CHIBA, Japan -- First-round NBA draft pick Rui Hachimura scored 35 points to lead Japan to a 99-89 win over New Zealand in a World Cup warm-up game at Port Chiba Arena.

Hachimura became the first player from Japan to be chosen in the first round of the NBA draft, taken with the No. 9 overall pick by the rebuilding Washington Wizards in June. The former Gonzaga University star played in the NBA's Summer League for the Wizards and next will take up national duties for Japan at the World Cup and for other warm-up games, including against New Zealand again on Wednesday.

"We got off to a good start and went from there ... I want to lead this team,'' Hachimura said after Monday's game. "I'm just happy to be back in Japan after a while for these friendly games.''

The 21-year-old from Toyama Prefecture scored 22 points in the first half and impressed Detroit Pistons head coach Dwane Casey.

"I think he's going to be a heckuva player, the NBA is a physical game, a tough game. He's got a great body for the NBA,'' Casey, who is in Japan for a coaching clinic and was at the game as a spectator, told Kyodo News. "I see Rui ... developing his game to move out to the 3-point line. Because that's where the NBA is. Great kid, great work ethic.''

Tai Webster led New Zealand with 18 points. Japan played without Memphis Grizzlies forward Yuta Watanabe, who has an ankle injury. Japan opens its World Cup competition against Turkey on Sept. 1 in Shanghai and then takes on Czech Republic and the United States. The top two teams in the group will advance to the second round.

For years, the New Orleans Saints held back Drew Brees from winning his second Super Bowl. Now, could the biggest obstacle for the 2019 Saints actually be their star quarterback?

They enter the season with a 15.7% chance of winning the Super Bowl per ESPN's Football Power Index, odds that are second in the NFL behind the Chiefs, but those numbers surely rely upon the future Hall of Fame quarterback continuing to play at his accepted level of greatness.

In 2018, Brees was great ... until he wasn't. Through the first 11 games, he put together what might be the best stretch of play we've ever seen from an NFL quarterback, with the Saints starting 10-1 while averaging more than 37 points per game. Over his final four games of the regular season and in the Saints' two postseason contests, though -- sandwiched around a Teddy Bridgewater start in Week 17 -- Brees looked ordinary:

Overnight, he went from playing like an MVP to putting up numbers in the range of quarterbacks such as Derek Carr and Case Keenum. And while it was lost in the shuffle of the infamous missed pass-interference call against Nickell Robey-Coleman late in the fourth quarter of the NFC title game, Brees didn't play all that well in that loss to the Rams, averaging just 6.2 yards per attempt and turning a pair of short fields into just three points before throwing an interception on the first possession of overtime.

Do the Saints have something to be concerned about with their star quarterback? At 40 years old, Brees is in barely charted territory; the only other passers in league history to make it through a full season as a starter in their age-40 campaign are Tom Brady and Brett Favre. The good news for New Orleans is that both played well and made deep playoff runs, although Saints fans won't need to be reminded of how Favre's 2009 season ended.

Normally, I like to go through the research before detailing what I've found, but I'm going to stick the findings up here first this time. The best answer to the Brees question I just posed is "maybe." I don't think what happened at the end of 2018 necessarily indicates that Brees is going to be at the Carr level again in 2019. Simultaneously, though, there's no guarantee we will see the old Brees, because we just don't have a big enough sample of Hall of Fame quarterbacks getting to this point of their careers in the modern era to know what triggers their decline. Brees could fall off and become a middling quarterback for reasons totally unrelated to what we saw last season. So could Brady. Father Time arrives without warning.

Perhaps most important for Saints fans, even given that I expect New Orleans to decline in 2019, I still think the Saints are a viable Super Bowl contender if the Brees from those final few weeks shows up, given their strength elsewhere on the roster. Figuring out which edition of Brees will show up for the majority of 2019 is virtually impossible, but in going through a series of questions related to that bigger question, I think we can get to some interesting stuff about aging, quarterback play and what might happen with the Saints this season.

What happened at the end of 2019?

After watching those games again and looking over the numbers, there's not a clear, obvious cause for what happened to Brees after Thanksgiving. The best explanation is a confluence of factors coming together to drive the decline, including:

Regression toward the mean. In short, it might not be realistically possible for any quarterback to play for a full season as well as Brees had over the first 11 games of 2018. He wasn't due to struggle -- that's the gambler's fallacy -- but his true talent baseline isn't completing more than 76% of his passes while throwing nearly 15 touchdown passes for every interception, because nobody is that good.

As an example, take Brees' competition at the time for the MVP award, eventual winner Patrick Mahomes. Through the first 12 weeks of the season, Mahomes posted a Total QBR of 82.6, a passer rating of 117.9 and averaged just over 10.0 adjusted yards per attempt, or AY/A. (I'll be using AY/A, which counts touchdowns as worth 20 additional yards and interceptions as a 45-yard penalty, as an improvement upon passer rating in this piece. You can read more about that statistic here.)

After Week 12, Mahomes declined, albeit far more gently than his competition in New Orleans. From Week 13 on, Mahomes posted a Total QBR of 72.9, a passer rating of 103.6 and averaged 8.7 AY/A. It's just hard for any quarterback to be as good as Brees (or Mahomes) was during the first three months of the season, so it would have been natural to expect some drop-off from the Saints star over December and January. Obviously, Brees declined more than we would have expected given his history, so that's not enough of an answer on its own.

The road trip. Brees has exhibited a pronounced home/road split during his career; the Purdue product has averaged 8.1 AY/A and thrown 2.7 touchdowns for every interception at home, but Brees has fallen off to 7.1 AY/A while averaging 1.8 scores for every pick on the road. His decline started with three consecutive games on the road before a home game against the Steelers, in which he went 27-of-39 for 326 yards with a touchdown in his best outing of the final six. (He sat out the meaningless Week 17 game against the Panthers.)

