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SIX OF THE BEST: SPORTING SWITCHES
by Alex Hazle
With news that Red Bull Racing F1 driver Mark Webber is wisely using his downtime to keep fit with a Rugby League team, we celebrate the athletes who have switched from their usual sporting environments – for various and sometimes nefarious reasons…
A League of his own
Mark Webber’s friend and compatriot Marc Herbert has just signed for the British Super League side Bradford Bulls, and Mark decided that a trip to Lanzarote in the Canary Islands to take part in the Bulls’ warm-weather training would be a decent warm-up of his own ahead of the launch of the Red Bull Racing RB7 at the first testing session in Valencia, Spain on February 1. “He trains more like a triathlete than a rugby player,” commented Bradford Bulls coach Mick Potter, “and although he's 6ft 3in [190cm], he only weighs 70kg.” Fortunately, Mark, probably with some other notable mishaps in recent years in the back of his mind, only did fitness training and played touch rugby rather than being subjected to the rigours of a full physical Rugby League game…
Old haunts
Last year, MLS soccer star David Beckham sealed a switch back from Los Angeles Galaxy to Europe – namely Milan, with whom he made an emotional return to Manchester United in the Champions League. Despite having no World Cup squad to aim for this season, the Englishman has nevertheless moved again this January, and even closer to home – to Tottenham Hotspur, the club he supported as a boy when he was growing up nearby. Meanwhile, another hero has returned to North London from the MLS – Red Bull New York’s Thierry Henry has been training with his old club Arsenal, though strictly to keep fit ahead of his return to play for the Red Bulls in March. Becks, however, still hopes he’ll play for Spurs before his February 10 return.
Two by four?
Every year, the ‘Valentino Rossi to Ferrari’ stories raise their head in various Italian Gazzettas, with the six-time MotoGP champ having tested the Prancing Horse’s F1 machinery rather successfully in 2006 (and the ex-karter has driven rally cars in a number of events for good measure). Now he’s on a red Italian MotoGP bike with Ducati for 2011, Rossi has been enjoying a winter trip to the joint Ducati/Ferrari launch in Madonna di Campiglio with his counterparts at the Scuderia, including double world champion Fernando Alonso (pictured, below). Going the other way, seven-time F1 champ Michael Schumacher has tried his hand at bike racing, though with markedly less success. A crash that injured his shoulder prevented him being fit enough to deputise for the injured Felipe Massa in a Ferrari F1 car in 2009 – but it reawakened the racer in him, and the rest, as we know, is current events and a drive at Mercedes GP!
Ferrari.com
Gorilla warfare
Another motor racing multi-talent and multiple world champion is of course Sébastien Loeb, who has won the last seven WRC titles. But former track racer Loeb (who was also a champion gymnast in his youth) has tasted F1 in an impressive test for Red Bull Racing after the 2008 season, and speculation mounted in 2009 that he might even get a drive for Scuderia Toro Rosso at the inaugural Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. This proved unfounded, though Loeb has taken to the track in anger for the Le Mans 24 Hours race, finishing second in a Pescarolo-Judd in 2006. One driver who made the switch the other way is, of course, Kimi Räikkönen. Having found time to rally a Fiat Punto Abarth on occasions while still in F1, where he won the 2007 World Championship, Kimi now competes full-time in the WRC, having completed a solid debut season where he steadily improved for the Citroën Junior Team last year, and will now take to the wheel of a brand-new Citroën DS3 for his own Ice 1 Racing Team in 2011. Incidentally, Kimi has also entered snowmobile and powerboat races under the pseudonym James Hunt (after the 1976 F1 world champion and notorious playboy of the same name), the latter dressed in a gorilla suit which, surprisingly, has yet to appear in the WRC service park!
Shock return for Marion
The admission by Marion Jones, the onetime darling of US women’s athletics, that she had won her five gold medals at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney while taking performance-enhancing drugs, sent shockwaves through world sport. The fact that she had also lied to two grand jury trials about the steroids saw her not only banned in disgrace but also jailed, with a counterfeit fraud charge also proved at the time. Many might have disappeared from public view after this, but Jones resourcefully returned to another sport at which she had excelled at college – basketball – and made her debut last March for Oklahoma-based WNBA side Tulsa Shock.
What a complete nobble
You’re unlikely to find a sportperson of either sex who’s been a pro in both ice skating and boxing, but then the Tonya Harding story isn’t a simple or ordinary one. Having been found guilty of deliberately setting up an attempt to nobble US skating rival Nancy Kerrigan by busting her leg in 1994 with her ex-husband Jeff Gillooly and others, Harding escaped jail but was nevertheless disgraced, after which a colourful period followed involving alleged alcohol abuse, various brushes with the law, internet sex tapes and abortive attempts at an acting and musical career. By 2003, Harding had become a boxer, making her pro debut on February 22 on the same bill as Mike Tyson (who beat Clifford Etienne in his last pro victory), but this career was also short-lived. By mid-2004, Harding had quit with three wins and three losses from her six professional bouts, blaming asthma…
Credit: Red Bull Racing Formula one Team (www.redbullracing.com)
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