The first thing to say is that this is a surprisingly tricky question, the answer to which is far more obscure than you might imagine. In rugby union, kicking duties – which, of course, include penalties, conversions and drop goals – often, but not always, fall to the fly half. Indeed, it is no coincidence that the top ten highest points scorers in the history of Tier 1 international rugby union, which includes England, France, Italy, Ireland, Scotland Wales, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, all wore the No. 10 shirt.
Of the aforementioned tensome, Englishman Johnny Wilkinson, Argentine Diego Dominguez, who played most of his international career for Italy, and Irishman Ronan O’Gara all feature in the top ten for career drop goals, with 36, 20 and 15, respectively. However, while it might seem reasonable to use this trio as the basis for further investigation, it turns out that the record for the most drop goals in a rugby union international belongs to none of them, nor anyone else in either top ten.
The most drop goals kicked by an individual in a Tier 1 rugby union international is five, scored by South African fly half Jannie de Beer in the second half of a Rugby World Cup quarter-final match against England at Stade de France, Paris on October 24, 1999. However, according to Guinness World Records, the most drop goals kicked in any rugby union international was six, scored by Russian fly half Konstantin Rachkov against Spain in a European Nations Cup, a.k.a. Six Nations B, match in Inca, Mallorca on February 16, 2003. The European Nations Cup featured Tier 2 and Tier 3 rugby nations.
Of course, the maximum number of wickets that any bowler can take in single innings, Test match or otherwise, is ten. In the history of Test cricket, which dates back to March 15, 1877, just three male bowlers have taken all ten wickets in an innings. The first, and most famous, of them was England off-spinner James ‘ Jim’ Laker, who took 10 for 53 in the second innings of the fourth Test against Australia at Old Trafford, Manchester in July, 1956. In what became known as ‘Laker’s Match’, the Yorkshireman had already taken 9 for 37 in the first innings, thereby finishing the match with figures of 19 for 90, which is still the record for the most wickets taken by any male bowler in a Test match.
Next on the highly select list comes Indian leg-break googly bowler Anil Kumble, who took 10 for 74 in the second innings of the second Test of the Pakistan tour of India at Feroz Shah Kotla in February, 1999. Chasing 420 to win the match, Pakistan started brightly enough, with opening batsmen Saeed Anwar and Shahid Afridi sharing a century partnership before Afridi was dismissed on 41. However, incoming batsman Ijaz Ahmed was trapped lbw first ball and, thereafter, only Saleem Malik and captain Wasim Akram, whose wicket was the last to fall, reached double figures. Pakistan were bowled out for 207, giving India victory by 212 runs.
Last, but by no means least, comes another Indian-born bowler, Ajaz Patel, a left-arm orthodox spinner by trade, who emigrated to New Zealnd with his family as a child. In December, 2021, Patel returned to his birthplace, Mumbai, and took 10 for 119 in the first innings of the second Test of the New Zealand tour of India at Wankhede Stadium. Unfortunately, unlike Laker and Kumble, his remarkable feat was in vain; in their first innings, New Zealand were skittled out for just 62, with Indian off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin taking 4 for 8, and were eventually trounced by 372 runs,
Newly cast, chased and polished each year by the silversmiths at Tiffany & Co., the Vince Lombardi Trophy is almost certainly recognisable to aficionados of American football, even if its name is less familiar. The Vince Lombardi Trophy is, of course, awarded to the winners of the championship game of the National Football League (NFL), otherwise known as the Super Bowl.
The trophy is named in honour of Vincent Thomas ‘Vince’ Lombardi, a celebrated head coach best known for leading the Green Bay Packers to victory in the first two American Football League (AFL) – National Football League (NFL) World Championship Games at the conclusion of the 1966 and 1967 seasons; those games would later be recognised, retrospectively, as Super Bowl I and Super Bowl II. On March 3, 1969, Lombardi appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated, having been hired as head coach to Washington Redskins. However, on June 24, 1970, he was diagnosed with a rare, highly aggressive colorectal cancer, known as anaplastic carcinoma, and died on September 3, aged 57.