Brees' road drop-off is typically attributed to weather after moving away from the climate-controlled confines of the Superdome, but I don't think weather played a big part here. His road trip included a game against the Cowboys in the Jerry Dome, a 71-degree afternoon in Tampa, Florida, and a 48-degree night game against the Panthers in Charlotte, North Carolina. His coldest game of the season was a 39-degree road game against the Bengals in early November, when the future Hall of Famer went a near-perfect 22-of-25 for 265 yards and three touchdowns. And when you include the two playoff games, Brees played exactly as many games at home as he did on the road during this six-game decline, so traveling doesn't tell the full story, either.

The deep passes. Brees was an absolute savage on deep throws during his dominant start, but that mastery seemed to fade as the season went along. The NFL defines deep passes as throws traveling 16 or more yards in the air, and during the first 11 games, Brees completed more than 60% of those throws, averaged nearly 17 yards per attempt and tossed nine touchdown passes against just one pick.

During his six-game end to the season, though, Brees completed just 41.3% of those passes, averaged 10.8 yards per attempt and threw two picks against one lone touchdown pass, which came on his first deep attempt of that stretch, to Keith Kirkwood. During one stretch against the Panthers and Steelers, Brees was just 1-of-9 for 19 yards on deep throws.

In watching Brees actually throw, though, I don't see a quarterback who was struggling to hit his receivers downfield. He was playing well and generally putting the ball in the right place at the right time. That 1-of-9 stretch included potentially six perfect or nearly perfect throws, with those passes either dropped, broken up by defenders who made great plays or caught.

The Saints coaches didn't appear to think that Brees was struggling to complete deep throws, either, given that the veteran quarterback was dialing them up about as frequently as he had been during that early run. He averaged 5.7 deep passes per game during the 11-game start to the season, and he averaged five deep throws per game through his next five starts. The sixth game was the loss to the Rams, which is a good representation of what Brees dealt with here.

The Rams played a fair amount of two-deep coverage and tried to force everything underneath, which is why Brees was 11-of-13 on throws to Alvin Kamara in the NFC Championship Game. Brees took four deep shots during that game. One was a perfectly placed pass to tight end Dan Arnold, only for the backup to drop a would-be touchdown on the final attempt of the opening drive. The second was a third-and-17 dig route to Ted Ginn Jr., who got open, only for Brees either to expect Ginn to settle on the route or throw behind his receiver. The third was the 43-yard pass to Ginn in the fourth quarter that set up the fateful non-call, and while that throw hung on Brees a bit, he put the pass where it needed to go. The fourth and final throw was his last pass of the season, the interception he threw while being hit in his motion (and arguably in the helmet) by Dante Fowler Jr.

As with the bigger picture, it's not as though Brees just forgot how to hit his receivers downfield. He naturally regressed toward the rest of the league and had some bad luck in a small sample.

A red zone decline. Again, the Saints were just running too hot to keep going at their pre-Thanksgiving rate. Brees & Co. averaged 5.7 points per red zone trip through the first 12 weeks of the season, which is ridiculous, even by their standards. For context, between the first 12 weeks of the season from 2013 to 2017, the Saints averaged just under an even 5.0 points per red zone trip. From Week 13 on, the Saints hit 4.9 points per red zone trip, which is right at the league average over that same time frame.

Brees' performance didn't slip much in the red zone over that stretch, either by the numbers or on tape, although he did put a slant to Michael Thomas low two plays before the infamous no-call against Robey-Coleman. They dropped one of his 72 red zone pass attempts during the first 12 weeks of the season, only to put three of Brees' 32 attempts on the ground afterward. Arnold dropped a would-be touchdown in the first quarter against the Rams, Ginn dropped a quick out in the same game, and Tommylee Lewis dropped a slant on a pick play inside the 5-yard line against the Cowboys which might have gone for a score. The Arnold drive ended in a field goal, and Smith's drop was on first-and-goal on a series which ended with Kamara getting stuffed at the goal line. Both games were decided by three points.

Pressure. The Saints lost star left tackle Terron Armstead in that 51-14 victory over the Bengals, but there's not a real clear correlation between Armstead's absence and Brees' drop-off. They scored 79 points in the first two games Armstead missed, wins against the Eagles and Falcons. Armstead did sit out the three-game road trip, but he was back on the field for Brees' three subsequent home starts to end the season.

Furthermore, Brees wasn't pressured at a significantly higher rate during his decline. He was actually pressured more frequently during his hot start (20.8%) than his subsequent falloff (19.5%). What changed was how successful opposing teams were when they did pressure Brees. Before Thanksgiving, teams turned just under 13% of their pressures against Brees into sacks. Afterward, that figure nearly doubled, to 25%.

The pressure also told with takeaways. After throwing two interceptions through 12 weeks, Brees threw five over the ensuing six games. Three were a direct result of pressure -- this short-armed checkdown to Kamara against the Cowboys, a rushed screen pass against the Buccaneers and the season-ending interception against the Rams.

The other two were different stories. One was a very good throw to Arnold against the Panthers, only for the ball to be dislodged by Thomas Davis' helmet and picked off by James Bradberry. The other was an underthrown bomb on the first play of the game against the Eagles on a play that should have resulted in a long Ginn touchdown, only for Cre'von LeBlanc to take away the pass.

What about that play against Atlanta?

In an attempt to draw a clear line between Brees' two seasons, some have pointed to the Thanksgiving night win over the Falcons and the tackle Brees attempted on his second interception of the season. After an ill-advised throw was picked off by Damontae Kazee, the Falcons safety attempted to return the pass for a pick-six. Kazee should have been (and eventually was) ruled down at the point of the catch, but without a whistle being blown, Brees attempted to take on blocking Falcons corner Desmond Trufant and was whipped sideways as Kazee ran past.

The timing on a macro level makes sense, given that Brees' second season started with the Cowboys game the following week. The problem with that theory, though, is that Brees threw that interception against the Falcons in the first quarter. Over the remainder of the game, he went 10-of-15 for 115 yards with three touchdowns and no picks. The Saints didn't need much from Brees in a game during which they ran for 150 yards and the Falcons turned the ball over four times, but when they called on their star quarterback, he was efficient and extremely effective.

Is it possible that Brees rode an adrenaline high (or a painkilling shot) in the game, woke up sore, and then wasn't the same player after that Thursday night game? I suppose, but Occam's razor suggests that Brees wouldn't have been his usual dominant self for three quarters after the hit before suddenly declining the following week against Dallas. I'm skeptical the hit played a significant role in his falloff.

Did Brees simply get tired?

Every quarterback wears down some as the season goes along, but I don't think there's a strong case for fatigue as the most likely cause of the decline. Brees doesn't have a notable track record of declining as the year goes along. Over his career, he has roughly posted the same AY/A in September (7.37 AY/A) as he has in December and January regular-season games (7.35 AY/A).

Could Brees' age make him more likely to gas out late in the season? Perhaps. I went back through 2001 and split the league's quarterbacks into four groups by their age as of Sept. 1 in each season to see if older quarterbacks were more likely to decline toward the end of the season than their younger counterparts. Brees fell into the camp of quarterbacks who were 36 and older, and the rest were split up with 31-35-year-olds, 26-30-year-olds and the 25-and-younger crowd.

When you compare their AY/A in December and regular season-games from January to their performance in September, October and November, the elder statesmen do drop off by about 6.6%. It's not enough to explain the entirety of Brees' decline, given that his regular-season AY/A fell off by about 33% between the first three months of the season and his three-game stretch in December, but it's probably some small part of the equation.

With that being said, it's hardly as if the Saints overworked Brees. The same quarterback who once routinely topped 450 passes between September and November -- topping out at 492 in 2012 -- threw only 384 passes through his first 12 games between September and November this time around.

So, has Brees lost it?

He could come back as a mediocre quarterback in 2019, but I don't think last season's falloff is enough to prove anything. For one, he wasn't even that bad; he wasn't that far off statistically from league average over his six-game stint. Brees looked better than his numbers on tape. All of the infrastructure surrounding him returns besides Mark Ingram, and the Saints actually upgraded offensive weapons by adding Jared Cook.

Brees has also come back from worse stints in the past. I put together a rolling five-game average of AY/A for each of his games with 10 or more pass attempts and then constructed a weighted league average to measure how Brees compared to the rest of the NFL's quarterbacks. I didn't include postseason games, but in the final five games of 2018, Brees was 7.5% below league average.

Even given that he was as high as 44.1% above league average earlier in the season, 7.5% below average just isn't remarkably bad. Brees was 3.7% below average over a five-game stint in December 2016 after throwing three interceptions in back-to-back games and nine over a five-game stretch. He showed no ill effects the following season. In October 2015, Brees dropped to 7.2% below average and then proceeded to throw 28 touchdowns against nine picks the rest of the way. Randomness and the aforementioned factors in a small sample are more likely to have driven Brees' decline than an inescapable, terminal plunge. My most likely outcome for him is that he's about halfway between league average and the lofty heights of his 11-game start to 2018.

With that being said, though, there's a chance Brees does drop to replacement level in 2019. Every quarterback in this age bracket has some chance of turning into a pumpkin in any given season without warning. Even if I don't think those final few games represent a meaningful indicator, history tells us Brees has some chance of falling out of contention in 2019.

What happens to Hall of Fame quarterbacks as they approach/pass 40?

Generally, they're great until the bottom suddenly falls out. We don't have many modern quarterbacks who really compare to Brees, so we don't have a huge sample of what happens at the end of their careers. From what we've seen, things generally don't end well. When you look at these past two generations of star quarterbacks, their careers seem to end one of three ways:

• Serious injuries: Troy Aikman (retired after age-34 season), Steve Young (38)

• Significant, sudden decline: Brett Favre (41), Jim Kelly (36), Dan Marino (38), Peyton Manning (39)

• Above-average play before leaving on own terms: John Elway (38), Joe Montana (38)

The one guy who doesn't really fit into any one group is Warren Moon, who was a Pro Bowler for the Seahawks in his age-41 season before being benched for Jon Kitna the following year and spending two seasons with the Chiefs as a backup. Aikman could also fit in the serious decline group, given that he had been right at or above league average for his entire career before taking a major step backward and posting a 78 AY/A+ in that final year before his concussion issues.

When my colleague Mike Triplett asked the Saints earlier this month whether they were concerned about Brees' disappointing end to 2018, they responded in the way you might expect: by expressing their confidence that Brees would continue to be great. Quarterbacks coach Joe Lombardi even referenced Nicholas Taleb's book "Fooled by Randomness" while suggesting what happened to Brees was more due to random chance than any sort of pattern. I mostly agree.

Where I disagree with Lombardi, though, is in what he said to Triplett next. "Listen, we didn't just score 48 points and then all of a sudden, one day later, age caught up to him," Lombardi said. "That's ridiculous, it's absurd."

