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• John Mitchell: England motivated to fill Twickenham with captivating displays

  England ran riot against Ireland with head coach John Mitchell revealing their pivot to an all-action attack is designed to fill Twickenham.

  A crowd of 48,778 watched the Red Roses plunder 14 tries in an 88-10 victory that keeps them on course to win a sixth successive Guinness Women’s Six Nations title when they face France in a likely Grand Slam decider next weekend.

  Unstoppable wing Abby Dow and player of the match Ellie Kildunne completed hat-tricks, but there were fireworks across the field as England delivered on their promise to put on a show.

  Their ultimate aim is to run out at next year’s home World Cup in front of a sold-out Twickenham and Mitchell insisted that can only be achieved by captivating audiences with a style of play no longer based on forward dominance.

  “The girls presented a performance that went up a gear. We asked that of them during the week and they certainly delivered it,” the Kiwi said.

  “We’ve got a drive to fill the stadium on a consistent basis because we want to play here consistently.

  “If we can continue to produce performances like that it won’t be too long before we do fill all the seats. From that point of view, it’s only that style of rugby that will bring people to watch us.

  “We know we have other strengths as well, but this is a good sign and we’re only in the infancy of it.

  “It’s a testament to the girls because they go out and own it and see the rewards from it.”

  England have amassed 228 points after four rounds of the Six Nations, conceding only 20, and the lopsided scoreline at Twickenham is an ugly look for the competition.

  “I’m sure some people will chat about the competitiveness, but at the end of the day we drive ourselves in the way we prepare and that’s all we can focus on,” Mitchell said.

  “We’re not really in a position to judge the competition or its competitiveness. Our standards in the way we prepare have gone up a little bit in terms of level.”

  Ireland head coach Scott Bemand admitted his side were left “shell-shocked” by the game’s dominant force.

  “Tough day at the office. We came up against the market leaders but we’ll dust ourselves down and come back next week,” he said.

  “This was a big game for a youthful group. Could we have predicted a margin like that? Probably not.”

• On this day 2013: Six-time Olympic champion Sir Chris Hoy announces retirement

  Six-time Olympic champion Sir Chris Hoy announced his retirement from competitive cycling 11 years ago, admitting: “I know it is the right decision.”

  The 37-year-old Scot had been contemplating continuing until the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow but revealed he was quitting the sport at a press conference in Edinburgh on April 18, 2013.

  Hoy was Britain’s most decorated Olympian after his haul of two gold medals at London 2012 saw him surpass rower Sir Steve Redgrave’s record of five, although he was overtaken by former team-mate Sir Jason Kenny in 2021.

  In explaining his decision, Hoy said: “I think in sport at the highest level you’re dealing in such small margins and you can tell when you’re good but not good enough.

  “It was very emotional coming in there (to the press conference) and I was trying not to watch the video montage with the sad music.

  “I don’t want it to be a sad moment.

  “I want to celebrate it and be happy because I know it is the right decision.

  “It’s a decision that I didn’t take lightly and I thought about it very hard.”

  As well as six Olympic titles, Hoy’s 13-year career featured 11 world titles and two Commonwealth crowns.

  Hoy’s final race was the Olympic Keirin final on August 7, 2012 – on the final day of the London 2012 track programme.

  Following retirement, Hoy pursued his passion for motorsport, including competing in the Le Mans 24 Hours, while he has also written children’s books.

  In February 2024, the 48-year-old announced he was undergoing treatment for cancer.

• Paris 2024 promises to be an Olympic Games like no other

  Boats down the Seine, B-boys at the Place de la Concorde and the lure of cold, hard cash promise to make the Paris 2024 Olympics, which get underway in 100 days’ time in the French capital, a Games like none before.

  If traditionalists were already blanching at audacious plans to rip up over a century of opening ceremony traditions, let alone welcoming the sport of breaking into the Olympic fray, they will have been white-eyed with fury at the announcement that track and field stars will each pocket a USD50,000 bonus.

  After the relative sterility of a delayed and Covid-stricken Tokyo 2020, the French capital, as well as the individual sports on an ever-growing and potentially tenuous programme, is preparing to pull out all the stops.

  The Games will start on July 26 with the first opening ceremony to be staged outside a stadium, each national delegation instead sent bobbling 6km down the city’s major artery before disembarking in front of the Eiffel Tower.

  Two weeks later, windmills, freezers and top rocks will become an official part of the Olympic lexicon for the first time as breaking makes its debut, B-boys and B-girls going head-to-head in DJ-driven battles.

  If its inclusion is not quite as contentious as the appearance of live pigeon shooting on the programme for the first Paris Olympics in 1900, it has raised some questions about the IOC’s almost obsessional commitment towards attracting the attention of global youth.

  Breaking joins other recently established sports like skateboarding, surfing and BMXing in the so-called ‘urban’ section of a constantly evolving Olympic programme, and one for which it would appear a city like Paris is ideally suited.

  For Team GB, now led by the likes of 15-year-old Sky Brown, keen to build on her history-making skateboarding bronze in Tokyo, there is a sense of similar upheaval, as a generation of new stars emerge and begin to eclipse the established order.

  There will be no Laura Kenny to light up the Velodrome, while in contrast to their dominant pre-Tokyo preparations, question-marks hang over the ability of the likes of Adam Peaty and Max Whitlock to retain their respective titles.

  Nevertheless, Tom Dean, Keely Hodgkinson, Tom Daley, Beth Shriever and Emily Campbell will expect to return to the podium at the head of a squad that looks more than capable of resuming its top three status in the final medals table.

  Dean and his closest revival Duncan Scott continued a stunning surge to prominence by the British swimming team – kick-started by Peaty’s heroics in Rio – while Daley and Matty Lee underscored a wave of promise for Team GB in the water.

  Hodgkinson’s ongoing battle to avoid another silver lining against rivals Athing Mu and Mary Moraa will generate top billing on the track, where double world champion Josh Kerr resumes his mouthwatering rivalry with Norway’s Jakob Ingebrigtsen.

  The international narrative will inevitably be headed by Simone Biles, hoping to add to her current haul of seven Olympic medals after recovering from a psychological phenomenon known as the ‘twisties’ which restricted her success in Tokyo to a solitary – if heroic – bronze on the beam.

  Meanwhile French hopes do not come any bigger – literally – than judo heavyweight Teddy Riner, who boasts three Olympic golds and 11 world titles, and bids to cap his extraordinary career with another victory on home soil.

  All of which will be played out in front of the welcome sight of sold-out grandstands, a world away from the bare bleachers in Tokyo, and a symbol, or so the IOC would like to see it, of the Games having weathered one of the most serious storms in its history.

  It is perhaps that new-found consciousness of the need to adapt that has pushed the IOC into making more aggressive changes, be it in future bidding processes or in urging the b-boys and b-girls off the streets and into the Olympic auditorium for the first time.

  The Olympic movement has evolved unthinkably since that first Paris Games 124 years ago, when resolutely amateur pursuits like angling, ballooning and croquet were also on the programme, the latter reportedly staged in front of a single paying spectator.

  Some might say the latest changes are a step too far. But after the turmoil of Tokyo, most of those fortunate enough to be present in Paris will just be grateful that the Olympics are back, and braced to bop to any kind of beat at all.