The existing Super Bowl trophy, which originally bore the legend, ‘World Professional Football Championship’, was renamed in his memory and first presented, in its new guise, to the Baltimore Colts following Super Bowl V at the Miami Orange Bowl in Miami, Florida on January 17, 1971. The presentation of an new trophy was fitting insofar as Super Bowl V was the first championship game played since the AFL and NFL merged to form a single league with two conferences, ahead of the 1970 season, or effectively the first of the ‘modern era’.
The inaugural Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) World Drivers’ Championship, which commenced with the British Grand Prix at Silverstone on May 13, 1950, consisted of just seven races. Aside from the British Grand Prix, those races were the other four Grandes Épreuves, or ‘Main Events’, from 1949 – namely the Swiss Grand Prix at Bremgarten, Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps, French Grand Prix at Reims and Italian Grand Prix at Monza – plus the Monaco Grand Prix and the Indianpolis 500.
However, while World Championship points were awarded for the Indianpolis 500, as they were for the next decade or so, none of the European Formula One drivers participated. Consequently, it was the only race of the season that was not won by one of the three-car Alfa Romeo team; victory went to Califonian Johnnie Parsons, representing Kurtis Kraft-Offenhauser.
In Europe, though, the Alfa Romeo GP Tipo 158, affectionately known as the ‘Alfetta’, or ‘Little Alfa’, reigned supreme. Realising 350 brake horsepower and capable of a top speed of 180 miles per hour, the car was driven to victory at Silverstone, Bremgarten and Monza by the leader of the Alfa Romeo team, 44-year-old Giuseppe Antonio ‘Nino’ Farina, and at Monaco, Spa-Francorchamps amd Reims by his illustrious 39-year-old team-mate Juan Manuel Fangio. Fangio would go on to dominate the rest of the decade, winning the World Drivers’ Championship five times, in 1951, 1954, 1955, 1956 and 1957 but, in 1950, it was Farina who came out on top, clinching the inaugural title, albeit narrowly, by winning the final race of the season.
A world record for the men’s javelin was first ratified by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) in 1912 and, notwithstanding changes to the specification of the projectile, just one athlete has thrown a javelin beyond the 100-metre mark in competition. The athlete in question was East German Uwe Hohn, who, four days after his twenty-second birthday, on July 20, 1984, threw the javelin a distance of 104.80 metres. In so doing, he smashed the previous record, 99.72 metres, set by American Thomas ‘Tom’ Petranoff on May 15, 1983, and hastened the introduction of a new javelin design, which was eventually implemented in April, 1986.
Petranoff, himself, had sparked debate about the design and flight characteristics of the javelin but, by the time Hohn obliterated his mark, the new specification had been officially proposed. Prior to the new specification, it was often unclear if the javelin had landed tip first, which it must for the throw to be legal, and male athletes were in danger of throwing the javelin beyond the boundary of the landing sector.
Indeed, during the XXII Olympic Day of Athletics at the Friedrich Ludwig Jahn Sportpark in East Berlin, Hohn came within a metre or so of the running track beyond the javelin landing sector. In scenes reminiscent of Nadia Comăneci at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, Canada, the manual scoreboard, which wasn’t equipped to show more than four digits, proudly displayed ‘0408’. Any confusion was short-lived, though, as Hohn was surrounded by photographers wishing to capture his ‘eternal world record’ for posterity.
The centre of gravity of the javelin was subsequently moved forward by four centimetres, such that the tip descended earlier and more steeply, thereby shortening throwing distances and eliminating dubious, ‘flat’ landings. The current world record, 98.48 metres, was set by Czech Jan Železný on May 25, 1996, but since the specification change, no-one else has come close to the triple-figure mark.