I don't think it's quite as unlikely as Lombardi is suggesting. At the very least, we have several recent examples of quarterbacks playing at a world-class level before suddenly, inexplicably declining, including a strong comp for what happened to Brees last season:

• Favre threw 33 touchdown passes against seven picks during his age-40 season in 2009 and put an exclamation point on his season with a four-touchdown, 148.7-passer rating game against the Giants. He threw for four more touchdowns in a 34-3 blowout of the Cowboys in the divisional round before he famously threw a pair of picks in the dramatic NFC title game loss to the Saints. The following season, Favre threw just 11 touchdown passes against 19 interceptions and subsequently retired.

• Kelly was above league average at 35, including a 237-yard, four-touchdown game against the Rams in December 1995. The Bills made the playoffs and scored 37 points in a wild-card game win, although he wasn't spectacular. The following season, a 36-year-old Kelly threw 14 touchdown passes against 19 picks, his sack rate spiked to 8.9%, and the future Hall of Famer subsequently retired.

• Marino was an above-average passer at age 37, including a 355-yard, four-touchdown performance in Week 16 of the 1998 season against the Broncos. He had a couple of big games left in him, including a 393-yard, two-touchdown performance against the Colts in Week 4 of the following year, but Marino threw 12 touchdown passes against 17 picks that year, struggled to stay healthy, and retired after a 62-7 playoff loss to the Jaguars.

• The most obvious comparison might be Manning, who was an MVP candidate during his age-38 season in 2014. Manning threw for 257 yards and four touchdowns in a 39-36 win over the Dolphins. He was averaging 323.5 passing yards per game with 34 touchdowns against nine interceptions through that Dolphins win; over the final five games of the regular season, the former Colts star averaged 233.8 yards per game with five touchdowns against six picks. Manning struggled in a playoff loss to his old employers and threw for nine touchdowns against just 17 picks in a 2015 season where he was benched for Brock Osweiler.

Aikman and Young both retired as a result of injuries. The only guys who rode off on their horse into the sunset while playing well were Elway, who left after winning his second consecutive Super Bowl, and Montana, who had come back after missing the better part of two full seasons with injuries. Brees is now older than both were.

In looking through the end of each player's career, there's no sort of trend or indicator I can find that represented proof of their coming decline. If I do the same rolling AY/A average for each of them as I did for Brees, they resided in similarly lofty heights to Brees before declining rapidly in their final season.

As a Broncos player, Manning only dropped below league average over a five-game sample by Week 17 of the 2014 season, when his AY/A was 5.1% below the mark. Despite the fact that he was 34.2% above league average over a five-game stretch as recently as Week 9, Manning never made it back above league average. Does that mean Brees will follow in Manning's footsteps this upcoming season? It's possible, but one dominant quarterback's career path isn't proof that Brees will follow suit.

The instructive way to think about quarterback aging, I think, is like this: As a Hall of Fame-caliber passer enters his late 30s, there's some percentage chance that he'll suddenly lose it and become a replacement-level quarterback. Those chances grow greater with each advancing year of aging. The risk increases for passers with injury histories and for quarterbacks whose infrastructure collapses around them. Neither of those categories fit Brees, but as a 40-year-old quarterback, there's just not enough of a sample size to say much about his chances of declining.

Is there a 10% chance Brees drastically declines and is barely playable in 2019? I buy that. How about 20%? Maybe. Or 50%? That seems too high. It seems crazy to think that the bottom could suddenly fall out for a quarterback as good as Brees (or, for that matter, Brady), but the same was true for these other Hall of Fame-caliber quarterbacks too. The thing about falling off a cliff is that you don't see it coming.

Can the Saints win even if Brees does crater?

They can, and I don't have to go back very far for an example of how to pull it off. I brought up Manning's 2014-15 decline as the most plausible comparison for a Brees drop-off, but you also probably remember what happened as Manning went from an MVP candidate in 2014 to Osweiler-grade in 2015: The Broncos won Super Bowl 50! They had to bench Manning for Osweiler and then sub Manning back in for part of Week 17 and the playoffs, but the Broncos rode home-field advantage to the Super Bowl and then handily beat the Panthers in Santa Clara 24-10.

Manning was a passenger on that trip. He was barely passable even during the postseason, completing 55.4% of his passes while averaging 5.8 AY/A. He didn't even fill the classic game-manager role by holding on to the football, as the future Hall of Famer turned the ball over three times in three games. He finished 11th among the league's 12 quarterbacks that postseason in Total QBR, with a mark of 28.4.

The Broncos won that Super Bowl because of what was around their quarterback, namely, the defense. Denver's defense forced seven takeaways in three games and absolutely beat up opposing quarterbacks. Von Miller & Co. racked up 14 sacks and a staggering 33 knockdowns over three games, including 17 knockdowns of Tom Brady in the AFC Championship Game. Injuries helped, too; the Steelers were without Antonio Brown and Le'Veon Bell and had a gimpy Ben Roethlisberger after a brutal wild-card game against the Bengals, and the Patriots were without starting left tackle Nate Solder for most of that season.

It's not difficult to imagine the Saints winning games on the strength of their defense. The 2015 Broncos led the league in defensive DVOA, coming in 25.8% below league average. (With defensive DVOA, below average is good.) The Saints were only 11th in the league last season, with a DVOA 2.9% below league average, but they improved mightily after replacing Ken Crawley with Eli Apple. Over the second half of the season and into the playoffs, New Orleans boasted the fifth-best defense in football on a per-game basis by win probability added. Given its young talent on that side of the ball, it's not out of the question that this defense sticks as one of the top five defenses in football in 2019.

Of course, the Saints' offense also should be better than that of the 2015 Broncos, even if Brees does fall off. In Teddy Bridgewater, the Saints should have a better backup than the Broncos did with Osweiler. Their running game is also likely to be better than that Broncos team was at running the ball if Alvin Kamara stays healthy, though they'll need to adjust after losing center Max Unger to retirement. That Broncos team ranked 25th in offensive DVOA; a Saints team with Bridgewater under center for half of the season should theoretically be able to top that mark.

