• May 28 down the years

A near riot in Rome

Adriano Panatta was a classy operator on clay but had the backing of a partisan crowd on home soil © Getty Images

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1978
The Italian Open tennis tournament was a riot that year. Nothing too unusual in that when Italian players were involved, especially Rome's favourite son Adriano Panatta. The only player ever to beat Björn Borg at the French Open, he did it twice. Today he played him in the final of the Italian singles. Both players were trying to regain the title, but Borg had more to contend with. He was playing against Panatta and his backing band, the Roman crowd. In his semi-final against Panatta, José Higueras of Spain had walked off when the deluge of insults and beer cans became too much. British umpire Bertie Bowron went with him. Today the mob was just as unruly, and although they were throwing beer and coins at an iceberg, even Borg was moved to ask the umpire for help. But at the start of the match, it wasn't the crowd that got to him. Even the local insects were in on the act. In trying to swat away a wasp, Borg cut his forehead with his own racquet! No wonder he lost the first set 6-1. He won the next two easily, but Panatta took the fourth. Then Borg broke to lead 2-0 and 3-1 in the fifth in between protesting about the coins that started landing around him. As if he needed the money. He was glad to get off without further bloodshed after winning the title 6-3.

1978
Fifteen-year-old swimming prodigy Sharron Davies completed her record haul of seven titles at the British Championships: the 100, 200, 400, and 800 metres freestyle, the 200 backstroke, and both individual medleys.

2000
Holland's overnight sensation Inge de Bruijn completed her world record rampage in Sheffield, setting her fourth in four events. Two days earlier, it was the 50 metres butterfly, yesterday the 50 freestyle and 100 butterfly. Today she became the first woman to swim the 100 free in under 54 seconds, improving a time set by a Chinese swimmer six years earlier. In the space of five months, De Bruijn set 11 world records in those four events and won three gold medals at the Olympics. She turned 27 during that time, which made some people suspect they had another Michelle Smith on their hands. De Bruijn passed all available drug tests. She was very nearly 31 when she retained the Olympic 50 freestyle in 2004.

1988
If Wales had any confidence going into their rugby tour of New Zealand, it was misplaced and didn't last long. In the first of two Tests, they were embarrassed 52-3 in Christchurch. Hefty winger John Kirwan had scored two tries against them in the World Cup on June 14, 1987. Now he scored another four. The All Blacks racked up nine in all, one by scrum-half Ian Deans on his debut, six converted by Grant Fox. They led 24-0 at half-time, so Mark Ring's penalty goal was just something to have on the scoreboard. Like everyone else, the Wales pack couldn't cope with one of the best in All Black history. Wales lost the second match 54-9, but at least Jonathan Davies scored a try. Kirwan scored two.

2006
Fernando Alonso won the Monaco Grand Prix on his way to retaining the world title. He started on pole and won a stop-start race without much trouble. But there's more to it than that, and as usual the pantomime villain was played by Michael Schumacher. When Alonso was threatening to set the fastest lap in qualifying, Schumacher suddenly stopped his car on a corner, forcing Alonso to slow down on his way round. My car failed on me, Schumacher wailed. What, said the stewards, you lost control when it was going ten miles an hour? They decided it was another of Schumacher's tricks and demoted him to the back of the grid. He set the fastest lap but finished fifth in the race and second in the Championship. Alonso won in Monaco again the following year.

Michael Schumacher showed good and bad sides at Monaco © Sutton Images

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When Schumacher behaved, he sometimes won in Monte Carlo. He did it for the fifth time on May 27, 2001, and he did it today back in 1995, for the second year in a row. Damon Hill started on pole, but the race had to be restarted after a crash on the first lap involving Jean Alesi, David Coulthard, and Gerhard Berger. Hill finished second behind Schumacher in the race and the Championship.

