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Rugby World Cup: Danny Cipriani left out of England training camp
Danny Cipriani has been left out of England's latest training camp in Treviso, Italy.
The Gloucester fly-half was named in the official World Cup training squad earlier this month.
But the Premiership player of the year is not among a 38-man group travelling to Italy on Monday for a 12-day camp.
"We have left some good players doing work at their clubs and they must be ready if called up," said head coach Eddie Jones.
Cipriani was part of a small group of players who spent last week's Bristol training camp doing specialised strength and conditioning work off-site.
But while the Bath pair of Sam Underhill and Anthony Watson are both travelling to Italy this week, Cipriani, who is not injured, has been left at home.
While the RFU says Cipriani will continue to train with an England programme and is certainly not out of contention, his absence suggests his chances are slim of making the final 31-man World Cup squad, which is named on 12 August.
Exeter prop Ben Moon has also been omitted, while Harlequins centre Joe Marchant has been called up.
Experienced full-back Mike Brown is also included after initially missing out on selection.
The trio of injury concerns - prop Mako Vunipola, lock George Kruis, and wing Jack Nowell - are all involved.
"Treviso is a hard-yards camp with conditions similar to Tokyo," Jones explained.
"Team training will be about being adaptable and off the field enjoying each other's company."
Jones will finalise his World Cup party the day after England's opening World Cup warm-up match, which is on Sunday, 11 August against Wales at Twickenham.
England then face Wales in Cardiff, and Ireland at Twickenham, before their final pre-World Cup game, against Italy in Newcastle on Friday, 6 September.
England training squad
Forwards: Dan Cole (Leicester Tigers), Luke Cowan-Dickie (Exeter Chiefs), Tom Curry (Sale Sharks), Charlie Ewels (Bath Rugby), Ellis Genge (Leicester Tigers), Jamie George (Saracens), Maro Itoje (Saracens), George Kruis (Saracens), Joe Launchbury (Wasps), Courtney Lawes (Northampton Saints), Lewis Ludlam (Northampton Saints), Joe Marler (Harlequins), Brad Shields (Wasps), Kyle Sinckler (Harlequins), Jack Singleton (Saracens), Sam Underhill (Bath Rugby), Billy Vunipola (Saracens), Mako Vunipola (Saracens), Harry Williams (Exeter Chiefs), Mark Wilson (Newcastle Falcons / Sale Sharks)
Backs: Mike Brown (Harlequins), Joe Cokanasiga (Bath Rugby), Elliot Daly (Saracens), Owen Farrell (Saracens), George Ford (Leicester Tigers), Piers Francis (Northampton Saints), Willi Heinz (Gloucester Rugby), Jonathan Joseph (Bath Rugby), Joe Marchant (Harlequins), Jonny May (Leicester Tigers), Ruaridh McConnochie (Bath Rugby), Jack Nowell (Exeter Chiefs), Henry Slade (Exeter Chiefs), Ben Spencer (Saracens), Ben Te'o (unattached), Manu Tuilagi (Leicester Tigers), Anthony Watson (Bath Rugby), Ben Youngs (Leicester Tigers)
KNOXVILLE, Iowa – Axalta will serve as the primary sponsor of David Gravel and the Jason Johnson Racing No. 41 sprint car during the NOS Energy Drink Knoxville Nationals.
Representatives from the World of Outlaws NOS Energy Drink Sprint Car Series team made the official announcement on JJR’s Twitter page late Monday morning.
The news was first revealed by Adam Stern of the Sports Business Journal.
Per Stern, Axalta joins the JJR organization on the advice of retired four-time Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series champion Jeff Gordon, who was backed by Axalta throughout his NASCAR career and raced sprint cars before moving to stock cars in the early 1990s.
Gravel moved over to JJR this season from CJB Motorsports, and the pairing has produced impressive results through the first half of the season.
Driving the No. 41, Gravel has earned four wins, 23 top-five and 32 top-10 finishes in 41 feature starts through July 22. His most recent victory came on July 12 at Hartford (Mich.) Speedway.
Jason Johnson Racing won the Knoxville Nationals in 2016, with late team owner and namesake Jason Johnson holding off modern-era Outlaw kingpin Donny Schatz for the win.
