Phillies send down RHP Mick Abel after six-start stretch
Johnson, 26, has a 2.25 ERA in two relief appearances (four innings) for the Phillies this season, including two scoreless innings Wednesday in Game 1 of a doubleheader against the San Diego Padres.
Abel, 23, went 2-2 with a 5.04 ERA in six starts since making his major league debut May 18. Abel gave up four total runs over his first four starts but nine runs over his next two, including five in 1 2/3 innings Wednesday against the Padres.
--Field Level Media
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Telegraph
32 minutes ago
- Telegraph
This is the last Tour de France on free-to-air and cycling will never be the same
When the peloton rolls out of Lille on Saturday for the start of the 112th edition of the Tour de France, it will mark the beginning of the end of one of British sport's great institutions. Nearly 40 years after Channel 4 first screened the highlights of the Tour de France in 1986 – played in by that iconic Pete Shelley theme music – ITV will this year broadcast coverage of cycling's biggest race on free-to-air for the final time. As of next year, the Tour will be behind a paywall in the UK, on TNT Sports. It is the end of an era. 'It's going to be emotional,' admits commentator Ned Boulting who has been part of ITV's coverage since 2003, and who will reprise his role this year alongside David Millar, continuing a line going back to Paul Sherwen and Phil Liggett. 'That's very nearly 40 years of continuity. So that's almost three generations of viewers within families. You know, that's grandparents, parents, and children, all of whom have come through the same very familiar routine. The same faces and voices, the same look and feel, the same style. It's unique in broadcasting.' 'A hammer blow for cycling' Once the emotion dies down, the question is: what does it mean for cycling in the UK, both in terms of viewing figures and participation? Will the sport wither on the vine, stuck behind a paywall where no one will watch it? Will the next generation of potential Geraint Thomases and Tom Pidcocks be starved of inspiration? Or might cycling benefit from being lumped in with bigger sports in the TNT Sports portfolio such as football and rugby, attracting new, crossover fans? It is fair to say fan reaction when the initial announcement was made last autumn that Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns TNT Sports, had bought the exclusive UK rights to the Tour, was not positive. There was sadness at the demise of the much-loved ITV coverage, particularly the daily highlights show. But public opinion really nosedived when WBD announced in January that it was axing Eurosport UK and cycling fans would have to shell out for the full TNT Sports subscription to access bike races in the UK. Not just the Tour, but the Giro d'Italia, the Vuelta a España, the spring classics, the whole caboodle. From £6.99 a month for Eurosport to £30.99 a month for TNT Sports – a price hike of some 400 per cent. Outraged fans – who, a couple of years ago were so spoilt they could get every obscure race under the sun for £5 a month on the GCN+ app, before it was bought and shuttered by WBD – threatened to boycott the channel, while others claimed WBD would get more people into piracy than they would cycling. The debate even reached the Houses of Parliament with Ben Obese-Jecty, the Conservative MP, securing a debate on the merits of free-to-air coverage of professional cycling in Westminster Hall on March 5. In an impassioned speech, Obese-Jecty told of how he had been inspired as a child by the exploits of British mountain bike rider Jason McRoy, whose races were occasionally shown on Eurosport. Describing the channel's demise as 'a hammer blow for coverage of cycling in the UK' he argued that cycling going behind a paywall would have a number of unintended consequences. It would mean children in the UK were not exposed to a sport which was patently good for their health. It would impact on the next generation of wannabe Bradley Wigginses. 'To be popular, a sport must be visible,' he said. 'To be visible, a sport must have a television presence. The Government would never allow the Fifa World Cup, the Olympics or Wimbledon to be put behind a paywall. With an estimated 12 million spectators attending the race each year, the Tour de France is easily the most attended sporting event in the world. 'Will the Government consider how it can inspire a new generation of Froomes and Cavendishes to take up the mantle and consider what they are doing to restore a sporting jewel, in which we have enjoyed such recent success, to the masses, lest its absence from our screens cause the sport to wither on the vine?' Stephanie Peacock, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, replied to say that she was grateful to the honorary member for bringing the matter to her attention, and that she 'sympathised' with his points, but that it was entirely up to the rights holder to determine whether any coverage will be available to free-to-air television in the future. New coverage, but less viewers TNT, understandably keen not to be painted as the villains here, say that is already happening. There is already a new hour-long programme called The Ultimate Cycling Show, hosted by Orla Chennaoui and Adam Blythe, shown on its free-to-air Quest channel, as well as daily highlights shows on the same channel during the recent Giro. The same is planned for the Vuelta a España in