Scout’s Overview
📡 🚨 Weekly Sports Radar: Gliding

Gliding, also known as soaring, is a competitive air sport where pilots fly unpowered aircraft called gliders or sailplanes, using naturally occurring air currents to stay aloft and travel long distances. Unlike powered flight, gliding relies on thermal lifts, ridge lifts, and wave lifts in the atmosphere to maintain altitude and manoeuvre across the sky.

Gliding began in early 20th-century Germany as a response to powered aircraft bans after World War I. The sport grew rapidly, with the first World Championships held in 1937. The main challenge of the sport is to complete a predefined course or cover the longest distance or fastest speed using only atmospheric conditions, without an engine.

🏋 Athlete of the week: Carlos Alcaraz

Carlos Alcaraz is a 22-year-old Spanish Tennis player. He began his professional career at the age of 15 in 2018. He broke into the top 100 in rankings in May 2021 and was ranked as the world No. 1 in men's singles in 2022.

And he just played the match of a lifetime this week, with many tennis fans saying it’s the best match they’ve ever seen. He came back after being 2-0 down to Sinner, and won 3-2. Here are some of the records this match broke:

• First time Alcaraz has ever won a match after going down 0-2

• First time since Wimbledon 2022 that Sinner blew a 2-0 lead to lose a match

• First time any male player has overcome three match points in an RG Final

• First French Open Final to go 5+ hours

• Second-longest Grand Slam final of all time

Just as the greats of tennis are retiring, it seems that Sinner and Alcaraz are ready to fill in their boots.

🏟️ Venue of the week: Floating Tennis Court, Australia

Keeping up with the Floating Venue theme, this week we have a throwback to the floating tennis court put up by Adidas in the Great Barrier Reef. While it looks stunning and the intention was good, Adidas took a lot of flak for it.

While the intention was to raise awareness of ocean plastic pollution, many people brought up the point of tennis balls going into the ocean and the erosion of the court, leading to more microplastics in the ocean.

It launched with a game of doubles between four Australian athletes on 11 January 2022, each dressed in Adidas’s new range of tennis apparel shown below.

🧤 Fit Check: Adidas Great Barrier Reef Tennis Apparel

In addition to the court, Adidas also dropped a collection of tennis apparel to raise awareness and positive discussion around how to end plastic waste and protect the Great Barrier Reef.

This kit is made with Parley Ocean Plastic, and Adidas’s goal is to replace virgin polyester in our products with recycled polyester wherever possible. I’ve got to say I’m a fan. They’re doing 100% more than other companies who just talk about doing stuff.

From the bench
🗞️ In case you were injured:

• Alongside the Alcaraz win in France, Coco Gauff won her first French Open by fighting back to beat world number one Aryna Sabalenka. What’s crazy is that exactly 4 years ago to the day, she predicted that she’d win a French Open one day.

• 18-year-old Summer McIntosh broke 2 swimming world records this week, breaking the decade-old 200-meter individual medley world record, as well as the 400m freestyle world record

• An Olympic-style event, called The Enhanced Games, is making its debut next year, where all athletes use performance-enhancing drugs to test their limits

🎯 In overtime:

• 2 men hid in a toilet for 27 hours to watch the Champions League final for free, instead of simply buying the tickets

• The Finland Women’s Football manager named a 51-year-old retired player instead of their current 23-year-old player with the same surname this week. Imagine the look on her face as she’s called back to play after 20 years

🏆 Sports Calendar

Here’s a look at the ongoing and upcoming sports events this week: