Over the weekend our former Olympic Gold Medallist Hamish Carter competed in his age bracket at the ITU Champs in Auckland. Admittedly he is no longer competing and has not been training like the old days...but he is a similar age to Kris Gemmell who won the Elite Men's. Though once the best in the world, yesterday he came 6th and was beaten by some enthusiastic amateurs, guys who have never reached the heights he has. Another bloke – Mr Martin Crowe, hung up his cricket boots for the secon...

In the afterglow of the Rugby World Cup final and watching our boys take it out, I have a real appreciation of what the failure in 2007 World Cup did for that group of players and management who were involved. Failure is a chance to begin again more intelligently and this is what the All Blacks did - they took the lessons learnt from 2007 and the years before, stuck to their game plan and persevered towards an end goal. As the final whistle blew and Richie held the Webb Ellis Cup high after 24 l...