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Sporting quotes of the week – 15Jun2007

The past week in sport and sports journalism, featuring Lewis Hamilton, Michael Vaughan and Tim Henman, plus the Bob Woolmer case and a new take on the London Olympic logo. Oh, and Tony Blair

And add your favourite sports quote of the week in the Comment box at the bottom of this item

“This is history” – Lewis Hamilton, right, following his first Formula 1 victory, in the Canadian Grand Prix

“He may be young and in his first season, but this guy is the real deal. If you’re good enough in this sport, you’re old enough – and boy, Lewis is good enough” – Damon Hill, the former world champion, on Hamilton

“I’ve not been comfortable with everything from the start. It’s an English team with an English teammate. You know that all of the help goes his way” – reigning F1 world champion Fernando Alonso

“The only person he has got to beat is Alonso. What impresses me most is the fact that he has got Alonso rattled. It’s remarkable” — Former British world champion Nigel Mansell

“For one month they went through a living hell. The players went into depression. I’m afraid someone has to be answerable and someone has to be responsible for this” — former Pakistan captain Imran Khan on why he thinks his country’s cricket board should sue the Jamaican police over the investigation into Bob Woolmer’s death

“It’s not a matter of me wanting an apology. Nothing could diminish the tension and hassle I suffered” – Inzamam-ul- Haq, the Pakistan cricket captain during the World Cup

“Winning becomes a habit and we’re on a winning streak. We’ve got to enjoy being on top of teams and getting them in the dirt, if you like” — Michael Vaughan, England’s most successful cricket captain following the third Test win over the West Indies

“He let himself down last week only by denying that he used a word that was captured on tape. Taken overall the interview with Donald McRae revealed him to be a thoughtful, honest man. Sometimes the good guys do come first, and Vaughan is one of the finest cricketers this land has ever produced” – Michael Henderson takes a balanced view of Vaughan

“We loved it, as second generation immigrants. We didn’t quite fit in here, we put up with a lot of racism, and here was our team, coming over and stuffing England. I grew up with parents who called Trinidad home; maybe young black people now don’t feel that same affinity” – Varun Maharaj, 42, a solicitor from Manchester, explains to David Conn, in The Guardian, the decline in support, and loss of atmosphere, at West Indies Tests

“I don’t even want to mention the fact that Chelsea are now spending nothing while United are spending a lot. When Chelsea were spending everybody said ‘Chelsea are buying their titles’. Now, I’m waiting to see if people put us in the last place of the title candidates, as they have to put United first, Liverpool second – and then Arsenal, Tottenham, Aston Villa and Newcastle” – Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho

“It’s hard to watch an athlete almost destroyed. To build her up again is a job and a half” – Lloyd Cowan, coach to Christine Ohurogu, the runner banned for a year after missing three drugs tests

“It’s great to be back. The crowd are unbelievable here and it gave me the confidence knowing they are behind me. The reception I got was really great” — Kieren Fallon, the jockey banned for six months after failing a drugs test

Mark Lawson, in The Guardian:

Present-tense journalism has always been vulnerable to future events – for example, those British newspapers that praised the ‘firmness’ of Germany’s new leader in the 1930s – but the turnarounds currently seem to be happening more regularly and spectacularly, and raise troubling questions. Should the BBC retract the edition of Panorama that stated authoritatively that Woolmer was poisoned, or simply pretend that the show was never broadcast?

“It’s the worst Olympic image since Fatima Whitbread bent down to pick up that javelin” – comedian Alan Carr on the Friday Night Project jumps on the London 2012 logo bandwagon

“I regard the demands by PR companies for vast amounts of time to absorb the very psyche of the organisation whose logo they have been commissioned to design, as arty-crafty pretentiousness and entirely self-serving, if you fall for it. It is what £400,000 bills are made of” – Sir Bernard Ingham, writing in the Yorkshire Post, on the Wolff Olins-designed Olympic logo. It was complaints by Sir Bernard’s former boss, Lady Margaret Thatcher, that led to the removal of the Wolff Olins re-designed British Airways tailfins

“You have talent, stature and the background and history. But I have to say that in terms of attitude the Italian teams could teach countries like England a lot of things. Sometimes I think your players do not give it their best shot. I particularly think that was the case last summer at the World Cup. I think the players were afraid of the media and the pressure was too much for them” – former Italy and Chelsea star Gianfranco Zola

“The fear of missing out means today’s media, more than ever, hunts in a pack. In these modes, it is like a feral beast just tearing people and reputations to bits. But no-one dares miss out” – soon-t0-be former Prime Minister Tony Blair

“We were all wrong about Beckham. We made a decision among the coaching staff and I have to take responsibility for that. The truth is, we got it wrong” — Real coach Fabio Capello

“In the contract he signed with LA Galaxy, there is a clause allowing the player to back out. We have to look at this clause and decide between all of us, but I would love him to remain at the club” — Ramon Calderon, president at Real Madrid, demonstrates a triumph of hope over experience with David Beckham

“I’m in a rut. I can’t hide the fact that it’s very frustrating” – Tim Henman after his first-round exit at Queen’s

“It comes down to the size of your balls” – Australian distance runner Craig Mottram, after winning the 2 Miles and taking 11sec off his national record, in Oregon last weekend

“How is it not journalism? It’s what a newspaper has been doing for 100 years but only able to do it once a day. Online you can do it every five minutes. It’s journalism; it’s just more immediate journalism” – Steve Purcell, editor of www.mirror.co.uk, defends live blogging coverage of sport and television to the Press Gazette‘s website