivanyuk return to winning ways, while Gianmarco Tamberi came fifth just weeks after his shared gold in Tokyo proved one of the highlights of the Summer Olympics. A few hours later inside La Pontaise, the gusting wind was playing havoc with some of the other field events.
A clean card from Christopher Nilsen gave the steadily improving American victory over Sam Kendricks in the pole vault, while Armand Duplantis struggled with his vertical clearance in the wind and finished in an almost implausibly low fourth position. Renaud and Valentin Lavillenie also made a hash of the tough conditions. Meanwhile the imperious Mariya Lasitskene managed to eke past Yaroslava Mahuchikh and Nicola McDermott at the end of a competitive high jump.
The athletes fared better in the vertical jumping events. Fresh off a world record performance in Tokyo, the Olympic champion Yulimar Rojas registered one of the best cards of all-time in the triple jump, stretching out twice beyond 15.50. The Venezuelan athlete is the only woman in history to have broken the mark, and she set a new meeting and Diamond League record in Lausanne, although her best jump on the night of 15.56 was aided by a hefty tailwind. In the long jump, Khaddi Sagnia set a new personal best of 6.92 in the third round, although a leap of 6.73 in the winner-takes-all sixth round was enough to secure victory for the always game Ivana Španović.
Johannes Vetter also bounced back after a disappointing result at the Tokyo Olympics. The German headed into the Games as the firm javelin favourite, with his throw of 97.76 last year falling perilously close to Jan Železný’s world record. Instead after qualifying with ease, two fouls in the Olympic final left Vetter down in ninth and out of the competition. In Lausanne he began making amends, with a leading throw of 88.54 and two more throws over 86 metres. No such trouble for Ryan Crouser, as the world record holder and Olympic champion continued to dominate with a meeting record of 22.81 in the shot put.
The 4 x 100 metre relay served as the traditional closer in Lausanne, this year with added lustre as the Swiss crowd waved off one of their own in Léa Sprunger. A European champion in the 400 metre hurdles, the multi-talented athlete is calling time on her solo career at 31 years old. A handpicked Team Léa finished fourth in the event, with Sprunger chasing home the Netherlands, Switzerland’s first team, and Great Britain as Daryll Neita surged past Salomé Kora for the finish.
Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce subsequently withdrew from the meet in Paris citing the steady buildup of fatigue, handing Elaine Thompson Herah free reign over 100 metres. In Lausanne, the top two had been hunted down by Shericka Jackson, Marie-Josée Ta Lou, Daryll Neita, and Ajla Del Ponte as six women raced under 11 seconds. The times weren’t quite as fast in Paris, but Thompson Herah still scored a meeting record of 10.72 with Jackson and Dina Asher-Smith doing enough in second and third to keep her honest.
Meanwhile Fred Kerley bettered his best over 200 metres, as the 400 metre convert continues to impress in his first full season over the shorter distances. At 19.79, he matched times with Kenny Bednarek but stuck out his chest to claim the narrowest margin of victory over his close friend and rival.
Fatigue was certainly setting in over the 400 metre hurdles. After pushing Femke Bol all the way over the course of the Diamond League season, finally it was Shamier Little’s time to shine, but the fifth-fastest woman on record looked entirely out of sorts as she finished in distant last place. Instead Gianna Woodruff held off Anna Ryzhykova and Janieve Russell to emerge as the surprise victor.
In the 100 metre hurdles, Danielle Williams set a season’s best time of 12.50, with Nadine Visser in second establishing a new Dutch national record. Over the 110 metre hurdles, Hansle Parchment bounced back to knock Devon Allen down into second as both men registered new season’s bests. Marileidy Paulino continued to dominate ahead of Sada Williams and Allyson Felix, as Femke Bol tried her hand over the 400 metres flat. And over 800 metres it was Wyclife Kinyamal who ended the winning run of Marco Arop, who finished third with Ferguson Cheruiyot Rotich in second place.
That left a couple of middle distance races, with Benjamin Kigen setting a new world lead with a time of 8:07.12 in the steeplechase, as the Kenyan athlete finished comfortably ahead of his compatriots Abraham Kibiwot and Leonard Bett. But the performance of the day belonged to Francine Niyonsaba, who was tested over 3000 metres before setting a new world lead, meeting record, and national record in a time of 8:19.08.
Forced to step up to the longer distances owing to rules around differences of sexual development, the Burundian can now boast the fifth-fastest time ever over the distance. Ejgayehu Taye finished just behind her in a new national record for Ethiopia, with Margaret Chelimo Kipkemboi, Elise Cranny, and Fantu Worku all setting new personal bests.
In the first field event of the day inside Stade Charléty in Paris, the high jumper Nicola McDermott scored a rare victory over Mariya Lasitskene on countback. The upbeat New Zealander keeps a journal alongside her training equipment, ranking herself out of ten after every jump. McDermott says that she never gives herself all tens, but there was little to fault as three first-time clearances left her ahead of the Olympic gold medalist, who also cleared a height of 1.98 after two unsuccessful attempts.
The conditions were calmer in Paris, and Armand Duplantis swiftly recovered from his poor showing in Lausanne, putting the field to bed with a clearance of 6.01 in the pole vault, before raising the bar to 6.19 as his own world record stays within sight. Anderson Peters toppled Johannes Vetter in the decisive round of the javelin, while Hugues Fabrice Zhango skipped past Yasser Triki in the triple jump. And a strong sixth round in the discus saw Yaimé Pérez and Valarie Allman improve on their best throws, only for Sandra Perkovic to cling on to the victory.
There are just two meets left of the Diamond League season, and both are short trips. World athletics travels to the King Baudouin Stadium in Brussels next Friday, before the grand climax of the calendar takes place the following weekend, over two days of stellar competition at the Weltklasse Zürich.