Meanwhile, Gravel put up a perfect score of 500 points during his Knoxville preliminary night in 2017, but an engine failure during the championship feature left him unable to claim the $150,000 top prize.
CONCORD, N.C. — Another Indy 500 has come and gone and I am convinced THE RACE is back to the all-caps version I lived as a kid.
That is, THE RACE means the Indy 500, not any other (lowercase) race, for now and for all time.
For most of my life, that event has been among the brightest of lights for me. It was on par with Christmas, my birthday and basketball state championships (I am a Hoosier, by the grace of God).
Amid the past troubles with the formation of CART, the subsequent outing of USAC, the formation of the IRL, which morphed into IndyCar, there were some lean years for the 500, which resulted in the de-capitalization of the word race.
No longer.
It’s as if I blinked and the 500-Mile Race reappeared, in all its glory and portent, the same way it had been when I started attending during the 1970s.
Now, Indy 500 purists (and I count myself one) have differing opinions of the event. Some like it, some tolerate it and some outright despise it, for his or her own reasons. I never despised it, regardless of some ham-handedness from certain parties, but there were a few years when the interest factor waned a bit.
I always paid attention and always watched the race, usually from Charlotte Motor Speedway, seeing as how I worked in NASCAR at the time.
The past five or so races? They were for sure and certain the pure quill.
This year’s race was gold, too. Simon Pagenaud owned the month, but Alexander Rossi’s ride amid the Red Mist was the stuff of legends, harking back to stirring drives by guys such as A.J. Foyt, Rick Mears, Gordon Johncock and Mario Andretti. He fell a few feet short, but the show was one for the ages.
Pagenaud became the first French driver to win since Calvin Coolidge was in the White House (1920, to be exact) and he did it with a gritty drive of his own. He was on a mission, too, leading more than half the race to earn his likeness on the Borg-Warner Trophy.
The racing was better too, these past four or five years, than at any time since the heyday of the 1970s and 1980s. At no time was any driver just a mortal lock to cross the finish line three-quarters of a lap ahead of the runner-up. The formula seems to be working in terms of competition and the new cars look damned smart.
I love the fact that the drivers, from the oldest driver in the field down to the kids just out of high school, can point these missiles where they need to go and generally don’t cause the kinds of stupid wrecks we’ve seen in years past.
The pageantry was spectacular as always and I thought NBC did justice to the pomp and ceremony the way ABC had done for many years. The flyover was by-God wonderful, too, though I wonder how the F-15 was able to hang low and slow with the other planes.
Feelings are fleeting at times and difficult to describe at others. There’s an essence about Indy for me that had been, if not missing, then not nearly as evident as it was for the past 40 years. That essence was in full bloom and glory this year and it was a wondrous feeling.
I’ve often said the Indy 500 is the race of all races, the Boss Daddy of all motorized contests the world over. It was when I was a kid, it was when I was a young man and it has returned to its unquestioned position atop the motorsports mountain.
Sure, there aren’t any more Unsers, Foyts or Rutherfords in the field and Tony Hulman has been gone since 1977. Most of the people I knew from my earliest days at the speedway are either gone or no longer involved, and it was the people who made it great.
But this past May, at The Greatest Spectacle in Racing, I could feel them all watching and smiling and clapping and shaking their heads at the race that was put on that day.
The all-caps version of THE RACE was back, and it appears that it will remain in all caps for the foreseeable future.
LONG POND, Pa. – The nickname for Pocono Raceway – the Tricky Triangle – is a cute and fitting slogan.
It might win the overly obvious award because the speedway’s triangular layout is indeed tricky for drivers and teams alike.
For the drivers in Friday’s FortsUSA 150 at Pocono, the track’s three distinct corners present a challenge. Each has a different radius, a different degree of banking, and a different way to approach each one. For some drivers, the best way to approach the track’s challenging turns is to use skills from road racing.
On a road course, every one of each circuit’s turns is vastly different. The same thing goes for Pocono, except there are no turns to the right. So drivers with a little road racing expertise may have a slight advantage over the competition.
At least that’s what Michael Self is hoping.
