American swimmer Katie Ledecky hasn’t lost a 1500m race since 2010, when she was 13. 

The nine-time Olympic champion extended her stranglehold on the event today at the Pan Pacific Championships in California, outswimming Australia’s Lani Pallister by over two seconds. 

The Los Angeles Olympics are two years away. I’m not much of a mathematician, but two seconds in two years? We could be on for a showdown.

Speaking of the Olympics, Netflix have released the trailer for a documentary about Australian breakdancer Raygun. It looks…interesting.

26.63 seconds
The new world record time for the women’s 50m backstroke, set by Italian 19-year-old Sara Curtis. The teenager swam the time in the semi-finals of the European Aquatics Championships, eclipsing the previous world record of 26.86 set by Australia’s Kaylee McKeown in 2023. 

"My view on curfews is I don't think they work, and if you want guys to take responsibility on the field they've got to be able to feel they can be grown adults off it and make good strong decisions off it.”
England men’s Test cricket captain Joe Root announcing that he will be rolling back the midnight curfew imposed on the team after a series of drinking-related incidents. Root was recently reinstated to the role following Ben Stokes's retirement last month. The curfew was imposed after batter Harry Brook was fined for an altercation at a nightclub on a tour to New Zealand last November.

In May this year, American climber Tyler Andrews set the record for the fastest ascent of Mount Everest. The 36-year-old reached the peak from base camp in nine hours and 55 minutes, breaking the previous record by one hour and one minute.

⚽️ Australian footballer Lucas Herrington has signed a five-year deal with English Premier League (EPL) club Hull City. Reports suggest that the transfer fee Hull City paid the Colorado Rapids, the 18-year-old’s previous team, was around $33 million, a new record for an Australian player. The record before was $23 million, which Leicester City, another EPL club, paid to sign Socceroos defender Harry Souttar in 2023. 

🏈 U.S. boy band The Jonas Brothers have been announced as the headliners of the halftime show at the first NFL match to be played in Australia. The match, scheduled for 12 September at the MCG, will see the San Francisco 49ers and the Los Angeles Rams face off as part of the opening week of the American football league’s 2026/27 season. The Melbourne fixture is one of nine matches outside North America this year as the NFL looks to grow its following in overseas markets. 

🏉 Carter Gordon is set to return for the Wallabies this Saturday at five-eighth as part of a shuffled starting lineup announced by coach Les Kiss today. Gordon will replace Declan Meredith in the playmaker role after the Brumbies player struggled to assert himself in Australia’s 35-32 victory over the Cherry Blossoms in Osaka last weekend. Harry Wilson and Josh Nasser are the only two forwards who started in the last Test who will start this weekend. Angus Bell, Taniela Tupou, Charlie Cale, Lachlan Shaw, Lukhan Salakaia-Loto, and Carlo Tizzano have all been promoted to starting roles. Other changes include Isaac Henry starting in the centres after Joseph Sua’ali’i picked up a hamstring injury, while Queensland Reds prop Massimo De Lutiis could become Wallaby #1000, having been named on the bench for the first time. The Test will kick off at 3:15pm on Saturday. 

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Former Hobart Hurricanes fast bowler Aaron William Summers, has been jailed for sexually abusing a 15-year-old girl he met at a Big Bash League match in 2017. 

Summers, now aged 30, will spend 10 months in jail, with another 10 months suspended. 

Summers was 21 and on the Hurricanes roster when he met the girl at a Hobart game in 2017. The pair connected on social media, and he later took her to a nearby school, where the abuse took place on two occasions. 

Separate messages in which he sent and requested explicit images led to a grooming charge. Summers received a two-and-a-half-year sentence, but will only spend 10 months behind bars after the rest of the sentence was suspended.

This is Summers' second such conviction. He was extradited to Tasmania this year after almost four years in a Northern Territory prison for possessing and sharing child sexual abuse material involving other victims.

The judge presiding over his case, Justice Helen Wood, said his cricket career, which once included overseas contracts, is finished.

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The Big Three of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic ruled men's tennis for two decades, winning 66 Grand Slam titles between them from 2003 to 2023. While Djokovic is still pursuing a 25th Grand Slam title, the last few years have seen a changing of the guard.

At the 2026 Australian Open, Carlos Alcaraz defeated Djokovic in the men’s singles final. It marked the ninth Grand Slam title won by either Alcaraz or his Italian rival Jannik Sinner. 

From Federer's first major in 2003 to Djokovic's in 2008, the Big Three took about four and a half years to all become slam champions. Alcaraz and Sinner managed it in 16 months. More than two years on from Sinner’s first Grand Slam title, no third name has stepped up to join them.

There is one player, though, who is showing early signs he could join them at the top of the sport: 19-year-old Rafael Jodar. 

Jodar is from Madrid and grew up idolising Nadal. His breakthrough moment came when he won the U.S. Open junior title in 2024. After that, he spent a year playing collegiate tennis at the University of Virginia before deciding to join the professional tour. 

Jodar moved into the top 100 in the ATP rankings for the first time on 30 March when he made the third round at the Miami Open. He then recorded his best Grand Slam run to date at the French Open in June, reaching the quarter-finals. 

This week, he made the semi-finals at the Canadian Open before losing to American Brandon Nakashima. His run there saw him rise to world number 11 in the live rankings (he’s now at no.15) and become the first man born in 2006 or later to make the semi-finals of a Masters 1000 tournament. 

The young Spaniard’s rise has been so rapid that he still has until 26 October this year to break Boris Becker’s record of 210 days for the fastest time from top 100 to top 10. 

Jodar came up against Sinner in May at the Madrid Open, losing in straight sets but taking eight games off the world number one. At the end of the match, Sinner wrote on the camera: “What a player.”

As for whether he truly has what it takes to help form an evolved Big Three, only time will tell.

The finals of the men’s and women’s Canadian Open will be played tomorrow. Then, the Cincinnati Open begins tomorrow ahead of the final major of the year, the U.S. Open, starting 30 August.