• September 18 down the years

More glory for Redgrave and Pinsent

Steve Redgrave and Matthew Pinsant were dominant in the water © Getty Images

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1994
Steve Redgrave won nine gold medals at the World Championships, Matthew Pinsent a record ten. They won seven of those world titles together: three in the coxless fours and four in a row in the coxless pairs, including the third of those four today. Trying to use their usual tactic of getting out quickly and dictating the race from the front, they were penalised for jumping the start. Understandably cautious second time round, they allowed the very good German pair of Peter Höltzenbein and Thorsten Streppelhoff to open up an early lead. Redgrave and Pinsent were still only third at halfway - but they were rowing within themselves, at 36 strokes a minute compared with the leaders' 39. Accelerating gradually, the Brits upped their rate to 40 with 200 metres left and worked hard all the way to the line to hold off the Germans and fast-finishing Australians. Two years later, Redgrave and Pinsent won Britain's only gold medal at the Olympic Games ( July 27).

On the same day at these World Championships, Britain's Peter Haining retained his title in the lightweight single sculls, which he also won the following year. The 1991 champion Niall O'Toole of Ireland used the following wind to take a two-length lead, but Haining made his move at halfway, passed O'Toole with 400 metres to go, and won by three seconds.

Two days earlier, Britain had also won gold in the men's lightweight eights, a furious finish taking them past long-time leaders Denmark. The British crew rowed the first 500 very fast and the last 500 very faster.

On the same day over in Las Vegas, two great boxers faced each other in one of the eagerly awaited unification fights. Both were world welterweight champions: Oscar De la Hoya with the WBC, Félix Trinidad the IBF - but the fight didn't need any plastic belts to be a box-office smash. These were two unbeaten pros: Trinidad in 35 fights, including wins over top names like Pernell Whitaker and Héctor Camacho, De la Hoya in 31, which brought him world titles at four different weights. He'd beaten Whitaker and Héctor Camacho too, and the great Julio César Chávez twice. The tale of the fight doesn't take much telling. De la Hoya completely outboxed Trinidad for the first eight rounds. He bloodied his nose in the second, kept him at arm's length, and caught him with his much-improved right hand. An increasingly desperate Trinidad couldn't get into the fight. Until, suddenly, out of nowhere, De la Hoya began to act as if he were running out time in a football match, playing a kind of boxing keepball. For the last four rounds, he hardly threw a punch, even in the last. It was a horrible miscalculation. Thinking he'd won all the first eight rounds, he was horrified that others disagreed. Some of the early rounds had been so close that two judges thought Trinidad had won and the other called it a draw. Astounding. Just downright bizarre. The two boxers carried on winning world title fights, De la Hoya until 2006, but this was the only one between them.

Joe Louis still towered above his rivals into his 30s © Getty Images

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On the same day in 1946, Joe Louis became the only boxer to win five world title fights in the first round. He was 32 by now, and his balance and defence didn't get any better with age, but he still had enough of a punch to beat any opponent who came into the ring overawed by the Louis reputation. Tami Mauriello carried a light layer of blubber and still weighed nearly a stone less than Louis, who was all muscle and glower. Still, like other fighters who knocked Joe down before he did the same to them, Mauriello decided attack was the best form of defence, and he nearly flattened the champion with a right to the jaw in the first ten seconds. If Louis had been a few inches closer, he would have gone down and maybe out. Instead he came back with an immediate left hook which put Mauriello on the floor, and the challenger just looked scared after that. Mauriello went down again from a series of punches, got up on one knee, but then clutched his head and was happy for the referee to lead him away. The fight lasted just over two minutes. Two years later, Louis retired after 11 years as undefeated heavyweight champion.

1969
After her disappointing silver medal in the 400 metres at the 1968 Olympics, blonde golden girl Lillian Board had her attempt to go one better shattered by a back injury that still troubled her here in Athens. Only a month before the Championships, she decided to try the 800 metres again to put less strain on her spine. So here she was, still only 20, with just half a dozen 800-metre races behind her and a back that needed massaging the day before. Naturally not much was expected of her in the final. For most of the race, the lead was held by defending champion Vera Nikolić of Yugoslavia, who'd won the title as a 17-year-old in 1966. As she came out of the final turn, she opened a one-yard gap over Board, whose strength didn't seem to be matching her speed. But look again. Moving out into the second lane, Board exploded down the home straight. She finished ten yards clear of Denmark's Anneliese Damm-Olesen, with Nikolić third. Board's time of 2 minutes 01.4 was more than half a second faster than her previous best and shattered Nikolić's Championship record. Nikolić regained the title in 1971, but Lillian Board wasn't there by then. One of the favourites for the 1972 Olympics in Munich, she reached that city only as a cancer patient, dying there on Christmas Eve just a year after her win today. She was barely 22.

1971
In golf, Britain & Ireland hadn't won the Ryder Cup since 1957. They managed a draw at home in 1969, and there was a brief knock-on effect today in St Louis, when they led after the first day's foursomes. But normal service returned with a bang on day two, when the USA won six of the seven matches and took a four-point lead into today's singles. Peter Oosterhuis, on his Cup debut, beat both Gene Littler and Arnold Palmer, and Brian Barnes also won both his matches, but a team that included Nicklaus, Trevino, and Sam Snead retained the trophy 18½-13½. By 1977, the British Isles were about to bow to the inevitable ( September 17).

1965
All-time great switch-hitter Mickey Mantle played his 2,000th game in Major League baseball, for the New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium. Another legend, Joe DiMaggio, who was replaced in the team by Mantle in 1951, came out of retirement for the day. Mantle scored a record 19 home runs in the World Series, finishing on the winning side seven times.

1992
High jumper Steve Smith jumped highest when he was only 19. At the World Juniors, he won gold by clearing 2.37 metres, which equalled the world junior record set at the previous Championships. It also set a Commonwealth senior record and a British senior record that still stands. Smith equalled the height in winning bronze at the 1993 World Championships.

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