Self, who has a 90-point lead in the ARCA Menards Series championship standings over second-place Bret Holmes, made the transition to stock cars after starting his career in road racing. Although he doesn’t compete regularly in sports car events on road courses, he’s still an active driver coach. He recently guided recent Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series winner Justin Haley to the 2016 NASCAR K&N Pro Series East championship and assisted Haley when he raced in the SCCA Trans-Am TA2 Series.
Even with expertise that other drivers don’t have, Self and his Venturini Motorsports team led by veteran crew chief Shannon Rursch found the Tricky Triangle to be just that.
“This year the biggest challenge we had the first time we were there was setup,” Self said. “We fought it all weekend long before we had a mechanical issue with the car. As far as driver goes, Pocono is very demanding. It’s very disciplined. It’s easy to over drive even though it’s so big. You can bite yourself really badly and not even realize you’re doing it until you watch video or on Dartfish.”
Dartfish is a program that allows a driver and team to overlay video of two laps to make a direct comparison. Self and his team use it extensively and it helped him figure out the best way to handle Pocono as a driver.
“On test day I was over driving it really bad,” he said. “I watched the Dartfish video and decided that I was going to calm down and we went out and finished third that day.”
Self can pinpoint exactly why that road racing background helps him in his quest to score a victory at Pocono.
“The variety of corners you get in road racing, every corner is different,” he said. “It’s the same at Pocono. You expect something different every time. The techniques you use in road racing, wanting to be back on the throttle early, that applies. The discipline it takes to be good at road racing applies as well.”
For Lowry, nothing like sharing victory with daughter Iris
PORTRUSH, Northern Ireland – It’s not often you see a player celebrate – actually celebrate victory – in the middle of the 18th fairway of a tournament.
Most players, no matter what their advantage, will wait until the final putt has dropped before they pump their fists and accept their hugs.
Not Shane Lowry. The Irishman enjoyed every second of his triumphant walk up the final hole at Royal Portrush. He raised his arms in the air and grabbed hold of his caddie, Bo Martin.
Afterwards, when the final putt did fall and the claret jug was his, Lowry soaked in the crowd’s adulation. He kissed his wife and hugged family members. He accepted congratulations from friends and fellow major champions Graeme McDowell and Padraig Harrington.
But there was nothing like embracing his daughter, 2-year-old Iris, on the 18th green.
“My wife knew no matter what to have her there waiting for me, because if things didn't go to plan, at least she would have consoled me a little bit,” Lowry said. “To have her there, winning, obviously it's very special.”
This is Lowry’s second win of the season that he’s got to enjoy with Iris, the first coming in January at the Abu Dhabi HSBC Golf Championship. She ran onto the final green then, an image captured by photographers and cherished by Shane and his wife, Wendy.
“I'll be able to show her, she'll be able to see those pictures in years to come and it will be a nice memory to have,” he said.
While Iris might not remember either of the two celebrations, Lowry expects her to have plenty more opportunities to share such moments with Dad.
“Look, I'm going to be coming back on another 27 Opens to play,” he said with a laugh. “She's going to be nearly 30 when I play my last one. That's going to be nice.”
Lowry couldn't get 'shank' guy out of his mind on first hole
PORTRUSH, Northern Ireland – Shane Lowry couldn’t stop thinking of Andrew Morris this week, and not for any reason that will excite Mr. Morris.
Addressing the media after his Open Championship win Sunday night, Lowry heard the following from a reporter: “You won the North of Ireland Amateur Championship here (at Royal Portrush) in 2008. You actually beat a friend of mine in the final. I'm just wondering …”
Lowry interjected.
“I couldn't stop thinking about him all week, because he shanked his tee shot out of bounds on the first. That's all I could think about on the first hole,” Lowry said, eliciting laughter from the entire room.
“He's going to kill me for that.”
The out-of-bounds stakes that line both sides of the first hole on the Dunluce Links received plenty of attention this week and fielded plenty of golf balls. Rory McIlroy threw away his Open hopes with his very first tee shot of the week, and both Rickie Fowler and J.B. Holmes went OB in the third- and second-to-last groups on Sunday.
Lowry flirted with the left boundary himself in the final round before his ball harmlessly came to rest in the rough.
The reporter later assured Lowry, perhaps sarcastically, that Morris would be delighted Lowry “remembered him, anyway.”