"I don't know" isn't the most satisfying answer anyone can give for what Brees will do in 2019, but it's the most realistic response to the question. Anyone who tells you they know for sure how Brees will play is lying. Given how he has played at a high level for the vast majority of his career, my best guess is that he'll continue to maintain a Pro Bowl-caliber level of play, minus some moderate penalty for aging. After what Brees showed before and after Thanksgiving last season, though, the error bars for any projection are far larger than they would be for most veteran quarterbacks. Everything from an MVP award to a benching-worthy campaign is possible for him this season.

The elite orienteer explains how every second counts in her sport

Megan Carter-Davies joined her first orienteering club – the Mid-Wales OC – as an eight-year-old and became a member of the Welsh junior squad after a couple of years, running her first junior inter-regionals and junior home internationals aged 12.

She has gone on to place 20th at the World Orienteering Championships and hopes to improve on that at this year’s event in Østfold, Norway.

Here Carter-Davies shares some insight into her sport and its crossover with running.

Athletics Weekly: What was your route into orienteering? Were you a runner, or an orienteer, first?

Megan Carter-Davies: A bit of both. I started doing cross-country races in primary school and also first tried orienteering when I was eight years old. I continued with both, and as I got more into orienteering, the running became more important to me. I started to focus on training when I was about 14.

READ MORE: World Orienteering Week: Interview with Ralph Street

AW: What do you love most about orienteering?

MCD: I absolutely love the feeling of racing, having to stay focused the whole time. At elite level, every second counts. We run hard for the entire race across rough terrain, up and down hills, weaving through trees and ducking under branches. At the same time we read the map (while running!), look up to see where we need to go, make decisions about our route, and all while being conscious of our next step. Undoubtedly mistakes are made, so it’s all to play for while you’re out there. I also love that we get to run in so many interesting and beautiful places.

AW: How do you prepare for major championships? Do you have an ‘average’ training week?

MCD: During the week, my training is similar to that of a typical 5km or 10km runner. On the weekends it’s time for orienteering – both to practise the technical skills and get some time running in tougher terrain. It takes time to organise orienteering so I usually go to local races for this. Overall, this puts me at around 60km a week, supplemented by a cycle commute on week days and a bit of gym work.

AW: Can you talk about the crossover between the two sports and the necessary skillsets?

MCD: Forest orienteering is most similar to trail or fell running in the athletics world, with hills and uneven ground. We call it ‘forest’ but it could also be on sand dunes or a moorland. The map reading takes time to pick up as there are a lot of different things to consider like contours, vegetation, direction and distance judgement. Mistakes are fairly common in this style of orienteering, but those who can navigate better and keep mistakes to a minimum tend to succeed. We also have orienteering in urban areas. The navigation is simpler since it’s easy to make sense of the buildings and roads. The challenge comes with making quick decisions as you can race so much faster on tarmac. While you still need to be agile, speed is a more important factor here than in the forest. Many of the world champions in the sprint distance (short urban races) have also represented their country in athletics somehow. In terms of skills, it would be easier for runners to get involved in urban orienteering but, if you want to try ‘forest’ orienteering, there are usually club members at local races who will be happy to help.

READ MORE: World Orienteering Week: Interview with Cat Taylor

AW: What are your key 2019 targets in both running and orienteering?

MCD: Last year I came 20th at the World Championships, and my aim for this year is to improve on that. I am working on getting faster and would like to be able to run close to a 17-minute 5km time this summer. Other than that, I will keep orienteering as much as I can. I have a couple of training camps in Scandinavia lined up so I can get used to racing in similar forests ahead of the World Champs in Norway in August. As a team, we are aiming for a top result in the relays too.

AW: What are you most proud of having achieved in your elite career so far?

MCD: I think the coolest moment was at the World University Champs in 2016. After great performances from Charlotte Ward, Peter Hodkinson and Kris Jones, I was sent out in first place for the last leg of the sprint relay and got to bring us home to the gold medal! It was great to race with them again in the World Champs last year. I’m also proud of my 20th place in the World Champs middle distance last year and happy that I was able to make an easy transition from junior to senior level.

British number one Johanna Konta's US Open preparations continued with a second straight defeat as she lost in the Cincinnati Masters first round.

Konta, 28, was beaten 6-3 3-6 7-5 by Swedish qualifier Rebecca Petersen.

The world number 14 trailed 4-1 in the final set but recovered to level at 4-4 before Petersen took her fourth break point of the match to seal victory.

Konta lost to Ukrainian teenager Dayana Yastremska in the first round of the Rogers Cup in Toronto last week.

Meanwhile, seven-time Grand Slam champion Venus Williams, 39, ended a four-match losing streak by beating fellow American Lauren Davis 7-5 6-2.

Former world number one Andy Murray says he will not play singles at the US Open later this month.

On Monday Murray played his first singles match since career-saving hip surgery in January - a 6-4 6-4 loss to France's Richard Gasquet in Cincinnati.

However, he had been asked to make a decision on accepting a wildcard for the US Open prior to facing Gasquet.

"I didn't feel I was able to make that decision before today's match," said Murray, 32.

The Briton says he intends to play doubles and mixed doubles at the Grand Slam in New York, which starts on 26 August.

The three-time Grand Slam winner broke down in tears at January's Australian Open, fearing his career might be over. He believed surgery on his long-standing hip injury may end his chances of playing singles but has instead left him pain free and able to resume his career.

Murray consistently said he would not want his first tournament back to be over five sets at the US Open and playing over three in Cincinnati first left the door ajar for a potential follow-up appearance at Flushing Meadows.

