Who is Ben Shelton's girlfriend Trinity Rodman?
Here we take a look at his romance with Trinity Rodman, who has some serious sporting pedigree of her own — pro footballer and daughter of Chicago Bulls legend Dennis.
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Ben Shelton is through to round three of Wimbledon 2025, following a hard-fought straight-set win over Alex Bolt and a 69-second finish against Rinky Hijikata.
Next up, he faces Hungarian aggressive baseliner and hard-court specialist Marton Fucsovics on July 5, 2025.
Here we get to know Ben's better half, 2022 and 2024 Ballon d'Or nominee Trinity Rodman.
Who is Trinity Rodman?
Trinity Rodman is a rising star in American professional soccer.
Born on May 20, 2002, in Newport Beach, California, she is the daughter of NBA star Dennis Rodman and Michelle Moyer.
Trinity is in a relationship with tennis American tennis sensation Ben Shelton.
Like her boyfriend, Trinity is one of the most promising young athletes in women's soccer.
In 2022, former US head coach Vlatko Adonovski told USA Today: '[Rodman] was one of the most exciting players in the league this past season, and she proved that she can be impactful at the professional level in National Women's Soccer League.
'She is still a young player, but we do want to expose her to the environment where she can get her feet wet a little bit.
'And hopefully she can continue growing and show what she was able to do in the league she can do at the international level.
"We don't want to rush anything. We've got to be patient.'
Emma Raducanu talks about the challenge of facing Aryna Sabalenka at Wimbledon
Despite being given her father's fame, Trinity was primarily raised by her mum and grew up alongside her big brother DJ Rodman, who is a basketball pro like his dad.
She has spoken openly about her complicated relationship with her dad, emphasising the incredible influence and support she has received from her mother.
From a very young age, Trinity showed exceptional talent and passion for football.
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She started playing at just four years old, joined the SoCal Blues youth club when she was nine — helping the team secure multiple national championships.
Her soccer career took a major leap forward when she was selected second overall in the 2021 National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) Draft by the Washington Spirit.
At just 18 years old, she was the youngest player ever drafted in the league at that time.
Trinity's rookie season was nothing short of spectacular — she played a crucial role in leading the Washington Spirit to the 2021 NWSL Championship.
Her outstanding performances earned her the NWSL Rookie of the Year award and a place on the NWSL Best XI team.
Beyond club success, Trinity made her debut for the US Women's National Team (USWNT), where she made an instant impact.
She was part of the USWNT squad that won the gold medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics — scoring three goals during the tournament.
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The Guardian
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‘It's offensive': voices from Iran as fans face 2026 World Cup travel ban
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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
In Djokovic's sunset years, he loves what he does and still wants to be loved
Moments after he had beaten Dan Evans in almost perfunctory style on Centre Court to advance to the third round of the championships for a record 19th time, Novak Djokovic bumped into an old friend in the corridor on the way to his own match. 'Good day at the office?' Gaël Monfils inquired, smiling as old pros do. The French veteran paused before heading for Court 18 and a much smaller audience, adding: 'At this age, we need these types of days.' Djokovic smiled back. They talk the same language, walk the same walk, if in different directions with different ambitions. Both are 38 and still dangerous in any draw. 'Of course, it's great,' the seven-time champion said after beating Evans with a near-faultless display. 'You want to keep on playing this way.' In his pomp, we would be asking him – usually as world No 1 – who he saw as the main threats left in the tournament after two rounds. 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Last year, he reached the final against Carlos Alcaraz only weeks after having knee surgery, which might not have been what the doctor ordered. But the show must go on. Although he is fit, physically and mentally, these remain uncertain times for the old trouper, and he must always trust the other Djokovic: the on-court killer. Those instincts will never leave him. He is merciless on court. Andy Roddick, with whom he nearly had a locker-room punch-up many years ago, holds Djokovic in the highest esteem. The quotable American famously remarked once: 'First he takes away your legs. Then he takes your soul.' Djokovic, the sixth seed this year, agrees with the first bit, not so much the second. It doesn't fit the nice-guy image for which he strives. But any witness would agree it's without doubt true. Opponents melt in front of him, as Alexandre Müller did in round one, after briefly harbouring thoughts of an upset, and Evans folded spectacularly after a competitive start. 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Novak is an actor; he will be whatever you want him to be. And, when he goes back to the locker room, when he has his own private conversation, he will convince himself that's he still got it, that he's still a champion.
The Guardian
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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.