August. Only the Tour will remain fully behind a paywall, although a TNT spokesperson suggested the possibility of free-to-air highlights being shown on Quest next year, or in 2027, when the grand depart is once again scheduled to take place in the UK, was under consideration. What might the impact be on UK cycling by then, though? Again, WBD defend themselves. They claim over half of Eurosport viewers already had access to TNT Sports at the time of Eurosport's closure. They maintain that being part of a package which include Champions League and Premiership Rugby will introduce new fans to the sport. They also point out, rightly, that ITV declined to renew its broadcast rights for the Tour, whereas it is investing millions into cycling. Like football and cricket on Sky Sports, they promise to innovate and raise standards. That may all be true. But it does not change the fact that the Tour is disappearing from free-to-air TV and millions of fans will be left without a show which was appointment viewing for three weeks every year. As Obese-Jecty MP said: 'The reassuring tones of Gary Imlach and the encyclopaedic knowledge of Ned Boulting will no longer be staples of cycling fans' summers.' Boulting smiles at that line. 'The fact it got debated in Parliament is insane,' he says. 'David and my names are in the Hansard register now.' He does find the fans' backlash interesting, though, mainly because of how persistent it has been. 'The level of engagement with the topic just doesn't seem to have died down,' he says. 'In fact, the closer we get to the Tour the more it is ramping up. I think it's because, unlike the Ashes, or the Olympics, the Tour is every summer. It's an annual event, which just anchors its place in the rhythm of the year for so many family lives. That, I think, is the reason why the noise around it is so persistent and so loud.' Like many subscription channels, TNT does not release its viewing figures; or say how many new subscribers have signed up since shutting Eurosport down. Even if it did, it would be difficult to tell how many had signed up for cycling as opposed to its other sports. But Boulting stresses he wants the new landscape to be a success, not least because a bigger fanbase will drive more listeners to the Never Strays Far podcast he co-hosts with Millar. New TMS-style podcast planned The pair have big plans for the podcast next year, which they will confirm on Saturday. But essentially they involve Millar and Boulting driving around France in a camper van, with Lizzie Deignan as their co-host, doing live podcasts from the roadside, only looking away from the race, so the cameras watch them watching the action in the style of Soccer Saturday. 'We're going to call it Never Strays Far: Live in France,' Millar says. 'So we'll be on the race, following the race, watching the race, and just relaying as much of it as we can. We'll put it out as video as well, almost certainly on YouTube, but across as many platforms as we can.' 'Think TMS [ Test Match Special ],' Boulting says. 'It will be whimsical, irreverent. We'll chat to fans. We'll broadcast from random squares or places on the route. We won't be rights holders so we won't be able to show race footage. And we won't have accreditation. That's very important. But we can always go see riders in hotels or wherever. 'The Tour de France has always been about much more than the race,' he adds. 'And I think that's one of the things that our ITV viewers really understand and value. And we want to encourage a big percentage of these suddenly disenfranchised viewers to keep the Tour de France in their lives in this new form, where they can. We are very familiar voices and faces to them. And Lizzie will be an absolutely unbelievable addition to our team.' Will they sleep in the camper? Boulting laughs. 'Funnily enough that was Lizzie's first question. No. We're going to have plastic key cards to get into Campanile hotel rooms.. In fact, we might try and do the whole thing in Campaniles. The dream.' One more emotional lap It remains to be seen how it all shakes out; what exactly the loss of free-to-air will do to cycling in the UK. But in the meantime Imlach, Boulting, Millar, as well as reporters Daniel Friebe and Matt Rendell, are preparing for one final, emotional lap of France. 'I think the producers are definitely going to celebrate the heritage,' Boulting reflects. 'You know, it's tricky for ITV because they don't want to put up on great big billboards: 'We're leaving the sport'. But on the other hand, this is a unique programme, a unique event, and a unique association that has gone on for a long time. So they acknowledge that, and they are going to celebrate, you know, in style I think. 'For sure, we're going to hear the Channel 4 theme tune that so many people are nostalgic about. We're going to drill down into all that history, repeatedly, throughout the three weeks. The Tour de France allows us that. It gives us that time to be reflective and to sort of dredge the seabed of memories that people have.' How will he feel when it's over? 'I find it emotional at the best of times. When we sign off on the show each year, when the sun goes down behind the podium and you get the Arc de Triomphe in the background, I always find that a very emotional moment. Because we're tired, we've been on the race for three weeks, we've made it to Paris, and that's it, we're signing off. Signing off for the final time in three weeks will be a very hard thing to get right.'
