Yes we know that she’s not ugly but there are better higher-ranked women players who’ve

Yes, we know that she’s not ugly, but there are better, higher-ranked women players who’ve hardly been glimpsed. Even the photograph that accompanies her slim career statistics verges on the prurient. While other women are depicted in action, Kournikova is shown leaning forward with a plunging cleavage, more centrefold than Centre Court.And then of course there is Tim, “the most famous face in Britain” according to a smarmy Barry Davies. The BBC’s scarcely concealed hope is that this could be “Tim’s Year”, as John Barrett asked of Pete Sampras. And this just after wondering if the five-times champion was worried about his perceived “lack of charisma”. You feared that Barrett might soon be lacking his front teeth, but Sampras remained as polite as ever.Meanwhile, Henman’s credentials to succeed the immaculate Yank were undermined by a “Tim Nice-but-Dim” contribution to the equal prize-money debate, suggesting that the No 1 Brit might be a few strawberries short of a punnet. Henman is closing in on the quarter-finals, yelled on by the Union-jacked “Come-on-Tims!” The Beeb is right with him, but “Stephanie-ing” itself about his early exit.Greg Wood is on holiday.

BEFORE THE start of the first Emsley Carr Mile, in the 1953 British Games, the man blessed with the widest ever range of running talents was introduced to the August bank holiday crowd at the White City Stadium. Paavo Nurmi, 56 at the time, was paraded on a lap of honour around the West London track by open-topped car. At the peak of his physical powers, between 1920 and 1932, the finest of the Flying Finns won Olympic gold medals at distances ranging from 1,500m to 10,000m and broke world records from the mile up to to the 20,000m. The aficionados packed into White City must have thought athletics would never see his like again. But the crowd at Gateshead International Stadium this afternoon will see a track phenomenon whose spread of running ability is equal to that of the late, great Nurmi. Haile Gebrselassie is the reigning world champion, Olympic champion and world-record holder at 10,000m He is also the world indoor champion at 1,500m.

In today’s Gateshead Classic he will be striving to reinforce his reputation at the lower end of his scale. At 26, the Ethiopian will be running his first ever mile race It will not, however, be just any mile race. Oslo’s Dream Mile may have risen to become the world’s premier four-lap contest but it does not have a history as rich as the Emsley Carr Mile.
It has been won by eight Olympic champions – Murray Halberg, Kip Keino, John Walker, Steve Ovett, Sebastian Coe, Said Aouita, William Tanui and Venuste Niyongabo – and by six men who have broken the world mile record: Walker, Ovett, Coe, Derek Ibbotson, Jim Ryun and Filbert Bayi. It has also been responsible for some significant miling breakthroughs.It was in the 1976 Emsley Carr Mile, in the British International Games at Crystal Palace that Coe broke four minutes for the first time. The 19-year-old Loughborough University student clocked 3min 58.4 sec in a race won by Dave Moorcroft, the present chief executive of UK Athletics.

And it was in the 1978 race, in the British Meat Games at Crystal Palace, that Steve Cram first made his mark, shattering Ryun’s world age-best for a 17-year-old with a time of 3:57.4 in fourth place – just behind the 30-year-old Brendan Foster, who will be alongside him in the BBC television commentary box at Gateshead today.Cram went on to become one of the all-time greats of the mile but never managed to win an Emsley Carr Mile. That Gebrselassie, who considers himself primarily a 10,000m runner, could achieve a four-lap feat which eluded the miler made in Hebburn underlines the extraordinary breadth of his talent. He is certainly capable of adding his name to the illustrious list of Emsley Carr winners, even though his rivals this afternoon will include the two leading latter-day Britons at the distance, John Mayock and Tony Whiteman. In winning the world 1,500m title in Maebashi three months ago Gebrselassie was too quick for Laban Rotich, the Kenyan who won the Commonwealth 1,500m final ahead of Mayock and Whiteman in Kuala Lumpur last September. He has also run 3:31.76 indoors for 1,500m, a time which roughly equates to a mile in 3:49.8.”I really don’t know how fast I can run the mile,” Gebrselassie maintained as he prepared to leave his Dutch training base, in Uden, for Tyneside. “I don’t think I could break the world record but I think I could run a quick time.