Source photos: Hugh Gentry, Gonzalo Fuentes, Siphiwe Sibeko, Amr Abdallah, Perry Nelson. REUTERS/Illustration/Jeremy Schultz
Coming up this week: Cape Verde’s date with destiny, Ironman’s women return to Kona, tennis roadshow rolls towards Riyadh’s Six Kings Slam and more. Here’s your Inside Track to the action.
SOCCER
From wind-swept to world stage, Cape Verde chase history
Cape Verde players during their penalty shootout with South Africa at the Africa Cup of Nations last year. REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko
Cape Verde used to be a dot on football’s atlas — an Atlantic outpost where international matches were rarer than rain. Two decades ago, they averaged fewer than two games a year; now they are one win away from qualifying for their first-ever World Cup. Victory over Eswatini in Praia on October 13 would seal their spot in the final tournament, making an archipelago of roughly 600,000 the second-smallest nation ever to reach the finals, behind only Iceland. The difference? A far-flung diaspora stretching from Lisbon and Rotterdam to Boston that turned a supposed backwater into a global talent pool. It was Italy-based Dailon Livramento, a 24-year-old forward born in Rotterdam to Cape Verdean parents, who was the most recent hero here when, in Praia, he scored the winner to beat Cameroon last month.
Their squad reads like a roll call of Europe: six Dutch-born, others from Portugal, France and Ireland — and a centre-half from Shamrock Rovers who nearly missed his call-up because it landed in his spam folder. Roberto “Pico” Lopes told Reuters he’d set up LinkedIn at college and never checked it; a message from then-coach Rui Águas arrived in Portuguese, was ignored, and only nine months later did a follow-up prompt a Google Translate moment.
What it revealed was an invitation to declare for Cape Verde. “I was absolutely buzzing,” Lopes recalled. “Yep, 100% I’d love to be part of the squad.” A modern recruitment tale for a modern national team, and now Eswatini at home is the last hurdle. What began as a long shot has become a tidy little revolution: a driven federation, a squad stitched together across continents, and a team on the brink of the biggest stage. Cape Verde aren’t just on the map any more — they’re redrawing it.
Cape Verde v Eswatini, Praia, Cape Verde — October 13
TRIATHLON
Iron women on sacred ground as female athletes return to Kona
Triathletes waiting for the start of the swim portion during a previous Ironman World Championship in Hawaii. REUTERS/Hugh Gentry
Call it the sport’s neatest irony: On the day the Ironman returns to its volcanic cathedral, it’s the women who are the iron men. Hawaii and Kona belong to them on Saturday — heat shimmering, trade winds hissing — as the three-year-long split-sex experiment ends with a final blast of lava-hot theatre.
For four decades, men and women shared the spotlight in Kona — not only the site of elite world titles, but also where hundreds of amateur “age-groupers” got to fulfil their greatest sporting ambition by qualifying to swim 2.4 miles (3.8km) in the Pacific, bike 112 miles (180km) and run a marathon (26.2 miles, 42.2km) in Hawaii’s tropical October heat.
Since 2023, however, the men and women have alternated holding their championships in Hawaii, with the “other sex” being shunted off to France’s Nice — itself a city with a rich tradition of long-course racing, but hardly Hawaii. While that split will come to an end next year, this year the stage is just for the women as an elite group descends on the sport’s spiritual seaside home.
Among them are nine of the top 10 from last year’s race in Nice, including the medallists Laura Philipp of Germany, Kat Matthews of Britain and United States’ 2022 champion Chelsea Sodaro.
Lucy Charles-Barclay, the 2023 champion in Kona, is a strong favourite with a remarkable record: Thew British triathlete garnered four second places in four attempts before finally making it to the top step with a course record eight hours, 24.31 minutes . After missing last year’s race through injury, she has returned to top form this season and will race on the back of consecutive victories in the T100 series.
Germany’s Philipp should mount a strong challenge, however, on the back of her incredible Ironman record of 8.03.13 at Hamburg this year. American triple 70.3 (half-Ironman) World Champion Taylor Knibb could also be in the mix.
The last five years have seen five different winners from four nationalities.