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
‘It's offensive': voices from Iran as fans face 2026 World Cup travel ban
'It's offensive for any football fan to be prevented from participating in the World Cup, not just Iranians,' Ali Rezaei of Tehran's Borna News Agency says. In March, the national team became the second to qualify for the 2026 World Cup that will be hosted by Canada, Mexico and the United States. In June, Donald Trump authorised the dropping of bombs on Iran and hit the country with a travel ban. As things stand, while the national team will be able to enter the US next summer, fans – and perhaps media – will not. Residents of Tehran and other cities may have had enough to deal with of late, but still, being barred from entry stings, even if Iranians have long found it difficult to get into the US. 'If the US government has issues with the Iranian regime for any reason, it should not result in discrimination against Iranian citizens,' Behnam Jafarzadeh, a writer for leading sports site Varzesh3, says. 'If someone hasn't committed any illegal activity, why should they be punished? It's not just about the World Cup – the policy needs to change in general.' What can Iran do? 'Boycotting the World Cup is not a solution,' Siavash Pakdaman, a Tehran-based fan, says. 'Refusing to play on US soil would be a dangerous precedent – any host country could start excluding teams it has issues with. Just as the Iranian delegation can and should be present at the United Nations in the US, the Iranian team should also play on American soil if the draw requires it – without relocation.' There is a feeling that staying away would not make much difference anyway. 'It would only deprive the national team of the opportunity to participate in a major tournament and would ultimately hurt Iran more,' Jafarzadeh says. 'It might even be welcomed by some American officials. It could make headlines briefly, but once the tournament starts, it will be forgotten and will have achieved nothing.' Questions have been asked – including in Iran, whose supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has long banned competing against Israeli athletes – about what the international reaction would have been if Qatar had banned citizens from certain nations from attending the 2022 World Cup. 'If the USA makes it difficult for football fans to attend, then changing the host country is necessary,' Rezaei says. 'Doing so would harm the USA's reputation, not the World Cup's. If strict entry rules remain, we should focus on protecting football. This is supposed to be a celebration of sport.' Jafarzadeh is not confident that the competition could be taken away from the busiest of the three hosts. 'It is not a challenge Fifa and [its president Gianni] Infantino would want to take on.' Perhaps there is another way. 'Fifa should use all of its influence to push for a suspension of this policy at least during the World Cup.' Fifa may find it easier to place Iran in Canada or Mexico and hope that Iran don't make it to the latter stages, when there would have to be a game in the US. 'Playing in Mexico or Canada is not a real solution – it just ignores the actual problem,' Rezaei says. Many expect it to happen anyway. 'Canada has a large Iranian immigrant population, although some of them are opponents of the Iranian regime and the national team can't count on their support,' Jafarzadeh says. 'Mexico is probably a more attractive and less controversial destination for the team.' That is another question. The Iranian-American community is more than a million strong yet many of these headed west before, or in response to, the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Sign up to Football Daily Kick off your evenings with the Guardian's take on the world of football after newsletter promotion 'It seems that many Iranians who oppose the government consider the national team to be a representation of the regime – which I believe is wrong,' Pakdaman says. 'And since a larger number of these opponents live in the US, the team may face pressure from the audience during the matches. Of course, I hope my analysis is wrong.' Jafarzadeh, who went to the World Cups in Russia and Qatar and would love to go to the United States, says: 'Some see the team as one that represents the regime, and this sentiment is even stronger among Iranians living abroad. Of course, the war with Israel has stirred feelings of patriotism among many Iranians, but I'm not sure if this will translate into support for the national team. We'll have to wait and see how things unfold in the coming months.' That there is time is perhaps a small reason for optimism that things could change. Iran is one of 19 countries subject to a full or partial US entry ban. Several of the others retain hope of qualifying for the first 48-team World Cup, including Sudan, Sierra Leone, Venezuela and Haiti. 'Considering that there is almost a year left until the 2026 World Cup, there is a possibility that the situation may stabilise,' says Isa Azimi, a columnist and translator, regarding Iran's situation, though he is not confident. 'Despite claims of separating politics from football, Fifa has shown that it is not particularly independent when facing major political powers.' Especially when Infantino appears to prize his close relationship with Trump. 'If Fifa considers itself a global body independent of governments, it must stand up to such laws and not allow politics to contaminate the world of sports,' Pakdaman says. 'Of course, we all know that, unfortunately, such contamination exists – especially when one side of the issue is a superpower that answers to no one. It is Fifa's duty to treat all member countries equally, but will that actually happen?'
