Europe 1 USA 0
Posted on 29/09/2010Two days to go until the Ryder Cup, and Europe have the psychological edge after winning the battle of the catwalk, writes Hannah Betts in The Telegraph.
Camel tones and a Seventies flare may be über-fashionable for the female of the species, however, on a pack of American sportsmen — as we’re talking golf, one uses the term loosely — the effect is stomach-churning.The arrival of the US team at the Ryder Cup this week resembled an invasion of science teachers, lost in time and space after an experiment went wrong back in 1977. Boxy jackets, Travolta trousers and – please God, no — are those slip-on shoes?
Small wonder that several team members chose to don dark glasses. The kit for the 1999 tournament was so heinous that Tiger Woods admitted to incinerating his outfit in its wake. This year, he may be tempted to set light to it before.
The team-photo garb the players wore is no less perturbing. Mud brown trousers accompany queasy cream pullovers boasting a sub-Vivienne Westwood cup insignia, offset by blue shirt and grey baseball cap. The effect is at once infantilising and profoundly unflattering to the golfing physique.
Team US will be on course in lurid terracotta tank tops (shriek!) with baby blue shirts and kiddie caps.
The responsibility for these most unstylish of style choices lies with Lisa Pavin, wife of US captain Corey. La Pavin claims to have been aiming at a “retro-inspired, vintage look”. And how. Still, at least her efforts raise the game of the Team Europe attire — bland it may be, but bland wins hands down over blurgh.
Delhi fears not over yet
It looks like the Commonwealth Games will go ahead after panic set in last week following images of filty athletes' accommodation, but concerns over safety still remain a major issues, writes Jonathan McEvoy in The Daily Mail.
Delhi awoke to a heavenly blue sky on Tuesday.The grey smear on the city's ceiling had been wiped away and the English archers came out to play. A dozen of them, with their ancient weapons and stiff upper lips, practised at the Yamuna Sports Complex.
It was a civilised, competitive reminder of what the Commonwealth Games should be all about. Yet the 19th edition of this festival is still besieged on every side.
It is not now a question of whether the Games will go ahead on Sunday, but whether they will be ambushed by a security or safety disaster.
It must be said in defence of the Indian organisers that there are a multitude of guards - 80,000 police and 20,000 paramilitaries - protecting the venues and the immediate city.
We are repeatedly stopped: the taxi at every hotel gate, every guest at the lobby entrance, each official and journalist on the Games site, every underground passenger.
Soldiers are on sentry duty, rifles are ready. At the hotel, guards and sniffer dogs roam the corridors.
But as India's leading counterterrorist expert told Sportsmail on Tuesday, it may not be enough to thwart a left-field incursion by Islamic fundamentalists, perhaps on the fringes of the event.
'I'm quite sure that all the terrorist attacks that can be anticipated will be met with sufficient counter measures,' said Ajit Doval, former director of India's Intelligence Bureau. 'But I don't know whether the existing measures will counter unanticipated, or new or unusual, threats.
'I have apprehensions about saying what form the new threat could take. It might give the terrorists ideas.
'The sort of thing I have in mind will not require significant manpower or weapon-power. It is unlikely to be at a big event such as the opening ceremony. No, it would be carried out by one or two people. It will be surreptitious. I know how devilish the Pakistani-based Islamic radicalists, who are the only real threat to the Games, can be.'
England, who along with the home nations are natural targets given Britain's prominent role in fighting terror, declared themselves happy with the security provisions. Just as they did with the athletes' living quarters after the filthy conditions delayed their moving in.
But what of the other buildings? Reports claim that 16 structures have yet to be retested since the Central Vigilance Commission, India's foremost watchdog, found two months back that safety certificates had been forged to cover up corner-cutting and the use of substandard materials.
The venues for squash, hockey, diving, boxing, badminton and the practice rugby stadium, as well as roads leading to the main Nehru stadium, are believed to be vulnerable.
In light of the concerns, England spoke to other nations to gauge their feelings before saying they would not seek further reassurances unless hard evidence of more faulty buildings - after a bridge collapsed last week - emerges.
The Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) insist everything is in order, and the teams appear to be taking them at their word. Without wishing to be melodramatic, they will all look naive if a stadium, or a road, gives way when full of spectators and athletes.
Read a newspaper or switch on the TV here and you see that the buck-passing over these blighted Games is going on in Delhi faster than some athletes withdrew.
Without doubt, the misnomer that is the Organising Committee, under Suresh Kalmadi, and the admittedly under-resourced CGF, under Mike Fennell, are both to blame. The latter for not imposing its will over the shoddiness of the former.
Talk to many an ordinary Indian and they feel let down by the government and by the corruption they know is rife. But as one newspaper columnist argued in the Sunday Times of India this week: 'One thing is abundantly clear: we are nowhere near being a developed country. The sooner we stop pretending to be a super power, the better.
'There are many critical issues - poverty, hunger, literacy, drinking water - to be addressed before we ever embark on an exercise like this.'
It was a thought at least worth pondering.