Charlie Watts, the backbone of the Rolling Stones for almost six decades on drums, died on Tuesday at the age of 80. Watts together with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are the only members of the Stones to have featured on all thirty of the band’s studio albums.
Raised in northwest London and affectionately known as the ‘Wembley Whammer’, the young Watts’s first love was jazz. After listening to records by Jelly Roll Morton, Thelonious Monk, and Charlie Parker, the teenage Watts deconstructed a banjo to sate his burgeoning interest in the drums. He recalled:
‘I bought a banjo, and I didn’t like the dots on the neck. So I took the neck off, and at the same time I heard a drummer called Chico Hamilton, who played with Gerry Mulligan, and I wanted to play like that, with brushes. I didn’t have a snare drum, so I put the banjo head on a stand.’
Watts received his first drum kit in 1955 and played along to his collection of jazz records, while in the meantime enrolling as a student at Harrow Art School. His professional career began as a graphic designer for an advertising agency, as he sat in on drums for the local bands who managed to score gigs at coffee shops and clubs. After playing in the jazz band Middlesex with his childhood friend and double bassist Dave Green, in 1961 Watts was invited by Alexis Korner to join Blues Incorporated, accepting the offer upon his return from a graphic design assignment in Denmark.
It was in 1962 that Watts first met the slide guitarist Brian Jones, the keyboardist Ian Stewart, the singer Mick Jagger, and the guitarist Keith Richards, who frequented the local rhythm and blues clubs and variously passed through the ranks of Blues Incorporated. With a career in design and a regular salary from his side job as a drummer, it was January 1963 before Watts was persuaded to join their fledgling band the Rolling Stones. His first performance as a regular member of the group came on 2 February at the Ealing Jazz Club.
From the steady beat and gentle swing of Gerry Mulligan and all those Pacific Jazz records to the enduring influences of Charles Mingus and Miles Davis, from the outset the supple drumming of Watts complemented the rest of the band as they embraced the Chicago blues then embarked on a transatlantic stomp across America.
And from the sinuous snare and steady kick of ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’ to the arabesque patterns of ‘Sympathy for the Devil’, or from the swagger of ‘Honky Tonk Women’ to the stuttering introduction to ‘Rocks Off’ as the group continued their run of chart-topping albums, Watts was the bedrock as the Rolling Stones became especially for a time in the late sixties and early seventies the greatest band in the world.
In the late seventies, Watts began his first proper foray outside of the band, joining back up with Alexis Korner and the original Stones keyboardist Ian Stewart to form the boogie woogie group Rocket 88. He toured widely as a big band jazz musician, and in the nineties formed the first of a series of jazz ensembles which grew to include the Charlie Watts Quintet, the Charlie Watts Tentet, and the Charlie Watts Orchestra. The Stones by this point were releasing new albums every three or four years, followed by record-grossing world tours.
Richards recalled ‘a rare moment, in late 1984, of Charlie throwing his drummer’s punch – a punch I’ve seen a couple of times and it’s lethal; it carries a lot of balance and timing. He has to be badly provoked’. The Stones were in Amsterdam and after a night on the town with Richards, an inebriated Mick Jagger opted to call Watts over the hotel phone. It was five in the morning and Jagger asked ‘Where’s my drummer?’ before hanging up. Twenty minutes had passed, and then:
‘There was Charlie Watts, Savile Row suit, perfectly dressed, tie, shaved, the whole fucking bit. I could smell the cologne! I opened the door and he didn’t even look at me, he walked straight past me, got hold of Mick and said, ‘Never call me your drummer again’. Then he hauled him up by the lapels of my jacket and gave him a right hook. Mick fell back onto a silver platter of smoked salmon on the table and began to slide towards the open window and the canal below.’
Otherwise Watts said that he ‘loved playing with Keith and the band’ but was never interested in ‘being a pop idol sitting there with girls screaming’. Describing the band’s heyday, he said ‘Back in the seventies, Bill Wyman and I decided to grow beards and the effort left us exhausted’, while in 1996 he told Rolling Stone magazine ‘I’ve drawn every bed I’ve slept in on tour since 1967. It’s a fantastic non-book’.
He added ‘I’ve always had this illusion of being in the Blue Note or Birdland with Charlie Parker in front of me’. Instead after a crash course in the blues stylings of Earl Phillips, staying true to a simple four-piece drum kit, Watts became one of the greatest drummers in the history of rock and roll. In Life, which was published in 2010, Keith Richards wrote ‘Charlie Watts has always been the bed that I lie on musically’, and as colleagues and admirers paid their respects there can be no greater tribute than that.
A brief descent into drug use and alcoholism tested Watts’s marriage in the mid-eighties, and despite having quit smoking by the end of the decade, in 2004 Watts was diagnosed with throat cancer which went into remission after a course of treatment.
Earlier this month, the Rolling Stones announced that Watts would be absent upon the resumption of the No Filter Tour, scheduled to resume across the United States in September. Watts had recently undergone an unspecified medical procedure, which representatives described as a success. His death on Tuesday was announced by his publicist, with Watts leaving behind his wife Shirley, their daughter Seraphina, and a granddaughter named Charlotte.
After the highs and lows of the Tokyo Olympics, postponed by one year and transpiring in the midst of a global pandemic, the remainder of the athletics season could have easily petered out. Instead precisely two weeks on from the Summer Games, the Prefontaine Classic in Eugene played host to one of the all-time great track and field meets.
The short interval has not been kind to men’s sprinting, with the surprise 100 metre champion Lamont Marcell Jacobs ruling himself out until next season, while the relay silver medalist CJ Ujah has been provisionally suspended owing to a failed drugs test. But in Tokyo the stars of the show were the women, and in Eugene it was Elaine Thompson Herah who once more came out ahead.
