Top Ten Sporting Moustaches

1. Mark Spitz


The fastest underwater mammal since Flipper, Mark Spitz won 9 Olympic Gold Medals, including 7 at the Munich Games in 1972.

In a sport where the absence of body hair is seen as a key to success Spitz proudly wore his moustache as a sign to all hair fascists that you don't have to have an upper lip smoother than a baby's bum to collect gold.

In 1967 at the age of 17 he won five gold's at the Pan American Games in Winnipeg, he also held ten world records and said that he would win 6 gold's at Mexico the following year.

As it turned out he only won two (that's two more than I ever won!), the next Olympics however were both a personal triumph and the end of a glittering career. He won 7 gold's (3 team and 4 individual) and set World Record times in each event. Spitz had been a regular visitor to Israel and in the aftermath of the Palestinian attack, which left 11 Israeli athletes dead, he retired.

He did make a comeback in 1991 when he was offered a million dollars by a film maker if he made the U.S team for Barcelona's 1992 Olympics - as it was Spitz failed to make any of the qualifying times.

2. Mervyn Gregory Hughes


Larger than life itself, Merv was initially ridiculed but ultimately respected by spectators around the world - his 31 wickets in the 1993 Ashes series helped his cause in England. I saw him at Egbaston in the fifth test when he took 0-77 from 37 overs. Australia won that test by eight wickets to take a 4-0 lead. A test career 212 wickets at just under 29 each tells only part of the story of a man whose love for pies, beer and his fellow man is legendary.

With a 45 pace run-up it was a good job Merv choose to play for Essex and not Sussex in England, playing at Hove he would have arrived at the wicket with wet feet.


3. Francis Morgan Thompson


The word legend is bandied about these days with as little care for its true meaning as the word great, but this man is a legend writ large. If he had never won an Olympic medal he would have been in my personal top ten athletes of all time simply for defying Mrs Thatcher and going to the 1980 Moscow games. Thompson won gold at seven consecutive championships between 1980 and 1986, including of course back to back Olympic Golds at Moscow and Los Angeles.

Daley had a famous bust-up with David Coleman during the 1984 Olympics when he refused to do an interview for the BBC, Coleman apparently shouted at him "You owe it to me, I made you."

4. Graeme James Souness

The reason why Scotland were crap at the 1978 World Cup Finals in Argentina was because this man was left out of the side until it was too late. Forget all the hard men of today Souness was the most frightening thing to be seen in the era of tight football shorts that was the 1980's. Okay he may not have been a great manager in England but just look at his medals as a player : 5 League Championships, 3 European Cups, 4 League Cups he then went, via Italy to Glasgow Rangers where he won 1 league championship as player manager and 3 as manager.

And he was scary as hell in Boys From The Blackstuff.


5. Ian Terence Botham


I have to admit I wasn't a big fan of his to begin with, all the hype surrounding his early test exploits seemed over the top, his best performances were against India and New Zealand who weren't exactly world beaters at the end of the seventies - however like everybody else I soon learned to appreciate his talent.

Let's (as Lloyd would say) look at the evidence : the fastest (in terms of matches) to achieve the "doubles" of 1,000 runs and 100 wickets, 2,000 runs and 200 wickets, and 3,000 runs and 300 wickets. He was the first player to score 5,000 runs and take 300 Test wickets, and the first to score a century and take 10 wickets in the same Test match. He scored a century and took 5 wickets in an innings in the same Test on 5 occasions; no-one else has managed this feat more than twice.

6. Graham Alan Gooch


Okay I'm biased - an Essex boy, like me, a West Ham supporter, like me, and a great cricketer (unlike me of course) how could I leave out my number two all-time sporting hero.

Taking into account both tests and one day internationals GG is the highest run scorer in International cricket ever. 13,190 runs between 1975 and 2000 at an average close to 40.

Who can forget the magnificent 333 for England against India at Lords?

I saw him score a double century for Essex at the old County Ground against Hampshire in 1984, with that big heavy bat of his and perfect timing it was a wonderful weekend of exhibition cricket.

7. John David Newcombe


John Newcombe and Rod Laver are the only players to ever win both the US Open and Wimbledon men's singles titles as an amateur and as a professional. Newcombe was from that pre-open era when tennis players played to win not to earn millions of dollars for scraping into the top 20. Newcombe preferred grass surfaces as they favoured his game and although he made it to the 1964 finals, the French Open's clay surface was the only major singles championship he never won. However, he did take the French doubles title on three occasions. Overall, he won 25 Grand Slam major titles in singles, doubles, and mixed doubles. And he did it all wearing incredibly tight white shorts.


8. Allan Robert Border

Yes, I know he's another Australian and yes, he's holding that little urn we only win when Jupiter is aligned with Pluto and yes, he played for Essex, but hey, this guy redefined modern cricket captaincy. A.B was the first batsman to score 11,000 runs in tests, primarily a left hand number three batsman but also chanced his arm with some slow left arm orthodox bowling. He played 156 matches for Australia with 11,174 runs at an average of 50.56. His best bowling was 11/96 against the West Indies in 1989 at a time when the Windies were still good. He hit 27 centuries in his Test career, which is 6th all time.

9. Nigel Earnest James Mansell

Probably the most boring person in the history of sport, Mansell is fourth on the all-time list of Grand Prix winners. The remarkable thing about Nige is that he crashed out of 32 Grand Prix which is one more than the number he actually won. Having said that he was blighted by unreliability and only had a truly competitive car for half his career, he also had to race against his team mates, unlike some of rivals who had the advantage of team orders. I actually have a personal interest in Nigel as well, one of my ex-clients bid one for his F1 helmets at a charity bash, the last time I saw it, it was wrapped in a towel in a safe.


10. Leopold Luque

Back in the far off days of 1978 I remember sitting up until 1 o'clock in the morning to watch Argentina play France in the World Cup. It was on the 6th of June that we saw a nation forget its domestic problems, stick two fingers up at the military junta of Vidella and get behind their national football team.

Argentina had the three best players in the tournament in Kempes, Ardiles and Luque and it was the man from River Plate who scored one of the best goals of the tournament when he let fly from thirty yards with an unstoppable half volley against the French.


Honourable mentions must go to: Terry McDermott, John Aldridge, Bjorn Borg, Craig Stadler and Fatima Whitbread.