The 2012 US Open champion, now ranked 324th in the world, could have used his injury-projected ranking to enter the Grand Slam but instead decided to wait until nearer the time to assess his fitness.

He had been offered a wildcard by the United States Tennis Association, but Murray said: "We were hoping to hold a wildcard until nearer the time and see how it feels.

"But the US Open were announcing their wildcards today and I didn't feel I was able to make that decision before today's match.

"I didn't want to take the wildcard today because didn't know how I would feel after the match.

"I also wanted to maybe wait and see how I felt after maybe playing a couple of matches and how I recover the next day."

Murray said he might play singles at the Winston-Salem Open next week.

He has already confirmed he will play two tournaments in China - the inaugural Zhuhai Championships and the Beijing Open, which he won in 2016 - in late September.

Encouraging signs for Murray on singles return

Murray returned to competitive action in the Queen's doubles in June - going on to win the tournament alongside Spain's Feliciano Lopez - and has played in four more doubles events.

But his ultimate goal was always returning to singles action after having an operation with former Royal surgeon Sarah Muirhead-Allwood which he described as "life-changing".

The Scot feared having the operation - where the femur head is smoothed down and covered with a metal cap - would leave him having to call time on an illustrious career which has also seen him win 45 ATP singles titles and two Olympic gold medals.

No player had ever had the operation and then resumed their singles career.

From the moment Murray emerged onto the centre court in Cincinnati, smiling broadly and holding his mobile phone - presumably filming footage which he will use on his social media accounts - it was clear how much it meant to him.

Despite all the Grand Slam finals and title-defining matches, including many against the game's greats in Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, nerves were still there as he made a slow start.

Starting with a double fault, he went on to lose his serve in the opening game and fought off another break point as former world number seven Gasquet threatened to move 3-0 ahead.

Instead the Briton levelled at 2-2 after breaking back in the next game, only to trail again when Gasquet tested Murray's ability to change direction quickly on the deuce side of the court - with it being his right hip operated on - with a fizzing forehand winner for a 4-3 lead.

Gasquet, 33, served out the set with little problem, then broke again in the first game of the second set.

Murray continued to struggle to land first serves, although he did manage to stretch out Gasquet's service games without managing to break back, as the Frenchman went on to seal victory in one hour and 36 minutes.

Gasquet, who missed the first four months of the season after groin surgery, will play Austrian world number four Dominic Thiem in the second round.

Analysis

BBC Tennis correspondent Russell Fuller

Hard though he tried, Murray was unable to recover from poor service games at the start of both sets.

But he moved through the gears nicely after a very edgy start, and was able to put a lot of pressure on Gasquet's serve.

With his movement improving, there was one game in the middle of the second set in particular which pointed to a brighter future.

Murray covered a lot of ground to produce a flurry of winners, but the battle-hardened Gasquet still hung on to his serve.

The crowd were very subdued. They were respectful of Gasquet's superiority, but perhaps had unrealistic aspirations for the returning Murray.

Andy Murray does not tend to sugar coat his answers.

He accepts there are reasons to be cheerful after his 6-4 6-4 defeat by Richard Gasquet in Cincinnati, but admits he is "quite far away from where I would like to be".

That is to be expected after just two weeks of dedicated practice before his first singles match for seven months.

Murray will only play doubles in New York, when the US Open gets under way in a fortnight. But you can now consider him a singles player above all else once again.

A singles player who expects to be back in his peak physical condition in January: 12 months after the second operation on his right hip.

"I think nine to 12 months after the operation is when I would expect to be getting close to the best that I can be physically - and speed wise I should be fully recovered by 12 months," Murray told BBC Sport.

The 32-year-old regularly measures his speed around the court. Those numbers are improving, he says, but they only tell you so much.

"They have improved, but they are quite linear speeds, and repeatable tests, whereas on a match court you are changing direction and having to react to balls and anticipate.

"The way to get that back is by playing matches. You can hit as many speed targets as you like, but once you get out on court it's very different. I don't feel I was very slow out on the court today, but I was not as quick as I would have liked."

Murray will decide over the next few days whether to play singles in Winston-Salem, in North Carolina next week. He will then have plenty of opportunity to practise his singles during the US Open before he heads in September to China, where he tends to play well.

Appearances in Zhuhai and Beijing are already in the diary, with the possibility of adding Shanghai to his schedule the week after. There are then three further weeks of tournaments in Europe before the regular season comes to an end.

"I'm certainly not going to go backwards from here," Murray says.

"Every time I've practised singles so far, it's all just been practice sets because I was trying to get back on the match court.

"But once you actually get out there and start playing you realise, 'Wow,' my return needs to get better; I need to improve my serve. I need to get myself on the practice court and work on those things specifically."

It will take Murray some time. It is not just that he has missed seven months this year.

He was only able to play six events in the preceding 18 months (on a hip that was still not fit for purpose), and even the very best need a considerable period to regain that match sharpness after such an age away from the tour.

Even if they are not playing with a resurfaced metal hip.

"It will be exciting and interesting to see how I get on," Murray concluded.

"It's not something that's been tried or done before in tennis. Hopefully if it goes well it will be an option for more athletes down the line."

Head coach Eddie Jones said England "need people who have got a samurai spirit" after naming his squad for the Rugby World Cup in Japan.

Jones gave shock call-ups to flanker Lewis Ludlam and uncapped wing Ruaridh McConnochie in the 31-man group.

Gloucester scrum-half Willi Heinz, 32, whose England debut came in Sunday's win against Wales, is also in the squad, but centre Ben Te'o is not.

"You need guys who are mature, who enjoy life," said Jones.

"And we've deliberately picked a squad like that because it's going to be an important factor.