Nobody commands the Olympic stage quite like Thompson Herah, who in Tokyo completed an unprecedented double-double by once more securing gold over 100 and 200 metres. Her winning time in the 100 metres of 10.61 was the second-fastest in history, only behind Florence Griffith-Joyner but crucially ahead of her major contemporary rival Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce.
The Tokyo Olympics then served to whet the appetite for the Prefontaine Classic, which boasted a stronger field owing to the return of Sha’Carri Richardson. It was Richardson who set the pace back at the start of the season, with her time of 10.72 in Florida making her the sixth-fastest woman in history, before a marijuana violation during the course of the American trials resulted in a customary one-month ban from the sport. In the meantime Fraser-Pryce ran 10.63 in Kingston, and headed into Tokyo as the favourite even as Thompson Herah rounded into form.
The women’s 100 metre race in Eugene lived up to its billing as a bona fide classic. Just like in Tokyo, it was Thompson Herah who spearheaded a Jamaican top three. Her time of 10.54 smashed the mark which she set in Tokyo, for the first time in more than thirty years bringing Griffith-Joyner’s controversial world record within sight. Fraser-Pryce finished second, with Shericka Jackson and Teahna Daniels scoring new personal bests as four women went well under 10.90. That left world class athletes like Marie-Josée Ta Lou and Mujinga Kambundji languishing despite their fast times, with Sha’Carri Richardson on her return to the track disappointed to finish in last place.
In Eugene the men also stepped up to the plate. With the exception of the reliable South African Akani Simbine, it was a North American affair in the sprints. Over 100 metres, Canada’s Andre De Grasse held off the challenge of the 400 metre convert Fred Kerley, with Ronnie Baker coming through for third place. The winning time of 9.74 would have entered the history books if it wasn’t for a strong tailwind.
In the men’s 200 metres, Noah Lyles revelled in a return to form after a challenging Olympic campaign left him with a bronze medal. His time of 19.52 in Eugene was a world lead and reiterated his standing as the fourth-fastest runner in history. With Kenny Bednarek in second, it was celebrations all round for the Lyles family as Noah’s younger brother Josephus pushed years of injury to one side to finish third in a personal best of 20.03. In the women’s race, Mujinga Kambundji pulled double duty to come out ahead of Gabrielle Thomas and Dina Asher-Smith.
History was also being made in the middle distance events, especially in the 800 metres where the fresh-faced Olympic champion Athing Mu ran away from the field. Tying up towards the finish line, Mu looked a tad disappointed even as a time of 1:55.04 gave her a fourth personal best of the season, a meeting record, national record, and world lead while making her the eighth fastest woman ever over the distance.
In Tokyo the 1500 metre great Faith Kipyegon had to share some of the spotlight with Laura Muir and Sifan Hassan, who won memorable silver and bronze medals even as Kipyegon raced away to retain her Olympic title. In Eugene the Kenyan athlete was in a league of her own, finishing far ahead of the field to set a new meeting record. Hassan opted instead to race over 5000 metres, setting a new season’s best on distance night in Eugene.
Distance night, which took place on Friday evening, also featured the seldom competed two mile race. In the women’s event Francine Niyonsaba decimated an elite field. A silver medalist over 800 metres at the Rio Olympics, the Burundian has been barred from competing over the middle distance events owing to her naturally elevated level of testosterone. In a week where testosterone levels and intersex conditions were again making headlines within the sport, Niyonsaba stepped up to the longer distance and beat two of the all-time greats in Letesenbet Gidey and Hellen Obiri, narrowly missing out on a world record.
In the men’s race, Joshua Cheptegei held his form to earn a measure of revenge over Selemon Barega, who won the 10,000 metre title in Tokyo to deny Cheptegi an historic double. In fact the two mile men’s race produced a rare photo finish, with Barega just managing to hold on ahead of Paul Chelimo for second place.
The big story in men’s middle distance racing this season has been the emergence of Jakob Ingebrigtsen on the world stage. But as the young Dane has kicked on and started to fulfill some of his tremendous potential, the subtext has been the subdued form of Timothy Cheruiyot. After struggling to make the Kenyan team, Cheruiyot still headed into Tokyo with a pristine record against his Danish opponent, but at the eleventh time of asking it was Ingebrigtsen who came out ahead. Gold in the final of the 1500 metres was accompanied by new European and Olympic records.
On Saturday at the newly renovated Hayward Field, it was Ingebrigtsen and Cheruiyot leading the lineup for the Bowerman Mile, named after the legendary Oregon coach and Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman. Eschewing the expected runoff between the top two names in the event, instead the Australian Stewart McSweyn led from the front, as he and Ingebrigtsen left the rest of the field trailing. Inevitably Ingebrigtsen kicked on over the last lap to take the race, with McSweyn in second and Cheruiyot winning the scrap for third.
In the men’s 800 metres, Marco Arop beat out some of the longest names in the sport, as the Canadian prevailed over Ferguson Cheruiyot Rotich and Emmanuel Kipkurui Korir. In the women’s steeplechase, Norah Jeruto kept the records coming at the head of one of the fastest races in history. Steadily pulling away from the pack, her winning mark of 8:53.65 was the third-fastest of all time, with Courtney Frerichs also smashing nine minutes to establish a new North American area record. And in the 400 metre hurdles, Dalilah Muhammad scored a meeting record as the silver medalist from Tokyo remains in fine fettle.
The competition was less fierce in some of the field events, with visa issues and a slight crosswind serving to thin out the vertical jumping. Katie Nageotte still managed to cement her status as the best in the world in the women’s pole vault, while anyone still feeling put out by the show of friendship between Mutaz Barshim and Gianmarco Tamberi in Tokyo had only to turn to the women’s high jump.
Eugene gave us a jump-off between Iryna Gerashchenko and Vashti Cunningham, who scaled 1.98 with the same number of failures before falling short at 2 metres. The Ukrainian and the American dropped back down through the heights, failing at 2.00, at 1.98, at 1.96, and even at 1.94 before both athletes made the jump at 1.92. Stepping back up to 1.94, it was Gerashchenko who cleared the bar to take the victory.
