type of culture.” Given the
intensity of training which has
caused England’s players to lose
around half a stone per session,
their first warm-up game against
Wales on Sunday will probably
come with a small measure of
relief. It will also act as the last
opportunity for any fringe players
to nail down their positions before
Jones announces his final 31-man
World Cup squad next Monday.
Four years ago, George made his
debut in the warm-up series and
was subsequently named in Stuart
Lancaster’s final squad alongside
Henry Slade and Sam Burgess
(whatever happened to him?). After
serving a long apprenticeship
under Dylan Hartley, George
enters this World Cup as the
undisputed first choice, but he is
no less excited for the challenge to
come, particularly with the chance
to avenge England’s 21-13 Six
Nations loss to Wales.
“Whenever England play Wales
it is going to have an edge to it,”
George said.
“At the end of the day it is a Test
match, playing them home and
away, and they are both amazing
opportunities to put our best foot
forward and potentially right a
few wrongs from that game in the
Six Nations.
“My first cap in the pre-World
Cup games last time around seems
a long time ago. It’s an incredibly
exciting time to be involved in
English rugby. There’s a huge
excitement and belief amongst the
group that we can really do
something special. I can’t wait to
get going with the games.”‘There’s a huge
excitement and
belief amongst the
group we can do
something special’
By Oliver Brown CHIEF SPORTS
FEATURE WRITER in BudapestLewis Hamilton has responded
witheringly to Nico Rosberg’s latest
barbs from the sidelines, dismissing
the opinions of his former Mer-
cedes team-mate as an irrelevance.
Rosberg, the 2016 world cham-
pion, had used his video blog to of-
fer five reasons why he thought
Max Verstappen was the stand-out
driver of the season, citing Hamil-
ton’s age and fractional loss of qual-
ifying pace as key factors. But his
old nemesis, having denied the
Dutchman victory in the Hungar-
ian Grand Prix on Sunday after an
exhilarating pursuit, gave such
arguments short shrift.
“Honestly, I’ve never seen the
blog,” he said. “It has no bearing on
anything I do in my life. I don’t care.
All you have to do is look at the tally
of my results over the years. They
speak for themselves. There will be
people who haven’t had the success
that I’ve had and who might want to
talk it down.”
Rosberg, with 23 race wins to
Hamilton’s 81, is one such person.
The relationship between the pair
remains as icy as it was on that day
in Austin in 2015 when Hamilton,
celebrating his third world champi-
onship, provocatively tossed the
cap for the second-placed driver at
Rosberg – only for the German to
hurl it straight back.
Now that the retired Rosberg has
moved into punditry, his criticisms
of Hamilton have become increas-
ingly pointed. When Hamilton dis-
closed that he had a virus ahead of
the recent German Grand Prix,
where he finished only ninth, Ros-
berg scoffed: “I think the man flu
was just part of the Lewis Hamilton
show. He likes to make it look more
difficult than it is.”
But Hamilton, now 62 points
clear of Valtteri Bottas, referred to a
self-help book entitled The Four
Agreements, by Mexican spiritualist
Don Miguel Ruiz, as his inspiration
for deflecting such broadsides.
“There’s an element in there thatBy Ben Bloom
ATHLETICS CORRESPONDENTBasil Heatley, Britain’s former mar-
athon world record holder and
Olympic silver medallist, has died
aged 85.
Heatley’s time of 2 hr 13 min
55 sec at the 1964 Polytechnic Mara-
thon was more than 30 secondsfaster than the previous world re-
cord, although his mark would last
just four months before it was sur-
passed by Ethiopian Abebe Bikila at
the Tokyo Olympics. Heatley fol-
lowed Bikila home to claim silver.
