You can escape cold but you cannot escape heat but overall I

You can escape cold, but you cannot escape heat, but, overall, I would prefer the heat even if you are lying in a plastic mesh bunk almost floating in sweat.The game now is to hang in there until we can look for a break going up though the Caribbean. Everyone is watching everyone else hawk-eyed, and there is so much weather information available these days that it is difficult to pick up something others have not seen.But the models for this part of the world are also notoriously unreliable, so we have the navigator, Roger Nilson, and the tactician, Dee Smith, hard at it all the time below while the on-deck boys concentrate on even the slightest improvement in boat speed.There had been no great expectations of Rio as a stopover, it had been considered as pretty marginal But Rio really worked. The people at Volvo and the organisers in the city did a hell of a job. You can’t do anything about the oppressive heat, but all the bits to do with immigration and customs worked; getting the boats out to do the refits and repairs worked very, very well, and I wasn’t expecting that.It would be really good to see a Brazilian boat in the race.

After all, they have a terrific Olympic record in terms of winning medals in the sailing events. They know how to sail, even though the country is consumed with football. There is certainly some talk about it and it would not be difficult to get people motivated It could be big, very big. We shall have to see what format will be adopted for the next race after all the talking and research.. Naseem Hamed has been forced to pull out of his proposed challenge for the International Boxing Organisation featherweight title fight against Spain’s Manuel Calvo at the London Arena on 23 March because of a mystery back injury. It is also probable that the fight against the light-hitting and lightly regarded Spaniard will be abandoned.The Barrera loss was Hamed’s only fight last year and a planned return last November was postponed after September’s terrorist attacks in New York. However, the American attacks were seen simply as a disaster of convenience for Hamed, who had not agreed a new deal with his major paymasters, HBO, and was clearly not keen to fight again.Hamed’s brother and manager, Riath Hamed, said yesterday that the boxer had to be carried out of his Sheffield gymnasium after suffering a back spasm.”He was doing a sit-up routine and his back just went,” Riath said “Four of us had to pick him up and carry him home.

He has to sleep on the hard floor and must rest completely for two weeks. His physio believes it is probably muscular rather than a disc problem and we hope that is the case.”. It was supposed to mark the crowning glory of a great career but the Champion Hurdle ended in disappointment and tragedy for two horses at Cheltenham yesterday. It was hoped he would become the first in history to win the race four times, but he was pulled up with a minor injury to a hind leg after jumping only two fences.While Istabraq will now retire to the Limerick stud of his owner, J P McManus, at the end of a racing career which produced 23 victories from his 29 starts over hurdles, there will be no peaceful retirement for Valiramix, another of yesterday’s fancied runners.On a day of dreadful fortune for the home champions, the trainer Martin Pipe and the jockey Tony McCoy, no moment was worse than when Valiramix fell after clipping heels with a rival as he approached the penultimate fence. The grey fractured a shoulder and had to be destroyed.These incidents allowed Hors La Loi III to scamper up the hill to win the race by three lengths at 10-1 odds.