While Tokyo provided welcome respite, the dreaded sudden death format was back in the remainder of the field events. Rather than allowing everyone to compete over six rounds, the top three athletes over five rounds see their earlier scores scrapped, with their final sixth-round performances deciding the winning positions.
The absurdity of the format was laid bare repeatedly in Eugene. In the triple jump, Pedro Pichardo went beyond 17 metres in the first round, then sat out his next four jumps knowing he had already qualified for the decider. Pichardo still dominated the event, securing victory with a comfortable winning jump of 17.63.
In the shot put, the local favourite Ryan Crouser threw farther than his opponents on five consecutive occasions, but still faced the prospect of a stumble in the decider. His nearest challenger Joe Kovacs fouled out with his sixth-round throw, and Crouser managed to overcome Darlan Romani even with his second-shortest throw of the session. Oregon born and bred, victory on home soil completed a memorable summer for Crouser, who claimed gold in Tokyo after excelling at the American trials, where his throw of 23.37 bested a 31-year-old world record.
Nearly 9,000 fans attended the Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, inside Hayward Field which was substantially rebuilt before reopening in April. The sweeping curves and timber beams of the new grandstand can welcome a regular capacity of 12,650, expandable to almost 25,000 for major events as the stadium prepares to host the 2022 World Athletics Championships. In the meantime track and field heads to Lausanne for the next stop in the Diamond League season.
In a landmark report for the future of our planet, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on Monday issued a ‘code red for humanity’. Observing changes across every region of the planet on a scale unprecedented in many cases for thousands of years, the report states that humans are ‘unequivocally’ to blame for rising greenhouse gas emissions, which are responsible for 1.1°C of warming since 1850-1900 and are expected to result in 1.5°C of warming averaged over the next 20 years.
Such an outcome would exceed one of the goals set by the Paris climate agreement, which vowed to limit global warming to ‘well below’ 2°C above pre-industrial levels while pledging to ‘pursue efforts’ to limit the rise to 1.5°C. In its report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that some of the changes wrought to our planet are already impossible to reverse. Current levels of warming are twice as high in the Arctic, the Greenland ice sheet is likely to continue melting, while the oceans are heating at a rate not witnessed since the last ice age 11,000 years ago. Sea levels are therefore almost certain to rise for centuries to come.
But the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change also strikes a note of optimism, indicating that an immediate and sustained reduction in carbon dioxide emissions could still limit global warming to 1.5°C over the long haul. Strong action by local governments would swiftly improve the air quality, though global temperatures would take several decades to stabilise as pollutants dissipate from the atmosphere and temporarily lead to added warming from the sun.
This is the sixth report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change since 1990, with the last arriving in 2013. 234 authors from 66 countries drew from the evidence compiled in more than 14,000 scientific studies, before the report received approval at the end of a two-week virtual summit from all 195 members of the IPCC. The environment will be on the agenda in a major way in Glasgow in November, as the COP26 climate conference seeks to wring from national governments more ambitious targets and funding promises.
The rapper, DJ, and record producer Biz Markie died on Friday at the age of 57 years old. Rising to fame as a member of the Juice Crew as hip hop flicked at the boundaries of mainstream culture in the eighties, Markie was a larger-than-life character who established an enduring appeal through the success of his 1989 song ‘Just a Friend’.
Born Marcel Theo Hall in the Harlem neighbourhood of Manhattan, by his teens Markie had moved to Long Island where he began to make a name as a beatboxer and member of the Juice Crew. The Queensbridge collective was centred around the producer Marley Marl, who at the time was serving as the sound engineer and sidekick for Mr. Magic’s pioneering New York radio show Rap Attack.
The collective featured the diverse talents of MC Shan, Roxanne Shante, Kool G Rap & DJ Polo, and Big Daddy Kane, gaining popularity when the answer song ‘Roxanne’s Revenge’ became a breakout hit in late 1984. In contrast to the rapid-fire delivery of Kane and the gritty realism of Kool G Rap, Biz Markie stood out for his large frame and outsized personality, often the source of comic relief. He was interviewed in the 1986 cult documentary Big Fun in the Big Town, while Marley Marl began to produce the collective’s solo records for the new label Cold Chillin’.
‘My name Biz comes from the first hip hop tape I heard. It was 77, 78 from the L Brothers. Grand Wizard Theodore was the DJ, and the rappers was Kevvy Kev, Master Rob, and Busy Bee Starski. I loved Busy Bee. Busy Bee just stuck with me. My name used to be Bizzy B Markie, and after a while I put the Biz with the Markie. My nickname in my neighborhood was Markie.’
Biz Markie’s full-length debut arrived in early 1988. Co-written by his childhood friend Big Daddy Kane, Goin’ Off showcased Markie’s beatboxing talents on the track ‘Make the Music with Your Mouth, Biz’, while ‘Pickin’ Boogers’ stressed a penchant for childish comedy that sometimes bordered on the slapstick. With ‘Vapors’ on the other hand, Markie demonstrated his knack for narrative storytelling and ironic wordplay, in a song which interpolated James Brown and was covered by Snoop Dogg in 1997.
Produced by DJ Cool V and Paul C, the standout single ‘Just a Friend’ became one of the biggest crossover hits of the era, climbing to number nine on the Billboard Hot 100 and to five on the Hot Rap Singles chart. Constructed around a sample of the 1968 song ‘(You) Got What I Need’ by Freddie Scott, the track’s self-deprecatory lyrics offered an engaging chronicle of stalled or unrequited romance.
On the thirtieth anniversary of the record, Markie recalled inviting other artists to sing on the chorus, but when they failed to show up at the studio he was left to belt out the part. His strained delivery perfectly captured the theme of hapless courtship, while the accompanying music video – in which he adorned a powdered wig and played piano by candlelight – did much to add to the song’s innate charm.