"This is an enormous cultural event apart from being a sporting event and you've got to be able to cope with the different culture."

The World Cup runs from 20 September to 2 November, with Jones naming his squad weeks in advance of the World Rugby deadline of 8 September.

It will be the first time the tournament has been held in Asia and the England head coach believes this will make the competition even tougher.

"I think it is the most competitive World Cup," Jones told BBC Radio 5 Live Sport's Rugby Union Weekly.

"That's exacerbated by the fact it's in a neutral country and a non-rugby country which is going to add a number of distractions. The first couple of rounds some teams may struggle to adapt to the circumstances of the tournament, which is going to be different."

Another surprise inclusion in the squad was versatile back Piers Francis, who earned a place at the expense of Te'o, with the latter involved in an off-field incident at a training camp in Italy.

But Jones refused to confirm whether Te'o's exclusion from the squad was related to this event.

"I'm not going to go into the reasons why [Ben] is not selected. We've had that conversation with Ben and he understands it," he explained.

"Whether he agrees with it is another matter but we've had that discussion with him and he's just not in our top 31 players at the moment."

'It's nice to bring new blood in'

Northampton back row Ludlam, 23, impressed as he made his England debut on Sunday, but former international sevens player McConnochie, 27, was denied that opportunity, having to withdraw from the starting XV due to injury.

Although he has had limited opportunities to see them play Test rugby, Jones is certain both can contribute to England's World Cup campaign.

"It's always nice to bring new blood in," he said. "It freshens everything up and when you've got that enthusiasm as young players do, it helps to add to the squad.

"Ruaridh we've been watching quite closely through the club season. He's a good worker, good communicator. He plays a number of positions so he was an easy selection in the end.

"Lewis came from nowhere. We watched him in club rugby and he'd done particularly well. We thought we'd roll the dice, bring him into camp and see what he can offer.

"Every week he's got a little bit better. We saw against Wales a display that's only just the start of his career."

England captain Owen Farrell, 27, has been equally impressed by the new arrivals, especially those - like Ludlam, hooker Jack Singleton and Heinz - who earned their first cap in the warm-up match against Wales.

"A few of the lads who made their first cap brought a whole lot of energy and weren't waiting for anyone else to show them the way. They led from the front," Farrell said.

"The lads have done really well to get selected for the World Cup but there's still a lot of work to be done so we've got to get excited about doing that work."

'Players left out have still got to be ready'

England's first World Cup match against Tonga on 22 September is still over a month away and Jones has already had injuries to contend with.

Tom Curry left the pitch holding his right arm early in the second half on Sunday and Jones said that would be a "small amount of weeks' injury", while the 59-year-old added Exeter wing Jack Nowell is "on track" to recover from an ankle problem in time for the World Cup.

Henry Slade and Sam Underhill were named in the starting side for the Wales game and withdrew the day before, but Jones said Slade's knee issue was a "two or three week injury" and Underhill could return before the warm-up game against Ireland on 24 August.

Nevertheless, the England head coach warned those who had been omitted from his side that they may be needed should any more serious injuries occur before the tournament begins.

He said: "They've still got to be ready because the circumstance of the World Cup dictates that you have injuries and they could get their opportunity later down the track."

England face Wales in Cardiff for their second warm-up match on 17 August, before the Test against Ireland and a final game against Italy on 6 September.

England World Cup squad

Forwards: Dan Cole (Leicester, 86 caps), Luke Cowan-Dickie (Exeter, 12), Tom Curry (Sale, 11), Ellis Genge (Leicester, 10), Jamie George (Saracens, 37), Maro Itoje (Saracens, 27), George Kruis (Saracens, 32), Joe Launchbury (Wasps, 59), Courtney Lawes (Northampton, 72), Lewis Ludlam (Northampton, 1), Joe Marler (Harlequins, 58), Kyle Sinckler (Harlequins, 22), Jack Singleton (Saracens, 1), Sam Underhill (Bath, 9), Billy Vunipola (Saracens, 42), Mako Vunipola (Saracens, 53), Mark Wilson (Newcastle/Sale, 13).

Backs: Joe Cokanasiga (Bath, 5), Elliot Daly (Saracens, 31), Owen Farrell (Saracens, 70), George Ford (Leicester Tigers, 56), Piers Francis (Northampton, 5), Willi Heinz (Gloucester, 1), Jonathan Joseph (Bath, 41), Jonny May (Leicester, 45), Ruaridh McConnochie (Bath, uncapped), Jack Nowell (Exeter, 33), Henry Slade (Exeter, 22), Manu Tuilagi (Leicester, 33), Anthony Watson (Bath, 34), Ben Youngs (Leicester, 86).

KNOXVILLE, Iowa – The Jason Johnson Racing team has something figured out at Knoxville (Iowa) Raceway.

The No. 41 was fast all week, with David Gravel winning all three features he was in and giving the team its second NOS Energy Drink Knoxville Nationals triumph in the past four years.

• Logan Schuchart and Shark Racing are going to win one of the sport’s crown jewels. It’s only a matter of time.

Schuchart, who finished second in last month’s Kings Royal at Eldora Speedway, fought his way through Friday night’s Hard Knox program to make the main event for the third straight year.

His Drydene No. 1s was the fastest car on the track during the second half of Saturday night’s feature, as Schuchart blasted from 22nd on the grid to finish second.

• Saturday night at the Knoxville Nationals is one hot ticket. The event sold out for the second consecutive season — with all 20,322 seats sold.

• The Hard Knox qualifying on Friday night has added a lot of intrigue to the Knoxville Nationals.

• The margin between making the A-main and having a frustrating week can be razor thin. For example, Brian Brown made a dazzling move on the first lap of his Thursday night heat race to get into a transfer position. However, an accident before the end of the lap required a complete restart, and Brown didn’t make it back into the top four.