“We’d no sooner started than I
developed a severe stitch – the first
time I’d had one in a race,” Heatley
explained later. Despite the stitch,
he entered the stadium third before
passing host nation favourite Kok-
ichi Tsuburaya to claim silver in thefinal 200 metres. Coventry Godiva
runner Heatley set a 10-mile world
record of 47:47 in 1961. That same
year, he won gold at the Interna-
tional Cross-County Champion-
ships, the forerunner to the World
Cross-Country Championships.
Olympic 400m bronze medallist
Katharine Merry said: “Very sad to
hear Basil Heatley has passed away.
One of the Coventry Godiva greats
and an England Athletic Hall of
Fame inductee in 2015. RIP Basil.”FORMULA ONE
ATHLETICS
Briton suggests his old
rival is envious of him
Former team-mate cites
champion’s age and pace
says, ‘Don’t take anything person-
ally’,” he said. “So, when people say
something about you, it’s not actu-
ally how they’re feeling about you,
it’s how they’re feeling about them-
selves.”
While aided by Mercedes’ inno-
vative two-stop strategy, Hamilton
was masterful in judging his chase
of Verstappen, heading off into F1’s
summer break having won eight of
12 grands prix in 2019. In words that
should chill the blood of his nearest
rivals, he described how he couldsecond half of this year to be even
stronger than the first.”
Rosberg, in highlighting what he
saw as Verstappen’s superiority,
had suggested that an F1 driver’s
form tended to tail off past the age
of 32. It was not a theory for which
Hamilton had any time. “I’m 34, but
I feel like I’m driving better than
ever,” he said. “I hope you can see
that I haven’t lost any speed.”
Hamilton leads a wandering life
away from the track, often crossing
two continents or more in the same
week. His one concession to ad-
vancing age is that over the next
month, he plans to work con-
sciously on introducing more struc-
ture and discipline to his days.
“I’ve never been very good at
planning,” he acknowledged. “Be-
fore I could go and party for multi-
ple days. But now I need to make
sure that I get my energy back. I’m
a night owl; I don’t really sleep a
huge amount. So I want to focus on
shifting that, waking up early, see-
ing the sun rise wherever I am.
“I might try meditation, a few dif-
ferent things to help with a health-
ier lifestyle. I’ll be doing a lot more
reading, too.”
Over at Red Bull, there is a grow-
ing danger that Pierre Gasly could
be sacked before the end of the
year. The Frenchman has earned
just 63 points to Verstappen’s 181
and, in Hungary, was lapped by the
Dutch prodigy for the second time
in four races. “Pierre really needs to
take some time out during the
break and reflect,” said his team
principal, Christian Horner. “He’s
not in the mix at all.”Rosberg’s criticisms have no
bearing on my life – Hamilton
Biting back: Lewis Hamilton has given short shrift to Nico Rosberg’s opinions
ALAMY LIVE NEWSMarathon silver medallist Heatley dies at 85
Championship standings
make refinements in time for the
next race at Spa in four weeks’ time.
“I feel really fit,” Hamilton said. “I
wouldn’t say I’m the fittest I’ve
been, because I’ve been coming
away from this sickness – and, be-
lieve me, it wasn’t man flu. It was
something that really wiped me
out. With this break I have, I’m re-
ally focused on recovery. I’ve told
my guys, ‘I want everyone to send
me an email, be completely straight
with me if there are things you
think I can improve on’. I want the1 Lewis Hamilton (GB, Mercedes) 250pts
2 Valtteri Bottas (Finland, Mercedes) 188
3 Max Verstappen (Holland, Red Bull) 181
4 Sebastian Vettel (Germany, Ferrari) 156
5 Charles Leclerc (Monaco, Ferrari) 132
6 Pierre Gasly (France, Red Bull) 63
7 Carlos Sainz (Spain, McLaren) 58
8 Kimi Raikkonen (Finland, Alfa Romeo) 31
9 Daniil Kvyat (Russia, Toro Rosso) 27
10 Lando Norris (GB, McLaren) 24
Next race Sept 1, Belgium (Spa)The Daily Telegraph Tuesday 6 August 2019 *** 17