I Need a Haircut in 1991 and All Samples Cleared! in 1993 were more moderately successful, as Markie poked fun at the litigation which ensued following the use of an unauthorised sample on the song ‘Alone Again’. Markie was sued by the Irish songwriter Gilbert O’Sullivan, with the resulting case setting a new precedent for the recording industry, requiring all samples to be cleared in advance. A couple of compilation albums still followed, before Markie’s final studio record Weekend Warrior was released in 2003.
Self-styling as ‘The Inhuman Orchestra’ at the start of his career, the success of ‘Just a Friend’ saw Markie increasingly embrace his title as the ‘Clown Prince of Hip Hop’. In the nineties he began to parlay his reputation into other forms of entertainment, making guest appearances on In Living Color before starring as an alien beatboxer opposite Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones in Men in Black II.
Markie continued to perform as a featuring artist, while contributing to compilation albums and television commercials. In 2002 he sang the hook as the R&B artist Mario revamped his famous single, with ‘Just a Friend 2002’ surpassing the original by peaking at number four on the Billboard chart. Markie then introduced himself to a new generation of fans through the live-action puppet series Yo Gabba Gabba! on Nickelodeon, where he hosted the regular segment ‘Biz’s Beat of the Day’.
Alongside the strawberries and cream, the all-white attire, and the royal box which provides sanctuary to celebrities and encrustations of the British upper class, one of the facets which makes Wimbledon special is the bearing of the venue as a private members’ club. The day-to-day running of the championships falls on the shoulders of the All England Lawn Tennis Club, with membership the preserve of several hundred lucky locals plus former tournament winners, who are invited to sign up.
Membership comes with special privileges: two tickets for each day of the championships, and the chance to rub shoulders with Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge, or former champions like Martina Navratilova, Pete Sampras, and Steffi Graf, or perhaps a Tim Henman or an Andy Roddick, who was made an honorary member back in 2014. Don’t count on bumping into John McEnroe however: the Wimbledon champion turned regular commentator might still hold a grudge, after he was denied membership despite winning the tournament in 1981 on the grounds of bad behaviour.
As Wimbledon made a welcome return in 2021, everyone was falling head over heels sometimes from more than excitement. On the second day of competition, the French veteran Adrian Mannarino was forced to retire as he threatened to score a major upset and the biggest win of his career, after slipping behind the baseline and injuring his right knee in the fourth set versus Roger Federer. Then in the very next match on Centre Court, already with heavy strapping around her right thigh, Serena Williams fell twice and retired midway through the first set, postponing once more her quest for a record-tying 24th Grand Slam title.
Rain was at least partly to blame, as the first day of Wimbledon had ended with a washout. The wet weather caused play to be delayed on the outside courts, while roofs were drawn over Centre Court and No. 1 Court. In inimitable fashion, the world number one Novak Djokovic began his campaign slipping and sliding about Centre Court, suffering an early scare versus the British prospect Jack Draper before prevailing comfortably in four sets.
While organisers defended the surface, citing the bad weather and the natural progression of any tournament on grass, Djokovic admitted that could not remember ‘falling this many times on court’. Following her first round defeat to Alizé Cornet, the fifth seed Bianca Andreescu complained ‘The courts are super slippery. I didn’t slip just once, I slipped like six times during the match’, while second seed Aryna Sabalenka suggested that players ‘stay lower’ to avoid losing their footing.
Andy Murray added to the chorus, even as the dauntless Scot made a winning return to Centre Court. Four years and two hip surgeries since his last appearance at Wimbledon, the former champion spurned two match points at 5-0 in the third set, losing seven games in a row before an enforced break as Centre Court turned on the floodlights. Murray then managed to regain his composure, finally brushing past Nikoloz Basilashvili 6-4, 6-3, 5-7, 6-3.
If fate was doling out some cruel hands, the first round of Wimbledon also showed the value of perseverance and wilfulness. Overcoming obstacles most of us would find difficult to mount, Carla Suárez Navarro pushed world number one Ash Barty to three sets after being diagnosed late last year with Hodgkin lymphoma, and Francesca Jones put in a strong showing versus Coco Gauff, despite the rare genetic condition Ectrodactyly Ectodermal Dysplasia which left her at birth with seven toes and eight fingers.
Meanwhile Roger Federer eased out of first gear up against a choice opponent in Richard Gasquet. The eight-time Wimbledon champion was playing in his fifth tournament following knee surgery, which resulted in more than a year away from the tour. After struggling in the first round against Mannarino, the Swiss made light work of the Frenchman, who possesses a splendid backhand but plays more like an amiable hitting partner than a genuine threat. As Federer revved the engines, Andy Murray sought to rekindle the flames in the second round, even as his very presence on court seemed like something of a throwback.
Players were still slipping out on the show courts. Novak Djokovic met the turf on numerous occasions during his second-round victory over Kevin Anderson, then Murray stretched his groin after falling at the beginning of the fourth set against Oscar Otte. Another enforced break had already come to the rescue, with the British wild card and the German qualifier reemerging once the Centre Court had closed up for the night.
There were more than glimpses of the old Murray, for instance when holding serve at 4-2 in the deciding set, where he showed a combination of speed, drive, and flawless anticipation to run down an angled volley which Otte had managed to pick up off the turf at full stretch. Then again on match point, where he broke serve with one of those dinking lobs which have always been one of his defining characteristics.
From the gangling youth who gobbled down pizza before his first ever matches at Wimbledon to the Grand Slam and Olympic champion with one of the game’s all-time great returns and impeccable core strength, few athletes have managed to pull more from their body than Andy Murray. Now after a couple of hip operations, including hip resurfacing surgery which involves smoothing down the hip ball before covering it with a metal cap, his movement might generously be described as a work in progress, but the touch and determination remain intact. So too does his ability to rouse a crowd, a learned trait which Murray long since mastered.
