Random sports trivia

[J-Ster]

Hull City is the only team in the Profesional English Football Leagues which hasn't got a single letter that you can colour in. (Due to it having no "A"s "O"s, etc)

[Kyng]

F1 drivers who competed in the 2000s and 2010s, and set to compete in the 2020s
Kimi Räikkönen (2001-present)
Lewis Hamilton (2007-present)
Sebastian Vettel (2007-present)
Romain Grosjean (2009-present)

And, to this, I guess we can now add:

Fernando Alonso (2001-18; 2021-????)

[Kyng]

2016 Formula One driver Nico Rosberg speaks French, Italian, Spanish, and English, in addition to his native German. Here he is speaking all five languages:



I can't assess the first three languages; however, his English is some of the best I've ever seen from an F1 driver who was speaking it as a second language . Impressive stuff.

The funny thing is, he has a Finnish father, but he doesn't speak Finnish at all. His parents deliberately didn't teach it to him, because they thought the other languages would be more useful to him in his motor racing career (for example, the Italian would have served him well had he ever driven for Ferrari - which he never did in the end, but it would've been nice to have the option open!)

[Kyng]

Here we have the first Grand Slam Singles champion born in each decade from the 1950s onwards, on both the men's and women's sides:

Decade	Men's Singles	Women's Singles
1950s	Jimmy Connors (1974 Australian Open)	Evonne Goolagong (1971 French Open)
1960s	Mats Wilander (1982 French Open)	Tracy Austin (1979 US Open)
1970s	Michael Chang (1989 French Open)	Arantxa Sánchez Vicario (1989 French Open)
1980s	Marat Safin (2000 US Open)	Martina Hingis (1997 Australian Open)
1990s	Dominic Thiem (2020 US Open)	Petra Kvitová (2011 Wimbledon)
2000s	N/A	Bianca Andreescu (2019 US Open)

Funny how our first female winner born in the 2000s came before our first male winner born in the 1990s. Just speaks to the dominance of Federer/Nadal/Djokovic, I suppose !

[Ann]

5 Most Popular Sports In Canada

1. Ice Hockey. When you think of Canada, the first sport that comes to mind is ice hockey. ... 
   
2. Lacrosse. Lacrosse is another sport that is believed to have Canadian roots. ... 
   
3. Soccer. While soccer did not start out as a popular Canadian sport, it has really taken off in recent years. ... 
   
4. Baseball. ... 
   
5. Cricket.
   

https://sustainableplanet.ca/most-popula...in-canada/
for more details

[Kyng]

Wow, I'm a bit surprised to see soccer in 3rd place, given that Canada's only been in the World Cup once (in 1986). Still, if it's taking off there, we might see more of them in the not-too-distant future (especially if it gets a further boost from Canada jointly hosting the 2026 tournament with Mexico and the USA).

As an addendum to my previous post about the first Grand Slam winners born in each decade, here are the highest-ranked male tennis players born in the 2000s (to give everybody some idea of who might be the first to win one):

22. Félix Auger-Aliassime (Born 8th August 2000)
46. Jannik Sinner (Born 16th August 2001)
112. Thiago Seyboth Wild (Born 10th March 2000)
123. Lorenzo Musetti (Born 3rd March 2002)
136. Carlos Alcaraz Garfia (Born 5th May 2003)

You might be thinking that 'Jannik Sinner' doesn't sound like a very Italian name - and you'd be right . He's from South Tyrol (the German-speaking part of Italy on the Austrian border). For some reason, this part of Italy seems to produce a fair number of professional tennis players - two other examples in recent years being Karin Knapp and Andreas Seppi.

[Jarkko]

^Was actually wondering if he was from Südtirol. That's also by and large the centre of Italy's hockey program. You might not associate Italy with hockey, but they are quite often in the top sixteen at the IIHF Worlds. How, I don't know, as they've never had one native-trained player play in the NHL.

[Jarkko]

The Vancouver Canucks are the NHL's worst case of "always the bridesmaid, never the bride," having made the Stanley Cup final three times (1982, 1994, and 2011) and never won. Between 2011 and 2019, they shared this dubious honour with the St. Louis Blues, who made the Cup finals three years in a row from 1968-1970, but then the Blues won the Cup two seasons ago.