As a result, he ended up in the night’s B main and back far enough in points that he had to run the Hard Knox program on Friday. More bad luck there put him in Saturday’s C main.

Had he simply transferred through the heat race, he’d have had a very different Knoxville Nationals experience. Other drivers could tell similar stories.

• Race fans still love Steve Kinser and Sammy Swindell. A huge crowd showed up to watch the Ralph Sheheen Show Saturday afternoon at Knoxville Raceway with the two appearing together for the first two segments of the show.

Everyone was surprised when the two played to the crowd hand in hand at the end of their time on stage. Kudos to both for embracing what they mean to the fans of the sport.

• USAC midget champions Tanner Thorson and Spencer Bayston should each have quality winged sprint car rides. Both showed great speed in one-off Knoxville Nationals rides with CJB Motorsports and VanDyke Motorsports, respectively.

• Jason Sides has quality equipment. Tim Kaeding, who is racing a limited schedule in a second Jason Sides machine, again showed the speed that the Sides machines have. If he became a full-time owner, the popular free spirit could be one of the most successful owners in the sport.

• Aaron Reutzel and the Baughman Reutzel Motorsports team are factors anywhere they unload. The Ollie’s Bargain Outlet All Star Circuit of Champions point leader and reigning champion has seven victories this season and finished in the top five during the Knoxville Nationals A-main for the second consecutive year.

• There are a lot of competitive sprint car teams and drivers that do not run full time with a traveling series. Wednesday night winner Trey Starks, Parker Price-Miller, Cory Eliason, Tanner Thorson, Gio Scelzi and 52-year-old Tim Shaffer are among those who turned in stellar performances during the Knoxville Nationals.

• Shane Stewart is one gritty dude. After a somewhat embarrassing crash during his qualifying night, Stewart fought back and put the CJB Motorsports No. 5 in the feature. It was his 19th consecutive A-main start. He moved from 23rd to finish 12th.

• The late nights of the Knoxville Nationals aren’t as easy to navigate as they once were.

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INDIANAPOLIS – McLaren Racing head man Zak Brown knows full well the rich history that the British auto manufacturer has in American open wheel racing.

After all, three Indianapolis 500 victories – one as a chassis manufacturer with Mark Donohue and Team Penske in 1972 and factory team wins in both 1974 and 1976 with Johnny Rutherford – speak for themselves.

Now, in the wake of last week’s landmark announcement that McLaren will partner with Arrow Schmidt Peterson Motorsports to compete full time in the 2020 NTT IndyCar Series, Brown is hoping to rekindle the McLaren magic of the past and go toe to toe with the present-day titans of Indy car racing.

Brown spoke candidly on a media conference call Monday afternoon regarding the brand’s return to the IndyCar Series and his personal enthusiasm for coming back to a brand of racing that has meant so much to McLaren as a company.

“For me, this news is super exciting,” Brown said. “When I started at McLaren, obviously things had been very tough for us, so we needed to make sure we got our Formula One team back on track. We still have a long way to go, but we’re pointed in the right direction now and making a fair amount of progress … as I think we’ve shown by our on-track runs this year on that side.

“As far as McLaren goes, we have a long history (in racing), whether it was Can Am or whether it was IndyCar in the past or whether it was sports car racing. I think that McLaren Racing, its DNA is racing, and racing in multiple series if it makes sense,” Brown added. “So we are quite excited to go back to IndyCar, especially given our history there and the importance of the market.”

The move for McLaren to return to Indy car racing on a full-season basis comes after a dismal Month of May appearance for the marque as a factory effort – missing the Indianapolis 500 entirely despite the best efforts of two-time Formula One champion and international driving star Fernando Alonso.

That was a moment that revealed many of the flaws in McLaren Racing’s journey back to Indianapolis this year, flaws that Brown is determined not to repeat as the team takes a deeper step into the pool.

“We certainly made a lot of mistakes in Indianapolis this year, and as I told everyone on the racing team, mistakes are okay as long as you learn from them and you don’t make the same one twice,” Brown explained. “We always had a desire to compete on a full-time basis, and the way we did it in 2019 was kind of the start of ramping up. However, it’s very obvious that that’s not the right way to do it. What we are able to put in place for Sam (Schmidt) will give us that full-time presence and that platform to ensure that we’re competitive and don’t repeat the mistakes we made, which really was showing up with a part-time effort and a part-time crew that worked extremely hard.

“Indianapolis is a tough place to show up for anybody on a part-time basis, and so what we structured here with Sam, we think ticks a lot of the boxes as far as the technical aspects and the commercial aspects that enabled us to go ahead and commit,” Brown noted. “I think the view of my board was either let’s be all-in or all-out, and all the reasons we have wanted to do IndyCar the last couple years have remained, regardless of our defeat at Indianapolis.

“We’re racers, and in racing you’re going to hit the wall every once in a while; you just have to dust yourself off and go back at it.”

Going back at it will begin with the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg in March of next year, though McLaren Sporting Director Gil de Ferran – who will oversee the rebadged Arrow McLaren Racing SP Indy car operation – will be present at the final four races of the current season as a primer for 2020.

When opening day arrives on March 15, Brown said the team will be ready, with a host of backers behind them spurring them forward.

“We’ve had overwhelmingly great support, first and foremost, from the fans,” said Brown. “I think they are all quite excited to see McLaren back in IndyCar and in a full-time effort with Sam and Ric (Peterson) and our partners, who we knew would all be very supportive going into this.

“Our race team, IndyCar, and the industry itself have all showed that the response has been very, very positive, and we can’t wait to get to the start of the season next year and get the ball rolling.”