Almost everyone has been taught to take sides during this unprecedented era of men’s tennis, but whether you have preferred the sprightly panache of Roger Federer, the rugged shotmaking of Rafa Nadal, or the titanium nerves of Novak Djokovic, the sight of Andy Murray back in full stride out on Centre Court was enough to leave a lump in the throat.
Up stepped Emma Raducanu, who at 18 years old was entering into the main draw of only her second WTA tournament. On her Grand Slam debut, the Londoner had managed to navigate the first couple of rounds up against Vitalia Diatchenko and Markéta Vondroušová, but it was her third round victory over Sorana Cîrstea on No. 1 Court which grabbed the headlines and captured the public imagination. The young prospect pounced into her cross-court winners and racked up eight games in a row, becoming the youngest British woman to reach the last sixteen in the Open Era.
The women were the stars of the show in the third round, headed by Ons Jabeur who prevailed in three sets up against the former champion Garbiñe Muguruza. Angelique Kerber also mounted a successful comeback after dropping the first set to Aliaksandra Sasnovich, while the French Open champion Barbora Krejčíková persevered even as the tricky Anastasija Sevastova posed a stern test.
Not to be outdone, Daniil Medvedev and Marin Čilić went all the way in the men’s draw, before the second seed defeated the former Wimbledon finalist 6-7 (3-7), 3-6, 6-3, 6-3, 6-2 at the end of five sets. This was Medvedev’s first comeback from two sets down in a Grand Slam, with his reward a maiden berth in the fourth round. No such luck for Nick Kyrgios, whose complaints of slow courts and aching muscles over the first couple of rounds culminated in early retirement versus Félix Auger-Aliassime. The absorbing Aussie had suffered an abdominal strain, which also put paid to his mixed doubles partnership with Venus Williams.
The air of gentility which wafts like a gentle breeze over Wimbledon has always been carefully cultivated, blown in through the cupped hands of the All England Club. Beyond the strawberries, clotted cream, and tennis whites, the tournament has for many years harkened to tradition by holding off play on the middle Sunday, preserved instead as a quasi-pastoral day of rest. Players have been been able to practise and wander the grounds unfettered, while fans gape through the fencing or begin to busily erect tents.
Entering the second week of Wimbledon, the steadily improving Hubert Hurkacz was the only player yet to drop a single game on serve. In the women’s draw, Angelique Kerber was the only remaining former Wimbledon champion, with none of the other competitors boasting experience beyond the quarter-final stage.
Top seeds and star names fell thick and fast amid the frenzied action of Manic Monday. Ons Jabeur battled out a three-set victory over last year’s French Open champion Iga Świątek, while in a breakthrough performance, the Swiss veteran Viktorija Golubic handily dispatched Madison Keys.
The last time there was play at Wimbledon, a 15-year-old Coco Gauff emerged as the talk of the town, with victories over Venus Williams, Magdaléna Rybáriková, and Polona Hercog before she was defeated by the eventual champion Simona Halep in the last sixteen. Gauff entered Wimbledon on a high after a strong showing at Roland Garros, where she became the youngest Grand Slam quarter-finalist since Nicole Vaidišová in 2006. Growing in strength while managing to iron out some of the kinks in her serve, she posed a real threat on the grass but lost out in the fourth round to a resurgent Kerber, finally showing a return to form after a couple of patchy years on tour.
Karolína Plíšková was also playing some of her best tennis, after a torrid start to the season as she adapted to life under a new coach. Having dropped out of the top ten for the first time in almost five years, in the fourth round she ended the hot streak of the wild card Liudmila Samsonova, while Aryna Sabalenka overcame Elena Rybakina in three sets. The journey ended for yet another youngster, as Emma Radacanu retired in the second set of her match with Ajla Tomljanović after suffering from breathing difficulties.
At least they were able to finish their match. Rain washed away Hubert Hurkacz and Daniil Medvedev with the rangy Russian second seed up by two sets to one midway through the fourth set. The following morning, they switched to Centre Court to conclude proceedings, and the match ran away from Medvedev who was left almost speechless after succumbing in five sets.
Wimbledon had been operating at half capacity, but on the second Tuesday of the tournament the lid came off. Ahead of the lifting of restrictions across the country, special dispensation was given for major sporting events like Wimbledon and Euro 2020, allowing matches from the quarter-final stage to be played in front of capacity crowds of 14,979 on Centre Court and 12,345 on No. 1 Court.
With the world number one and firm favourite Novak Djokovic progressing seamlessly against Fucsovics, the surprise of the quarter-final stage fell around the shoulders of Roger Federer. Up against Hurkacz, who had been flawless on serve before pulling away in the fourth round from Medvedev, the Swiss struggled to find any semblance of rhythm. After working his way into the tournament, and raising hopes with his comfortable fourth round victory over Lorenzo Sonego, Federer struggled to ward off breaks against Hurkacz, who took the first set 6-3.
Normal business resumed in the second set as Federer raced into a 4-1 lead, but the odd wobble turned into a full-blown collapse as Hurkacz broke back to take the set into a tie-break. Standing 6 feet and 5 inches, the towering Pole provisionally seems like a power hitter, but his prowess on serve masks a style from the back of the court whose patience and precision has drawn comparisons with Andy Murray.
As Federer increasingly stormed the net in an effort to force the action, Hurkacz always had an answer, whether it was a firmly struck backhand down the line, a cross-court passing shot, or something more deft pushed out wide or dropped at the feet in such a way as to make life difficult for his opponent.
In windy conditions, palpably irked by the anxious cries of the capacity crowd, Federer lost his bearings in the tie-break, crucially slipping beneath an easy put-away smash to allow Hurkacz to assume an unassailable position. His energy spent, Federer folded in the third set, as Hurkacz won through 6-3, 7-6 (7-4), 6-0 while producing only twelve unforced errors.
That meant a new finalist from the bottom half of the men’s draw, and just like Murray earlier in the tournament, Hurkacz followed up his heroics with something more like a damp squib. In truth the Pole was fortunate to snatch the third set against Matteo Berrettini, as the seventh seed and Queens Club champion progressed 6-3, 6-0, 6-7 (3-7), 6-4. On the other hand the match between Djokovic and Shapovalov had the feel of a five-set epic, though the indomitable Serb held sway over the big points. Despite an impressive display of rugged shotmaking, Shapovalov fell in three with the final score reading 7-6 (7-3), 7-5, 7-5.
Two tantalising clashes in the semi-finals of the women’s draw pitted top seed Ash Barty against the former Wimbledom champion Kerber, while at different stages of their careers, Karolína Plíšková and Aryna Sabalenka were both hoping to get over their Grand Slam hump.
Since winning Wimbledon in 2018, Kerber had failed to stretch beyond the fourth round of a Grand Slam, while at the Australian Open and French Open earlier this year she suffered troubling first round exits. Reunited with her old coach Torben Beltz, the long road back for the 33-year-old saw her once more in the semi-finals of a major, where she refused to wilt even as the world number one showed an enviable slice and peerless focus.
Resetting the points through her slice, attacking with her forehand and steady on serve, Barty took the first set 6-3. Kerber stepped up at the start of the second set, reeling off the first three games before Barty began to claw her way back, eventually stringing together enough points to earn a tie-break. Kerber had been the aggressor early in the set, and at 5-2 had stood a couple of points away from the decider, but she faded slightly in the tie-break as the gruelling rallies and her tenuous position in the match finally took their toll, with Barty winning 6-3, 7-6 (7-3) to progress to her first Wimbledon final.
Aryna Sabalenka snagged the upper hand at the end of the first set of the other semi-final. After saving eight break points on her own serve, her solitary chance to break arrived gift-wrapped as Plíšková double faulted to drop her first set of the tournament. Thereafter however it was the Czech who seized control of the match, more through a display of cunning and craft than her usual awesome hitting power.
Plíšková began to hit more winners in the second set, but she also continued to mix up the pace and tempo of her groundstrokes, sometimes pushing or hitting slowly through the ball in a successful attempt to drag her opponent out of rhythm. And she was imperious on serve, especially at 3-2 in the second set when she scored three consecutive aces.
Each piercing cry and every increase in volume from the other side of the court showed Plíšková steadily turning the screw on her opponent. Sabalenka is a fearsome competitor, and she fought especially hard in her first semi-final at a Grand Slam, but by a score of 5-7, 6-4, 6-4 it was Plíšková who emerged the victor.
The precarious nature of women’s tennis meant that thirteen different women had won the past seventeen Grand Slams heading into Wimbledon. Still if the tour seems in a state of constant flux, this was the first time since 1977 that both competitors were making their debut in a Wimbledon final. Barty was hoping to add to her French Open from 2019, while Plíšková was eager to improve upon the status of runner-up achieved in 2016 at the US Open.
The final threatened to be a one-sided affair, as the form and composure which Plíšková had shown in the semi deserted her during a nervous first set. Barty forged ahead, winning the first fourteen points thanks to seven winners and more than a few unforced errors, before wrapping up the first set and securing an early break in the second. But Plíšková kept calm and began to fight back, picking up some pace and consistency on serve before a loose game by Barty at 6-5 took the second set to a tie-break. Plíšková was now in full flow, striking winners and moving freely as she took the tie-break by the scruff of the neck.
The third set remained close, as the Czech frequented the net and continued to hit winners. But her vulnerable second serve was seized on in the early stages of the decider, and Barty held her nerve to claim a memorable victory. The final score read 6-3, 6-7 (4-7), 6-3 in favour of the beaming Australian, who celebrated by climbing up into the stands.
In the middle of an eight-month grind as the twin pressures of tennis tournaments and the coronavirus pandemic keep her away from home, Barty thanked her team and family and grew tearful as she paid tribute to her friend and mentor Evonne Goolagong Cawley, who fifty years ago became the first indigenous Australian to win at Wimbledon. Barty said:
‘It took me a long time to verbalise the fact that I wanted to dare to dream and say I wanted to win this incredible tournament. And being able to live out my dream right now with everyone here, this has made it better than I could have imagined. My team is incredible, they are with me every single step of the way. I can’t thank them enough for sacrificing their time and energy into my career and into my dreams.’
Her achievement was all the more impressive given the year’s sabbatical she took from the sport in 2015, when she turned her hand to professional cricket for her hometown of Brisbane, and the hip injury which forced her withdrawal from the French Open less than four weeks before she strode out onto the Centre Court grass. At 25 years old, Barty is just hitting her peak.
Sometimes a slow starter of late, there seemed no danger of that as Djokovic brushed aside a couple of nervy service games to move into a 5-2 lead in the first set. But when Djokovic spurned a set point, Berrettini began to battle back from the baseline, lashing down the forehand winners before snatching the first set with an ace at the end of an unlikely tie-break.
In the second set, Djokovic bounced back and began smothering his opponent on the return, improving his own first serve percentage while managing to wrangle seven break points out of the hard-hitting Italian. Showing all of his usual grit and agility out on court, Djokovic needed two of those break points to secure the second set. By the third, Berrettini had decided to up the aggression, and he was rewarded with more winners and aces, but a solitary break point was all that Djokovic needed to once more edge ahead. By set four it was all over bar the shouting, as Djokovic triumphed 6-7 (4-7), 6-4, 6-4, 6-3 before slumping back onto the turf.