Ironman World Championship, Kona, Hawaii — October 11
TENNIS
Payday in the desert as tennis turns into triage
Spectators in the stands during a WTA tennis in Riyadh. REUTERS/Aleksandra Szmigiel
You can almost feel the tennis calendar groan. As the tour staggers into October, the story isn’t titles so much as toll: bodies and minds pulling the handbrake after a year that has already felt too long. Elina Svitolina has shut down her season “to heal and recharge.” Barbora Krejcikova’s year ended in Beijing with a damaged knee. Daria Kasatkina says she’s hit “breaking point” and is done too. Different reasons, but the same conclusion.
What’s left is starting to look like survival rather than sport. The Asian swing has turned into a tennis triage ward, with retirements in heat and humidity and players weighing the value of another week on the road against the cost.
The Shanghai Masters has been a slog for the men: heat, humidity, and bodies breaking down. Jannick Sinner, Casper Ruud, Tomas Machac, David Goffin, Terence Atmane, Hamad Medjedovic and Wu Yibing all quit mid-match. World No.1 Carlos Alcaraz, still nursing a left-leg strain from Tokyo, swerved Shanghai altogether to mend — and made the point without saying a word.
Next week comes Riyadh’s Six Kings Slam, a glittering exhibition with guaranteed appearance fees reportedly around $1.5m, and a $6m winner’s haul. Not bad for three nights under the lights — and hard to blame anyone for choosing that over a half-empty midweek first-round tour match and a red-eye to the next stop.
Sure enough Sinner, Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic will be there, joined by Alexander Zverev, Taylor Fritz and Stefanos Tsitsipas for another massive payday — one that only underscores the disconnect between player welfare and the tour’s hectic calendar.
Saudi’s showpiece is selling itself on star power and cash, not ranking points or prestige — and that should unsettle the tours. It may be time to stop papering over the cracks and redraw the map: fewer mandatory events, smarter clustering, real off-ramps after the Slams, and incentives that keep the best players in meaningful matches rather than cashing in on them. Otherwise, the final chapter of the season will keep reading the same — the identity of the winner matters less than the names who never showed.
Six Kings Slam, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia — October 15-18
EXTRA TIME
What else we’re watching
Soccer: As Australia’s already-qualified national team, the Socceroos, fine-tune abroad for the World Cup, a quiet upheaval brews at home with the launch of the long-awaited, nostalgia-laced Australian Championship. Two decades after debt sank the old National Soccer League, seven legacy clubs return to the national stage, including South Melbourne Hellas, where Premier League coach Ange Postecoglou learned the ropes. With fierce rivalries rekindled and memories of terrace mayhem, league chiefs will be praying the passion comes without the punch-ups.
Australia fans in the stands before a World Cup qualifying match this year. REUTERS/Hollie Adams
Ice Hockey: All 32 teams lace up on Saturday as the National Hockey League launches a coast-to-coast marathon, from first puck in Winnipeg to the last buzzer in Seattle nearly 12 hours later — a frozen frenzy of slapshots, saves and rib-rattlers where reputations are made before winter even bites. The Edmonton Oilers, who earlier this week signed superstar captain Connor McDavid to a contract extension, are a favourite to win the Stanley Cup after losing to Florida in the championship round each of the last two years.
Edmonton Oilers players celebrate a goal this week. Perry Nelson-Imagn Images
Athletics: Chicago readies the year’s penultimate World Marathon Major with a men’s field built for warp speed on a course that has delivered all-time marks and controversy alike (see: Ruth Chepngetich’s 2:09:56 last year, posted nine months before a provisional doping suspension). Defending champion John Korir returns from a Boston win chasing a personal best, while the man most likely to rip the tape from his grasp is Uganda’s Jacob Kiplimo, the half-marathon world record holder who took second in London in April.
Runners race past the Chicago Theater during the 2022 Chicago Marathon. Jamie Sabau-USA TODAY Sports
Motor sports: Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil producer, spotlights clean mobility this weekend with the debut of Extreme H — the first hydrogen-powered racing series. Set in Qiddiya beneath the Tuwaiq mountains, the FIA-sanctioned event features gender-equal off-road teams and replaces the all-electric Extreme E. Created by Spanish entrepreneur Alejandro Agag, the series runs through October 11 with time trials, head-to-head duels and an eight-car final to crown the first Extreme H champions.
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Editing by Yasmeen Serhan and Hugh Lawson; Illustration by Jeremy Schultz
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