• July 31 down the years

Sheene makes it two in a row

Barry Sheene is the last British rider to win a world title on anything other than a Superbike or sidecar. © Getty Images

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1977
Barry Sheene finished fifth at the Finnish Grand Prix to clinch the 500cc world title for the second year in a row (July 25) with two races to spare. He remains the last British rider to win a world title on anything other than a Superbike or sidecar.

2010
Mo Farah usually set his sights on recording fast times over winning medals, but at the European Championships in Barcelona he developed a taste for the colour gold as he claimed an unprecendented long-distance double. Having already won the 10,000m, he then destroyed his competition in the 5,000m in a time of 13:31.18. "It wasn't easy, I worked so hard for it and I can't believe I'm double champion - if you'd have said this to me three months ago then I would have settled for that," Farah said.

Britain's joy was amplified by Jessica Ennis, who completed her victory in the heptathlon event. Ennis confirmed her status as one of Great Britain's leading athletes by beating Nataliya Dobrynska with a record points score. Dobrynska had chopped into Ennis' lead throughout the competition, cutting the deficit to 18 points ahead of the final event, the 800m, and she passed the Briton with 200m remaining. However, running is what Ennis did best, and she powered back to add the European crown to her world title.

2009
Thanks to the polyurethane bodysuits, the World Swimming Championships were awash with world records. Britta Steffen of Germany set three in the 100 metres freestyle alone, ending with 52.07 in the Final today. She finished well ahead of Britain's Fran Halsall, with Australia's former word record holder Libby Lenton Trickett third.

2004
Scrum-half George Gregan won his 100th cap at rugby union. He captained Australia to an exciting 30-26 win over South Africa in a Tri-Nations match in Perth. Gregan set a world record that still stands when he won his 139th cap in a World Cup defeat by England.

1994
Ukrainian rubberman Serhiy Bubka set his last outdoor world record in the pole vault, ten years after his first (May 26). This was his 17th and the one that still stands. It's hard to know if high altitude makes much difference in a jumping event, but Bubka came to Sestriere anyway, up in the Italian Alps. And whether it was the air or in his head, he vaulted 6.14 metres, a centimetre less than the world indoor record he set the previous year (February 21) but one more than his outdoor best from 1992. For the last six years, he'd been raising the bar a centimetre at a time, because cash payments were made for every world record. In 1991 he became the first to clear 20 feet (6.10).

Meanwhile the altitude certainly helped John Regis in the 200 metres. He powered his muscular frame through the thin air in 19.87 seconds to set a British record that still stands.

1994
In the Formula 1 year that cost the lives of Ayrton Senna and Roland Ratzenberger (May 1), Jos Verstappen was lucky not to join them. When he came into the pits at the German Grand Prix, some fuel splashed on his hot car and ignited. He had his visor up at the time, so there were burns round his eyes, but thankfully nothing worse as he escaped from a fireball. Gerhard Berger won the race after starting from pole.

2004
In the third round of the women's British Open, Finnish golfer Minea Blomqvist shot 62, a new record for any Major, men's or women's. But Britain's Karen Stupples won the tournament the following day after starting her last round with an eagle and a double eagle.

1928
Douglas Lowe became the first British athlete to retain an Olympic title. He won the 800 metres in 1924 (July 8) and had far less trouble today. With the smooth style that saved him so much energy, he kept his momentum while others were tying up down the home straight. Otto Pelzer of Germany had set a world record to beat Lowe in a classic race two years earlier, but illness stopped him reaching the final. Still, two other runners had broken Pelzer's record, and neither of them won a medal behind Lowe, who won imperiously by eight yards.

1971
One of the most crucial rugby Tests in Lions history. After winning the first in New Zealand that year, they were well beaten in the second. With their place in history under threat, their canny coach Carwyn James began by checking the weather. When the local meteorological office told him the wind at windy Wellington wasn't likely to change direction, the Lions played with it behind them when they won the toss, then started the third Test like a storm. When fly-half Barry John dropped a goal, they were three points up after three minutes. When he scored a try by the posts after a jolting hand-off by Gareth Edwards, they led 13-0 after thirteen. The game grew untidy after that, but 13 points was a big margin in those days, and despite a late try, the All Blacks lost 13-3 and went into the final Test one down (August 14).

1910
French cyclist Octave Lapize won the Tour de France the hard way. The mountain stages were so severe that cyclists had to get off and walk (Lapize accused race organisers of being assassins), and he fought a great battle with the defending champion, the giant Luxembourger François Faber, who had a six-litre lung capacity. Lapize took the lead after Faber had held it for 11 stages, and held it on the endlessly long stages towards Paris. Lapize was only 22 and profoundly deaf.

At the other end of the age scale, American golfer Jerry Barber was 45 when he won the US PGA in 1961. While he was shooting opening rounds of 69 and 67, Don January made 66 and 67 in the second and third and led Barber by four shots with nine holes left. But Barber holed three long putts, including two for birdies, to force a play-off. They both scored well in that, Barber shooting 67 to win by one stroke.

Nicola Fairbrother was controversially denied gold at the 1992 Olympics © Getty Images

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1992
When women's judo was added to the Olympic Games, Britain's Nicola Fairbrother was unlucky not to win gold. In the lightweight final, she faced a Spaniard in Spain, world champion Miriam Blasco. Blasco took a small lead near the end, but Fairbrother was on the point of winning by strangulation when the referee controversially called a halt. "In another two seconds she would have been unconscious," said Fairbrother, and team manager Ray Inman was equally unhappy: "That should have decided the bout. The referee just did not recognise the technique." Fairbrother won the world title the following year but should have been Olympic champion too.

Meanwhile in the main stadium, Mike Stulce of the USA won the shot putt. He'd just returned from a two-year ban for excessive testosterone. At the 1993 World Championships, he tested positive for testosterone again, as well as mestanolone. The two other medallists in 1992 were equally naughty boys. Jim Doehring was also banned for too much testosterone and pleaded guilty to conspiring to sell methamphetamine. Russian bronze medallist Vyacheslav Lykho was banned for three months in 1990.

1993
Prolific Grant Fox kicked his last points in international rugby, finishing on 645 in only 46 Tests after scoring 25 in New Zealand's 35-13 win over Samoa in Auckland. The All Blacks managed only two tries, but Fox kicked seven penalty goals.

1980
Most sports only allowed women to take part in the Olympics a long time after the men. Seventy-two years in the case of hockey, which appeared in the Games just as several countries boycotted them after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. It left an embarrassingly weak field, and Zimbabwe wouldn't even have been in it a few years earlier, when the country was still ruled by a white minority. They drew two of their five matches but were the only country not to lose one, taking the gold by winning 4-1 against Austria, who were usually way off the hockey radar.

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