Despite the preponderance of chants for ‘Matteo’ hours before Italy played at Wembley, the crowd on Centre Court embraced Djokovic even as he engaged in his own peculiar tradition by nibbling on the worn grass. Now level with Federer and Nadal on twenty Grand Slam titles, after the match Djokovic indicated that the best is yet to come:
‘I consider myself best and I believe that I am the best, otherwise I wouldn’t be talking confidently about winning slams and making history. But whether I’m the greatest of all time or not, I leave that debate to other people. I feel like I’m probably the most complete that I’ve been as a player right now in my entire career.’
The argument is impossible to refute given his unrivaled mental strength allied to a beefier serve and all-court sensibility, with Djokovic winning many of his points against Berrettini in at the net. At the US Open in September, Djokovic will aim to become the first man to win a calendar Grand Slam since Rod Laver in 1969. In the meantime there is the small matter of a Golden Slam and the Tokyo Olympics, with Djokovic and Barty briefly free to bask in the sun as legends like Federer, Williams, and Murray head back to the drawing board.
Middle distance running held the spotlight on the French Riviera, as the world of athletics headed to Monaco for the latest leg of the Diamond League season. The Herculis was the penultimate meet before the stars of track and field head to Tokyo for the Summer Olympics, which this week were confirmed to take place without fans, as the Japanese capital reimposes emergency measures amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The climax of the night saw Faith Kipyegon, the reigning Olympic champion over 1500 metres, reassert herself as the woman to beat over the distance at the expense of the Dutch superstar Sifan Hassan. Hassan scored a world record last month in the 10,000 metres, and was looking to repeat that sort of form as she arrived in Monaco requesting 61-second laps.
She led the race at the bell, with Kipyegon and Freweyni Hailu giving chase, but on this occasion it was the Kenyan who kicked ahead as the athletes rounded the final bend to face the finishing line. With a demonstration of speed, Kipyegon finished just outside world record time, her winning mark of 3:51.07 the fourth-fastest ever over the distance.
Timothy Cheruiyot continued his return to form over 1500 metres. After finishing fourth at the Kenyan trials last month, leaving his Olympic prospects in doubt, Cheruiyot came through in Monaco with a personal best of 3:28.28, beating out Jakob Ingebrigtsten who was making his return to the track following a bacterial infection. Instead it was the Spaniard Mohamed Katir who finished in second place, setting another national record in what is proving to be a breakthrough season.
There was high drama and low farce in the steeplechase, as a premature bell prompted a mad dash for the line followed by looks of strained disappointment. When the last lap bell rang out with two laps still to go, Benjamin Kigen kicked hard and thought he had claimed a memorable victory. Instead race officials urged the athletes on, and as the bell rang for a second time, the grief-stricken Kigen effectively stopped running, finishing in seventh place. Instead it was Lamecha Girma who came through in a world-leading time of 8:07.75, as he held off the challenge from Abraham Kibiwot.
The bell played no part as fiasco engulfed the woman’s race, with Hyvin Kiyeng guilty of her own misjudgement. When the Kenyan pulled up at the end of the penultimate lap, Emma Coburn of the United States looked ready to pounce, only to fall headlong at the final water jump. That handed the victory to Kiyeng, who managed to find a second wind to stay ahead of the world record holder Beatrice Chepkoech and Winfred Mutile Yavi, with a soggy Coburn having to settle for fourth.
Even a victorious Shanieka Ricketts found fault with the format in the field, as the Jamaican leapt 14.29 in the decisive sixth round to claim victory in the triple jump. The world champion Yulimar Rojas had led after five rounds through a jump of 15.12, but fouled in the winner-takes-all sixth as she continues her push for a new world record. Ricketts celebrated her victory, but said ‘I think the person with the biggest jump should win’.
Orders were also reversed in the long jump, where Miltiadis Tentoglou ousted Tajay Gayle, and in the javelin as the 40-year-old Barbora Špotáková edged ahead of Christin Hussong and Maria Andrejczyk. In the high jump, Mikhail Akimenko was the only man clear at 2.32, with Ilya Ivanyuk and Gianmarco Tamberi going out in the early stages. And in the pole vault, Katie Nageotte cleared 4.90 at the first time of asking to pile the pressure on Anzhelika Sidorova and Katerina Stefanidi.
In a stacked 100 metres, the in-form Ronnie Baker prevailed with little to separate Akani Simbine, Marcell Jacobs, Andre De Grasse, and Trayvon Bromell who stretched from second to fifth. In the 200 metres a late surge from Shaunae Miller-Uibo saw her pip Marie-Josée Ta Lou on the line, with Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce in third place.
The Jamaican sensation Shericka Jackson, who also set a couple of new personal bests in Kingston, held off Shaunae Miller-Uibo over 200 metres in the Hungarian city of Székesfehérvár, once more dipping under 22 seconds. And Stephenie Ann McPherson made it a Jamaican triple in the flats, as she crept under 50 seconds to take the 400 metres.
The preeminent Puerto Rican Jasmine Camacho-Quinn, already the world leader in the 100 metre hurdles, set another fast winning time of 12.34. Grant Holloway topped Orlando Ortega, Sergey Shubenkov, and Ronald Levy in the 110 metre hurdles. But the hurdling performance of the night came courtesy of the Dutch starlet Femke Bol, who went under 53 seconds for the second time in a matter of days to fend off the challenge from Shamier Little.
Meeting records fell thick and fast out in the field at the Gyulai István Memorial. Liveta Jasiūnaitė threw 62.73 in the sixth round to snatch a last-gasp victory in the javelin, while the former world champion Tom Walsh sunk a throw of 22.22 in the shot. The hammer contests were won by the young Ukrainian Mykhaylo Kokhan and the two-time Olympic champion Anita Włodarczyk. Meanwhile Daniel Ståhl continued to dominate the discus, and Maryna Bekh-Romanchuk handed over a crisp card in the long jump.
Athletics now turns back towards Gateshead, with the final Diamond League session before the Olympic Games scheduled for the International Stadium on Tuesday night.
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