1978
Daley Thompson was only 19 but this was already his fifth British record in the decathlon. In the Austrian town of Götzis, where he later set world records in 1980 and 1982, he scored 8,238 points in finishing second to Germany's Guido Kratschmer. Thompson set his next British record at the European Championships in August.

1888
But roll over, Daley. And Bob Mathias and Dan O'Brien. And Roman Šebrle and your 9,000 points. Jim Thorpe was born today and he still looms over every decathlete. He was part French but mainly American Indian, hence his given name Wa-tho-huck ('Bright Path') - and his sports career is the stuff of legends. How he broke a high school record in his street clothes. How he beat Harvard on his own at American football, scoring all the points in an 18-15 win for the tiny Indian college of Carlisle. How he won seven track and field events in one afternoon against Lafayette. At the 1912 Olympics, he won the pentathlon with an event to spare and set a world record in winning the decathlon by a ludicrous 689 points. Then the famous comedown. Someone discovered he'd once earned a few bucks playing minor league baseball. So the American authorities struck Thorpe's name from the record books and (get this) petitioned the IOC to take away his gold medals. They had no right to do that, but the IOC acquiesced. Spinelessness in the face of smallmindedness by men not fit to lace his shoes. Later years weren't kind to Thorpe either. He sold the film rights to his life story for a pittance (the movie starred Burt Lancaster), worked as a labourer, and had no money for a cancer operation on his lip. When he died, a small town in Pennsylvania changed its name to Jim Thorpe in exchange for receiving his remains. Best of all time? Bear in mind that he was around before systematic training and dietary supplements. His marks in the high jump and high hurdles were a whisker away from the world record; his best long jump only a foot short; he ran 11.2 for the 100 metres when the Olympic champion ran 10.8; one of his shot putts would have won bronze in the individual event at the 1912 Games; his world record lasted 15 years and would have won silver at the 1948 Olympics. All this from someone who trained by competing: 'I had an aversion to work...I never left my best performance on the practice field.' If he'd ever taken athletics seriously, he might have been really rather good. Daley Thompson played a bit of professional football - but Thorpe was a Major League baseball player and a legend in American football. In 1982, nearly 30 years after he died, the IOC finally relented and presented Thorpe's family with his Olympic medals, too late to rectify one of the great sporting cruelties of the century.

1987
In rugby union's inaugural World Cup, France scored nine tries against Romania in Wellington. Romeo Bezuscu kicked four penalties in 19 first-half minutes, but they were Romania's only points in a 55-12 defeat. They couldn't hold a talented set of French backs (Sella, Charvet, Blanco, Lagisquet, Camberabero), and Guy Laporte scored 23 points. France set all kinds of records in their next match on June 2.

1978
Al Unser won the Indianapolis 500 for the third time. Mario Andretti took a break from winning the Formula One title that year to finish ninth. Unser eventually won the Indy four times. His brother Bobby won it three times, Andretti in 1969.

Former Formula One world champion Émerson Fittipaldi won the race on the same day in 1989. He started alongside Unser on the front row and came off best when he touched wheels with Unser's son Al junior, who spun off with two laps to go. If Fittipaldi was unpopular with some, it was nothing to what he went through after winning Indianapolis for the second time (see December 12, 1946).

1935
One of boxing's classic rivalries came to the crunch. On exactly the same day the previous year, Barney Ross took the world welterweight title from Jimmy McLarnin. He lost it to him later in the year, and this was the decider. Their series had everything people asked for. Three very close fights between two clever fighters who threw a lot of punches and could take them, with the Jewish-Irish rivalry thrown in. All three fights took place in New York: the first two at Madison Square Garden (the first pulled a crowd of 60,000), the third at the Polo Grounds. The first two were decided by split decisions, today's was unanimous, Ross regularly beating McLarnin to the punch. McLarnin had only three more pro fights, winning two, against top Italians Tony Canzoneri and Lou Ambers. Ross had many more before retiring after losing the title to Henry Armstrong on May 31, 1938.

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