THE SPIN FLEX AND EXTEND

any of the great rivalries in sport have been stirred by the bad blood between the antagonists. This is the same across all sport, regardless of whether it’s a team or solo endeavour. It might be between two individual sports people, such as in tennis where two compatriot stars of similarly volatile temperaments, John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors, erupted over a 14-year, on-court rivalry. In the case’, their historic team grudge isn’t carried so much by geographical proximity but by a sense of entitlement to a league championship that they’ve both won, a lot. Some of the most bitter feuds in sport have come from within the same team, and are often the most damaging. Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome’s feud at Team Sky festered as a result of very different personalities chasing the same goal: leadership at the Tour de France. Every so often you simply get sports people such as Irish footballer Roy Keane, who seemed to operate on a default setting of hostility to all his opponents, a rare but effective method that clearly served him well throughout a trophy-filled career.