By the numbers: Royal Portrush proves a worthy Open host
PORTRUSH, Northern Ireland – Royal Portrush returned to The Open rota for the first time since 1951 and proved itself a worthy host. Here is a breakdown of how it played last week during the 148th playing of The Open.
• The scoring average for the week on the par-71 layout was 72.175. J.B. Holmes’ final-round 87 was the highest round and winner Shane Lowry’s third-round 63 was the lowest.
• Both sides played virtually the same with the first nine holes averaging 36.159. The second nine holes played 36.015 even though it had the four most difficult holes of the week on that side.
• The par-4 11th hole was the most difficult hole of the week, playing to a 4.352 scoring average. The hole gave up 141 bogeys and 21 double bogeys. The next hole, the par-5 12th was the easiest at 4.664. There were eight eagles and 188 birdies there for the week.
• There were actually more eagles (11) on the par-5 seventh hole than there were on the 12th hole. The seventh hole was the third easiest hole of the week.
• In total, there were 32 eagles, 1,339 birdies, 5,180 pars, 1,493 bogeys, 164 double bogeys and 36 others for the week.
• Even though the par-4 opening hole was a brute, more people hit that fairway than any other hole (71.6 percent). The par-4 17th hole was the hardest fairway to hit, as only 38.4 percent of the field hit it.
• It makes sense that the three par 5s had the highest percentage of greens hit in regulation. The par-4 14th hole (the second most difficult hole of the week) only saw 31.7 percent of the field find the green.
Cowen called it: 'Little fat lad with the glasses' grabs claret jug
Not everyone saw Shane Lowry’s major breakthrough Sunday at Royal Portrush coming. Even Lowry, with a four-shot lead on the morning of the final round of the 148th Open, questioned whether or not he had what it took to hoist the claret jug.
But one person who did forecast Lowry achieving great heights was instructor Pete Cowen.
Talking to Golf Digest after Lowry's Open victory, Cowen recalled a story of when he first saw Lowry swing a club. The introduction came many years ago, when Lowry was just a teenager on the Irish Boys squad. Cowen was asked to drop by a practice and spend some time with the young players.
Irish coaches were particularly interested to hear what Cowen thought about their young prodigy, Rory McIlroy. And Cowen confirmed to them what they wanted to hear.
“Rory’s going to be great,” Cowen told them – and McIlroy has been, winning four majors and spending considerable time at No. 1 in the world.
Only Cowen wasn’t done.
“But there’s another good one out there,” Cowen continued. “The little fat lad with the glasses.”
That was Lowry, who now at age 32 is a major champion.
Real Madrid would be willing to let Gareth Bale leave this summer to go to China for free, as they look to unblock a tense situation at the Bernabeu, a source at the club has told ESPN FC.
Zinedine Zidane said on Sunday it would be "best for everyone" if the Wales international left "soon," to which the player's agent Jonathan Barnett responded by calling the Frenchman "a disgrace" -- adding: "If and when Gareth goes, it will be because it is in the best interest of Gareth and nothing to do with Zidane pushing."
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To resolve the issue, Madrid are willing to tear up the remaining three years of Bale's contract if he moves to China as a last resort because no European team has made any offer to sign the 30-year-old this summer, the club source said.
Jiangsu Suning and Beijing Guoan are the Chinese clubs reportedly interested in matching Bale's €17 million-a-season net wages -- and getting him off the payroll now would mean a saving for Madrid of around €100m over the next three years.
Barnett would not comment to ESPN FC on whether his client would be open to a move to China. Bale did not feature in the match squad as Madrid began their International Champions Cup schedule with a 3-1 defeat to Bayern Munich in Houston on Saturday.
The Madrid source told ESPN FC that the player had asked not to play while his exit was being managed, and Zidane was "tired" of Bale's behaviour as he had "not focused on anything" during the team's time in North America so far. However, Barnett denied to ESPN FC that a request had been made to sit out the ICC game.
Reports in the media that Bale could move to Paris Saint-Germain as part of a swap deal for Neymar are not being taken seriously at the Bernabeu, the Madrid source said.
Jiangsu Suning are owned by Chinese billionaire Zhang Jindong, whose Suning Sports holding group purchased a majority stake in Inter Milan in 2016.
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