• April 23 down the years

Borg returns to tennis

Bjorn Borg's return to tennis wasn't quite as successful as his first spell in the game © Getty Images

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1991
Björn Borg made his tennis comeback after eight years in retirement. But it was like watching a great boxer fighting once too often. Borg was 34 by now, too slow to make a match of it against even a journeyman like Spain's Jordi Arrese. At the Monte Carlo Open, Borg broke Arrese three times but held his own serve only twice and lost 6-2 6-3 in 78 minutes. The day after, he had to rush to Milan after the attempted suicide of his wife, Italian pop star Loredana Bertè. In the next two years, Borg lost in the first round of 12 tournaments in a row before retiring.

1962
The career of a great English driver ended on St George's Day. It was Easter Monday too, a holiday race at Goodwood. The crash left Stirling Moss with a broken leg and ribs and bruising to the side of his brain. He had an operation to correct a facial fracture, another to re-set his nose, and others to fix his eye, which was lower in its socket than the other. He never raced in Formula One again and announced his retirement a year later. One of the absolute giants of the sport, he won 16 Grands Prix, finished second in the world championship four years in a row, and only his own sportsmanship cost him the title in 1958.

2010
Olympic 400 metres champion LaShawn Merritt accepted a provisional suspension for testing positive for a banned substance he claims came from a male enhancement product. The US Anti-Doping Agency confirmed the positive tests contained prohormones of the banned male sex hormone testosterone. "To know that I've tested positive as a result of product that I used for personal reasons is extremely difficult to wrap my hands around," Merritt said. (And yes, that is the statement he released).

1983
The first 147 maximum at snooker's World Championship. Cliff Thorburn made it during his second-round match with Terry Griffiths. Fellow Canadian Bill Werbeniuk was playing another match on the other side of the partition; he stopped playing to watch, and he and Griffiths were the first to embrace Thorburn after he'd knelt on the floor and waved his cue over his head. After a marathon final session, he beat Griffiths 13-12 on his way to the final.

2000
David Coulthard did well to win the British Grand Prix from fourth on the grid, ahead of Mika Häkkinen and Michael Schumacher. But the main talking point was the state of the facilities, which threatened Silverstone's place on the Formula One calendar. The event had been moved from its traditional date in July - and a good old British spring downpour forced thousands of spectators to abandon their cars and walk eight miles to the course. Local farmers made some cash dragging vehicles out of mud with tractors.

2006
Top Italian wheeler Francesca Porcellato became the only competitor, wheelchair or otherwise, to win the London Marathon four years in a row. Britain's David Weir was men's wheelchair champion for the second time. The men's elite race was won by Kenya's Felix Limo, the women's by Deena Kastor of the USA.

1989
Britain's Véronique Marot won the London Marathon. She was France's Véronique Marot before switching allegiance in 1983. Today she bided her time while Aurora Cunha of Portugal went off at world-record pace. Marot passed her with five miles to go and finished more than a minute ahead of Poland's Wanda Panfil. The winning time of 2 hours 25 minutes 56 lasted as a British record until Paul Radcliffe ran the same race on April 14, 2002.

Francesca Porcellato won the London Marathon four years in a row © Getty Images

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1885
The final of the inaugural British Amateur Golf Championship. In Liverpool, Allan Macfie won the first four holes against Horace Hutchinson and the match 7&6 with a long putt, after which he was chaired off the course by other golfers. Hutchinson didn't win any of the 12 holes that were played, but he won the Championship in each of the next two years.

1969
Martín López Zubero was born in Florida but swam for Spain - and he was always likely to be a Spaniard winning an Olympic title in Spain. At the World Championships in 1991, he won the 200 metres backstroke (and took bronze in the 100), so he was favourite to win at the Games in Barcelona. Sure enough, he came through in the last 25 yards and set an Olympic record in winning the gold. At the 1994 World Championships, he won the 100 this time and silver in the 200. His four golds in the 100 at the European Championships included three in a row, and he won the 200 in 1991, when he also took silver in the 100 butterfly. In the 200 backstroke that year, he set a world record that lasted nearly eight years. His brother David won bronze in the 100 butterfly at the 1980 Olympics.

1950
The first team to win back-to-back NBA championships. In the finals, the Minneapolis Lakers beat the Syracuse Nationals by four games to two.

1927
Harlequins won rugby's Middlesex Sevens the first four years they were held. This was the second. In the final, they beat Blackheath 28-6. But the main spectacle was the match played just before it: there were 1,000 spectators in each team!

1965
Pone Kingpetch became the first Thai boxer to win a world title when he beat Argentina's great flyweight Pascual Pérez on April 16, 1960. Kingpetch then lost and regained the title against two different boxers before handing it over for good today. Kingpetch was a whirlwind boxer, but he lost fights against other cyclones, and Italy's Salvatore Burruni was one of those, a rugged little hard man. He forced the pace all the way to a unanimous decision in Rome. Burruni defended the title against one of Scotland's finest on June 14 the following year.

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