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Traktor Chelyabinsk announced the news on Facebook: “The emergency services have confirmed that the walls of the Arena Traktor were among those structures to suffer damage . . .”
The stadium was opened in 2009 and has a 7,500 capacity for matches and 9,000 for concerts – which it can stage without, wackily, thawing the ice.
Canadian goalkeeper Michael Garnett, one of the club’s imports, was, initially, unaware that a meteor had struck, although it wouldn’t be correct to say he was blissfully so.
He was, he told the Canadian Press, “jolted out of bed”, and “when he looked out the window, he says he saw a bright streak across the sky”. He assumed there had been a plane crash or a bomb blast – but he still set off for training.
Was he traumatised? Seems not. “Meteorite shook Chelyabinsk this morning. Shook my whole building and woke me up!,” he tweeted. “So cool!”
Gallagher's gold medal haul at 150 and counting
So, who’s the most successful Irish athlete of all time? It depends, of course, what criteria you choose, but if you opt for a medal count then Hugh Gallagher of Creevy, Co Donegal, will be severely hard to top.
Gallagher collected the 150th gold medal of his career at the National Indoor Masters’ Athletics Championship in Athlone, a collection that makes Usain Bolt’s haul look like a mere speck of dust.
In all, he picked up three golds, in the shot putt, 60 metres and long jump, and he hopes to add to that collection at the National Outdoor championships in Tullamore in August, the same month he turns 89. “If God spares me, I’ll be in Tullamore,” he told the Donegal Democrat.
If you were hoping to hear Gallagher has lived a life of debauchery, just to give you some hope – no joy. “I never drank or smoked and I train every day,” he said.
Maradona proves he's still the daddy of 'em all - just don't expect him to be there for the birthHearty congratulations to Diego Maradona for becoming a father again this week, his girlfriend Victoria Ojeda giving birth to a boy in Buenos Aires.
Daddy, alas, wasn’t pacing the hospital corridors puffing a cigar – he was busy with business in Dubai.
“My feeling is that Diego’s going to show up at any moment,” an optimistic Alfredo Cahe, Maradona’s doctor, told Reuters, before revealing of the baby: “He’s a Diego, with a big head and lots of hair.”
No paternity disputes there, then. Although England fans might want to know if his left hand was raised skyward when he emerged (get over it).
There was, of course, a bit of a paternity barney a few years back about another of Maradona’s sons after what he claimed was merely a 24-hour entanglement with a woman from Naples.
Nine months later, in September 1986, the product of their day-long dalliance was born, Maradona finally saying “hello, son” 17 years later when they bumped in to each other on a golf course, like you do.
