Androgens And Women

It is a point that David Starkey, sitting at an exhibition he has curated, takes up with characteristic attack. “Henry is a classic all-rounder. He is an extremely able student, a considerable poet and musician, and a very enthusiastic athlete. He takes after his mother’s side and, at a time when the average height is 5ft 4in, he is 6ft 1in. He has the build of a rugger player, and a big one at that.”

If a courtier had had the wit to invent rugby union then Henry would have made a fearsome No8, perhaps captaining his country in a forerunner of the Six Nations, with the Holy Roman Empire stepping in for Italy. As it was he became infatuated with jousting.

“The great heroes of the day are the leading jousters,” Starkey says. “When he was 14 or 15 Henry was like a boy on the terraces, wanting to go on the pitch. There are descriptions of him being glued to the action, champing at the bit to take part, but, of course, he can’t because it is so dangerous.” Henry ascends to the throne and one side benefit of the role is that no one can contradict him. “When he has been king for nine months he actually starts taking part in jousts, albeit in secret. It is only when the man he is jousting against falls off and is injured and everyone mistakenly thinks it is Henry that the story gets out.”

Jousting, Starkey says, is an unbelievably brutal and testing sport: “It is rugby in armour on horseback with a 12ft lance.” Just clambering aboard a horse wearing that weight of armour (100-120lb) takes some doing. To then compose yourself sufficiently to be able to lance your opponent’s helmet (known as “a tilt”) while travelling at full pelt involves considerable skill.

In the exhibition you can see the score cheque for the first day of the Westminster Tournament, held by Henry to celebrate the birth of his son in 1511 (however the boy, called Henry, died a few days later). It shows that the scoring is similar to boxing, with maximum points being awarded for a blow (“attaint”) to your opponent’s head which breaks your lance. The scorecard shows that Henry dominated proceedings, taking part in 25 courses and breaking four lances and making three attaints. However, Sir Thomas Knyvet, who took part in half as many courses as his King, managed five broken lances and three attaints. So it was that he was declared “best doer” by Queen Catherine and given the prize.

After the games, the fun. “At the end of a day’s jousting,” Starkey says, “the prizes are given by the Lady of the Joust who has been just sitting simpering ? la Wag with a bag of gold or whatever. After the action was over the jousters would go and have a communal bath and get calmed down, or overexcited, and then there would be the ball and the stars of the ball would be the winning jousters.” So far, so very Wimbledon.

Henry’s passion for jousting has a profound effect on the architecture of London. “Sport so dominates the life of the early Tudor court that all the great palaces have to have a tilt yard,” Starkey says. “Greenwich, in effect, becomes a tilt yard with a palace attached.” The Horse Guards building in Whitehall was once Henry’s personal gravelled tilt yard. And the tilt yard at Hampton Court was the first to be constructed with state-of-the-art viewing towers. It would be similar to Prince Charles celebrating his accession to the throne by building all-seater stadiums at Buckingham Palace, Balmoral and Sandringham.

When Henry is not jousting he goes hunting. As a small boy he enjoyed reading William Twiti’s The Art of Hunting and The Mayster of Game by Edward, second Duke of York. As an adult he organised his affairs so that he could devote the maximum amount of time to his hobby. “The only time he would do business during the day was when listening to mass,” Starkey says, “which he did from his special place which was heated and had a comfortable seat. And then again late at night after he had had a few drinks.” From 5am to 9pm he went hunting. “It is reckoned Henry spends a third of his adult life on horseback and this completely alters the geography of London as the great royal parks are created.” In 1520, Richard Pace, in a letter to Thomas Wolsey writes: “He [the king] spares no pains to convert the sport of hunting into a martyrdom.” An early example of someone treating a sport as a religion.

Akers was not present to see his team collect their 32nd trophy in the 22 years since he formed the club. His full-time job as kit man to the Premiership Gunners meant he was 170 miles away at the Emirates Stadium for the visit of Chelsea, though as that game kicked off two hours later than the women’s match he was able to keep in touch by telephone with events at the Halton Stadium in Widnes.

His captain, Faye White, who watched from the bench yesterday as she is recovering from a knee injury, said: “That’s the tenth time we’ve won the league but this is the most satisfying because we’ve lost so many big players. It proves you can’t keep a good club down and it’s a great send-off for Vic.”

White, who also skippers England, added: “Vic had a vision for the women’s game and he’s worked 24/7 at making it happen. He developed the links with the men’s club and always fought for the backing that we’ve now got ?and he made us the best team in the country.”

The Everton manager, Mo Marley, disappointed though she obviously was by failing at the last hurdle to clinch the title, also paid tribute to Akers.

“Vic never saw women’s football as a route to better things in the men’s game,” she said.

“He always saw it as parallel to his work with the Arsenal men. It’s a compliment from him to the women’s game that he’s enthused about it for more than 20 years and he’s done a brilliant job.”

Marley, who justifiably felt her team might have won yesterday on the balance of play, has the consolation of a place alongside Arsenal in the newly constituted Champions League ?a streamlined version of the Uefa Cup, which it will replace, and with its most glamorous innovation to be a final played at the same ground as the men’s championship decider.

“This is a vital step that’s right for our sport,” said the FA chairman, Lord Triesman. “It will ensure that our head coach [Hope Powell] will have outstanding players available to her in the future.”

Additional to the 17 centrally contracted players are a further five England squad members who are now playing as full-time professionals in the United States and earning more than twice the central contract salary. The FA’s move gives Powell, three months ahead of the 2009 European Championship finals in Finland, potentially the strongest squad she has had since taking charge in 1998. The home-based players will be allowed part-time jobs outside their football commitments, but only up to a maximum of 24 hours a week.