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Listen to Joey, sport is always trying to tell you something, even by the medium of hot dogs
The Big Dog is back. And the Big Dog is hungry. Hungry, above all, for dogs. Joey Chestnut has fulfilled his sporting destiny by reclaiming his world champion crown at the legendary 4 July hotdog eating contest in Coney Island, New York. Chestnut, AKA The Silent Warrior, is basically the Messi of elite eating. Or rather he's the Ronaldo, relentless in his perfectionism, possessed of an alluring competitive arrogance, and with the GOAT-level numbers to back it up: winner of the Mustard Belt now 17 times and the world record-holder as of 2021, when he ate 76 hotdogs in 10 minutes, a huge uplift on his debut in 2005 when he ate a frankly pathetic 32 hotdogs. Above all, Chestnut had a point to prove. He was banned from competing last year over a controversial sponsor deal with a plant-based hotdog alternative. Losing the title was a kind of Icarus moment. No one is bigger than the sport. Eating had to rein him in. And so this time around it wasn't about the $100,000 (£73,000) prize. It was about legacy. 'I'm back doing what I love,' Chestnut told the cameras ahead of Thursday's weigh-in. Which is, it seems, cramming an unbelievable amount of hotdogs into his face, and doing so in a contest that, frankly, feels like one of the few things that actually makes any sense this week, perhaps even the greatest and most fundamentally honest of all current human activities. Mainly, this is about will and about passion. 'I want to push myself,' Chestnut told USA Today, going on to talk about marginal gains and the tiny details of preparation, about taking up yoga, about working on rhythm, on ever-smoother delivery. There is talk of applying an 'electric simulation machine' to his abdomen 'to get everything loose', of endless tinkering with the temperature of the water used to dampen the buns, of burping exercises to develop the internal muscles, asthma drugs to improve air flow, open the sinuses and increase his capacity for stuffing hotdogs into his face. Plus of course the daily hard yards of the eating athlete. Chestnut performs endless neck hoists with a 7kg weight attached to a mouthguard. 'When I'm raising up, I'm almost imagining I'm swallowing, so I'm thrusting my tongue against the leather strap the mouthpiece is glued to.'' You've got to admit. This is incredibly sexy. The real kicker, as ever in elite sport, is attitude. Joey Chestnut? Joey Chestnut brought aggression to eating. He is looking for 'a perfect mix of anger and calm'. This is all very real. Three years ago he was forced to employ a chokehold on a stage invader who had run on in a Darth Vader mask to protest against killing animals just so people can stuff them in their mouths. Chestnut didn't stop. He still won by 15 dogs. This is eating heritage. And yes it is also highly confusing. Is this whole thing ironic? Is the world hotdog eating championship a joke? Nobody seems to really know. The stage announcer certainly seems to think it is a comedic event. The crowd has a kind of loose, spring break frat boy vibe. But there are rivalries here, men's and women's events, a massed judging corpus, stats and fandom, and of course that cash prize. It feels real, or like a thing that has become so unexpectedly. This is also not about mocking America: Brit-snobbery, the oh dear what have they done now Jeeves dynamic. I love America, love it as an idea and also as a place, as energy and colour and (even now) optimism. I also love hotdogs and can cram in up to one of them at a single sitting. But at the same time, it is also impossible to overstate how disgusting the hotdog eating championship is as a spectacle, and in every sense of the word. You probably think you already know it's disgusting. Well, you don't know nothing Mr Garrison, because you've never been confronted by an endlessly replicating pork-beef dog coated in your own semi-vomit. The world hotdog eating championship looks, and there is no other way of putting this, like a self-loathing high-speed fellatio marathon, the competitors constantly nodding their heads, thrusting in food with both hands, finishing up coated in bun paste and meat-goop, looking stricken but also impossibly excited. All of this is spectated by a mob crushed up into the notorious Splash Zone, with its crouching judges, its stern warnings about 'flying debris'. To be fair, you can really see the neck exercises pay off at this point. The natural assumption is the eating athletes will be large. They're not. They're buff, trim, competition-ready. Joey Chestnut's head is perfectly rounded