Tim Henman’s retirement (pending), 
Lewis Hamilton’s exile (assumed), Thaksin Shinawatra’s golf club membership (declined), John Regis’s monkeys (nuts), Martin Jol’s job (doomed) and Kelly Sotherton’s medal (won) prompt some of this week’s sporting quotes. Plus, “citizen journalism”, and whether it will create a second Chinese revolution at next year’s Beijing Olympics
“When I reflect on my career, I know I was able to maximise my potential. This was as good as I could have been” – Tim Henman announcing his forthcoming retirement from tennis
“She has cheated once, who says she is not cheating again?” World bronze medal-winning heptathlete Kelly Sotherton asks a not unreasonable question about the methodology of Ukrainian silver medallist Lyudmila Blonska
“Second day at the World Championships and I am not sure whether I have walked into the Bolshoi Theatre or Lakeside Country Club. I am watching Kelly Sotherton throwing the javelin” – David Powell‘s Osaka blog (or “weblog” as they insist on calling them at The webTimes)
“I’ll do everything I can to help Robbo, but if the opportunity arises, I’m up for it. I don’t want to be here just to warm the bench up” – Portsmouth keeper David James, keen to reclaim his England place from Paul Robinson
James Lawton, in The Independent
“Frank Lampard wrote in his autobiography at his shock that the team’s failure drew so much criticism. He thought he and his team-mates were entitled to “more respect”. But respect for what? Serial failure? A befuddling routine of big claims and miniscule performance?”
“It would be sad if I had to leave the country as world champion, but I am definitely contemplating doing that now” – Lewis Hamilton, suffering from all the attention
“I am English, but I want to kick on my career and I feel this is the best way forward for me” – James Morrison, the West Brom and England under-21 midfielder, after being picked to play for the Scotland senior side
“It wasn’t just cold, it was freezing cold” – Pakistan’s Inzamam-ul-Haq after his county championship debut for Yorkshire. In August
“I am unbeaten, he is unbeaten and one of us is going to lose in Osaka” – American 100m champion Tyson Gay ahead of his Osaka World Championships showdown with world record-holder Asafa Powell, of Jamaica. It is Gay who remains unbeaten
“Mutola is 35 in October and there seems no stopping her” – age is a funny thing that way…. insight from athletics World Championships website
“If you spray peanuts around you get monkeys, and at the moment we have a load of peanuts going out, so we have a load of monkeys running around” – former world and European sprint champion John Regis on Lottery funding in British athletics
“This is not entirely true. With respect, monkeys might do better in the high jump” – the Daily Telegraph on the day after two Britons qualified for the high jump final at the World Championships
“68.94 – The longest discus throw ever made on an August 28” – an “interesting” statistic circulated at the athletics World Championships in Osaka
“Maybe citizen journalism will come into its own, because it’s so unstoppable” – Kyle McRae, founder of Scoopt.com, looks ahead to a possible breakdown in Chinese government control of media during next year’s Beijing Olympics
Web journalism guru Jeff Jarvis on a similar topic
“Aren’t journalists supposed to be professional? Not necessarily. Not anymore. That is precisely what the professional class – in many trades – fears from the internet: it enables the amateurs. And that’s not always pretty”
“I did not understand why my nomination was criticised. It was absolutely incomprehensible to me” – double Olympic long jump champion Heike Drechsler, of Germany, after being elected to an international athletics women’s committee, despite her past record of having used banned drugs and having worked for East Germany’s dreaded Stasi secret police
“I’m not under pressure and if the chairman says he is backing me then there is no problem” – Tottenham manager (for now) Martin Jol
“He used everything like a goalkeeper to keep the ball out of the net. I felt you need to be a wizard to do that” – Jol thinks Spurs should have had a penalty for a Wes Brown handball at Old Trafford
Colin Dunne on life at the Mirror in the 1970s
“Passing the time could be a problem. Some took to the drink. Some took to adultery. Some took to both, and not always in the right order… Several of the writers, like Eric, became no-shows. His sports jacket – Daks, of course – was left over his chair, so that if anyone asked for him we could say he’d popped out to the bank and we would ring the number he’d left. The number, someone said, was for a drinking club in Soho in which he was a partner. We never rang it. No-one ever asked for him”
“It doesn’t matter who you are or how much money you might have. There are no short cuts to membership of St George’s” – spokesman for Weybridge golf club where former Thai prime minister and Manchester City owner Thaksin Shinawatra has been added to their four-year waiting list for membership
“By 1973, it was a quarter of a century since Britain had last won an Olympic rowing title at the London Games. Such was the standard of competition in the immediate post-war years that one of Britain’s two golds at those Games, in the coxless pairs, was won by John Wilson and William Laurie (father of actor/comedian Hugh), who were a formidable combination in 1938 but had spent the next 10 years working for the Colonial Service in Sudan. A few weeks’ practice on their return to Britain was all they needed to become gold-medal winners”- Jon Henderson, in The Observer, provides some context to sport in 1948
“Someone said to me: ‘What’s ITV4?’ I said I have been saying that for 10 years” – Frank Skinner has a nibble at the hand that feeds him
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