“This is a great opportunity for the players,” Powell said. “These contracts will help them to focus on training and playing, and allow them the time to concentrate on helping England to qualify for major tournaments on a consistent basis and to compete at the very top level against the best teams in the world.”

Of the 17 players handed contracts only one, the Doncaster Belles midfielder Rachel Williams, a plasterer by trade, has yet to make her senior England debut. “This is brilliant for me,” said the 20-year-old. “When I finish work at the moment I’m knackered and that affects my training. Now I’ll be fresher and hopefully I can push on to break into the England squad for the Euro finals.”

Players awarded central contracts: Rachel Brown (Everton), Siobhan Chamberlain (Chelsea), Carly Telford (Leeds Carnegie), Casey Stoney (Chelsea), Faye White (Arsenal), Rachel Unitt (Everton), Stephanie Houghton (Leeds Carnegie), Emily Westwood (Everton), Katie Chapman (Arsenal), Jill Scott (Everton), Laura Bassett (Arsenal), Rachel Williams (Doncaster Rovers Belles), Rachel Yankey (Arsenal), Sue Smith (Leeds Carnegie), Jody Handley (Everton), Lindsay Johnson (Everton), Corrine Yorston (Bristol Academy).

Now Graf is in the stands to present the trophy to the 2009 champion. Almost unbelievably, it is the first women’s match she has watched in the flesh in the 10 years since she stopped playing, not long after dispatching Hingis, to go off and marry Andre Agassi. Little wonder, then, that she looks so troubled as she surveys an all-Russian final between the world No1 Dinara Safina and Svetlana Kuznetsova that has fewer peaks than a Dutch landscape.

“I found it really hard to watch,” says Graf, before graciously trying to dampen any criticism of the players. “I know how it is out there when you get nervous and tight, and you can’t show your potential ?or even play close to your normal game.”

Maybe, but in Graf’s case big-title matches unfailingly brought the best out of her. It seemed to Graf a matter of honor that she should do credit to the office of top-ranked player in the world. In Paris, Safina’s performance is grim. Kuznetsova has to play no more than moderately well to lift her first French Open title.

“That’s for you to judge,” Graf says, deflecting an attempt to finesse out of her whether she thinks women’s tennis was better when she played than it is now. “I just don’t watch it enough. I see them and I know their faces, but I haven’t really gotten into their games.”

Those who have “gotten into their games” are becoming increasingly dismayed. Something seems to have gone wrong with women’s tennis, which, only a year ago, was in sufficiently good health ?despite the retirement of Justine Henin while still world No1 ?for these pages to celebrate its achievements. A big fashion photograph of Venus and Serena Williams, Maria Sharapova, Ana Ivanovic and Jelena Jankovic, five of the very personable stars at the top of the women’s game, accompanied the article.

What happened next was quite a shock. Ivanovic, Jankovic and Sharapova, the top three seeds, were all eliminated before the quarter-finals at Wimbledon and it was left to the enigmatic Williams sisters to rescue the competition by staying the course until the final.

The performances that led to the exit of the leading three seeds were all abject, none more so than Sharapova’s. She was humbled twice by Alla Kudryavtseva, a fellow Russian ranked 154 in the world ?first on court and then in the interview room. “It’s very pleasant to beat Maria,” Kudryavtseva said, “because I don’t like her outfit?it was a little too much of everything. It was one of my motivations to beat her.” Hitting the fashion-conscious Sharapova in her dress sense was possibly more painful for the former champion than her defeat.

Come the US Open, seven weeks later, Sharapova was sidelined by a serious injury to her right shoulder, two tears in the rotator cuff, while Ivanovic was so out of sorts, having suffered from cysts in her right thumb, that she lost to a qualifier in the second round. Although Jankovic reached the final, where she lost in straight sets to Serena Williams, she too was starting to struggle to hold her place in the top five.

The crew is skippered by one of Britain’s best-known sailors, Dee Caffari, the first woman to sail solo, nonstop both ways around the world.

Also on board the yacht Aviva is Sam Davies, who finished a couple of places ahead of Caffari in fourth in the grueling Vend閑 Globe solo round-the-world yachting race earlier this year. Although fierce competitors, they chatted together frequently during the three-month race and got to know each other well.

The UK round trip has, as the sporting clich?goes, been a sprint rather than a marathon but has had very specific technical challenges because it involves hugging a coast where tides are tricky and the weather is very changeable.

The women got off to a flying start after crossing the official start line off Ventnor on the Isle of Wight last Monday evening. Their first task was dodging huge vessels in the Channel, one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, as they headed anti-clockwise around the UK.

In one of her on-board logs, Davies said: “It is funny to be living on board a different boat after so many miles traveled alone on my Roxy boat, but the change is nice and it is great to learn how to get the most out of Aviva.”

Miranda Merron, the crew’s navigator and weather guru, said there had been a couple of close shaves. “We have been doing a spot of tourism around some of the hundreds of oil rigs in the North Sea. At times, the wind causes Aviva to be inexorably drawn to them,” she said.

But there has been time for fun. Davies said: “We have managed to have a great gossip amongst girlfriends. The subjects of conversation, of course, stay confidential to the crew. There has been a fair amount of singing (not all in tune) and laughing going on.”

By the time the yacht passed the most northerly point of the challenge, the rocky outcrop of Muckle Flugga in the Shetlands, the crew was ahead of the record-breaking schedule.

Caffari said: “The best part of being way up north is that there is no night-time. It is really incredible.”

Then they hit rougher weather. “Out here, our world is tipped over at 30 degrees, and jumps around like a fairground ride,” said Davies.