with muscle, like a boxer's biceps or a gymnast's core. If I were to nitpick I would suggest making the sport more robust with a rule that all dogs and buns must be consumed as a whole, not tearing it apart and going dog then bun, which is essentially ball-tampering. Otherwise, it is a compelling spectacle, and in its own way very honest too. All American sports are basically an excuse to eat things, a complex machinery entwined around the founding desire to have a hotdog. The hotdog championship cuts to the chase, like reducing football to a one-kick penalty shootout. Here is the thing you actually want. Just have it. It is the perfect sport in structural ways, too. All sports are supposed to reflect a culture, to express some part of the character of a nation, even in bastardised form, like bullfighting in Spain, or the way cricket dramatises the English class system. And yes it would be easy at this point to mock America's dysfunction around food, but this also is a relationship with roots in something real and beautiful: abundance, prosperity, fecundity of the land, tired hungry masses settling a new frontier. Eating was stitched into the American century. JK Galbraith's famous 1957 study, The Affluent Society, concluded 'capitalism works', as proved beyond doubt by excess consumption. 'More die in the United States of too much food than of too little,' he concluded, back when this was a good thing. So food is freedom in America. 'Tastes like Freedom' is a common banner at the hotdog championships, even if that taste turns out to be a bolus of compacted sawdust-sausage the size of a moped. And even if like so many of the freedom things – cars, sex, guns – this is a freedom that has bolted terminally out of hand. Daily life in America can feel like being chased by food, constantly craving the perfect salty sweet hit that is America's gift, burdened by the patriotic duty to consume. Restaurants that look like car showrooms. The idea that a salad is in fact some kind of toxic assault by steroid-fed flaps of ungodly meat. The fact even in high-end places the business is still fetishising food: the greatest burrito in the world, the most organic vegan dim sum ever devised. America and food is so obviously dysfunctional you start to feel you could fix the whole place if you went at it symptoms-first. Don't stop eating. Just stop eating that. And yes, this is all doubly, trebly, hyper-disgusting when America is also in effect sponsoring a famine in Gaza, and all the while staging a hotdog competition where Joey Chestnut can win $100,000. But there is domestic sadness to this, too. The hotdog is one of those American objects, icons of the everyday, things that feel even now like a shot at happiness fallen wide. The hotdog origins story is suitably diffuse, credited to a sausage vender at the 1906 St Louis World Fair, or to a moment of founding genius in Louisiana in 1904, or to Germans everywhere who were already putting 'dachshunds' in buns. It doesn't matter. There should be a vague and folksy feel to this. The hotdog is immigrant food, sports field food, egalitarian food. This is American symbolism, American art. It's Gatsby's green beacon, Jack Kerouac burning like a roman candle, Ignatius Riley pushing his hotdog trolley around New Orleans and muttering about the wheel of fate. And now the hotdog has been updated, via the Joey Chestnut show, into a klaxon of decay and excess. Basically, everything is a hotdog eating contest now, from sport to business, to the shared human experience, all of us in the wealthy world assailed by this agony of consumption, wants, desires. In the same week of the world hotdog eating championship the UK government has even started pushing weight loss drugs as a healthy living choice. We will create a world full of calories, we will take away your green space, stick you in front of a screen, make your life a matter of passive consumption. Then when it gets too expensive to fix your mind and body, well, we have an injection for that. Shoot this thing full of painkillers, antidepressants and weight loss jabs, we might just about muster up a functional human. So Joey Chestnut and his hotdog performance speaks in a way that is oddly heartening, an act of punkish satire. This is the life you have made for us, Joey Chestnut is saying, human need extrapolated to a wild extreme. I will take this world and hold up a mirror, turn it into a spectacle that mocks the spectacle. Enter the splash zone, Big Food. Feel his spittle on your face. It does always feel like sport is trying to tell you something, even here, via the medium of hotdogs. Sometimes well, sometimes you just get the heroes you need.
