EVERY sport has had its memorable clashes.
In boxing Ali versus Frazier stretched to three fights culminating in the Thrilla in Manila.
In cricket the Ashes gets the juices flowing every two years when England and Australia clash.
And in football every weekend appears to throw up a big match between rival teams at the top and bottom of the Premier League and the Championship.
I would have said England v Scotland is a memorable footballing clash, but it hasn’t been the same since the Scots nicked the goalposts at Wembley.
And then became rubbish too.
But what happens when you set up a sporting clash between individuals from different sports?
We might find out this year if unbeaten boxing great Floyd Mayweather comes out of retirement to fight UFC loudmouth Conor McGregor.
There will be only one winner if the match is made under boxing rules.
Everyone at the top of their sport competes believing they are going to win.
But what happens when you take them out of their familiar sporting environment and only their words will defeat a doughty opponent?
That is what happens at the annual Lord’s Taverners Balloon Debate.
This year’s event in Yorkshire takes place at the Queens Hotel in Leeds on Wednesday, May 17 and features four sporting speakers who have all reached the top of their game.
England and Yorkshire cricketer Jonny Bairstow, rugby league legend Kevin Sinfield, Great Britain paralympic footballer David Clarke and Yorkshire County Cricket Club’s head physiotherapist Wayne Morton will go head-to-head for a sporting battle with a difference.
The annual Balloon Debate is held to raise funds for the Lord’s Taverners, the UK’s leading youth cricket and disability sports charity dedicated to giving disadvantaged and disabled young people a sporting chance.
The Balloon Debate features four personalities who each speak about their sporting hero.
Based on the imaginary idea that all the sporting heroes are in a hot air balloon thousands of feet in the air but losing height, in a series of rounds, the audience votes out the speakers one by one until there is a winner.
To keep their sporting hero in the balloon, our speakers must entertain and impress the audience.
Last year athletics great Steve Cram narrowly defeated Leeds Rhinos and Great Britain player Jamie Jones-Buchanan.
Crammy spoke about his fellow Olympian Daley Thompson while JJB picked his Rhinos colleague and best man, Kevin Sinfield.
This year we’ve achieved a first and got a sporting hero, Sinfield, as a speaker.
Jamie Jones-Buchanan will never forgive him if he isn’t the subject of Sir Kev’s speech!
David Clarke’s stats speak for themselves.
Described as a “legend of blind football”, his football career spanned 17 years playing for the England and Great Britain blind football teams.
He won five European Golden Boots and is England’s highest goalscorer with 128 goals from 144 caps and has played alongside David Beckham.
And he did all that while also holding down a senior role in business banking.
He now works for Yorkshire Bank in London.
After competing for the blind-five-a-side Team GB football team at the 2012 Paralympics in London he was inducted into the National Football Hall of Fame.
Completing the line-up is a master manipulator.
Wayne Morton is Director of Medical Services at Yorkshire County Cricket Club.
A qualified physiotherapist, he started working with Yorkshire 26 years ago and has also been chief physiotherapist to the England Cricket team during 50 test matches and two World Cups.
I’m told Wayne is a livewire with a sharp wit, so don’t discount him from keeping his sporting hero in the balloon right until the final.
Stranger things have happened.
I won the Ballon Debate four years ago, defeating broadcasting favourites Harry Gration and John Helm in the process.
So it shows that the event is not so much about who you are, as what you choose to talk about.
The Balloon Debate, supported by Henderson Insurance Brokers, Deloitte and Yorkshire Bank, takes place at The Queens Hotel, Leeds on the evening of Wednesday, May 17.
We have already had plenty of bookings for what is a unique event but there are spaces and tables left.
It isn’t black tie and is a relaxing and fun evening that is completely different to other charity dinners.
A table of 10, including a three-course meal and drinks reception is £825 (+vat). Shared tables are also available for groups of less than 10, price £82.50 (+vat) per ticket.
To book email events@copasummit.com or call 0113 892 1002
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I’VE seen the future and it is full of robot lawyers.
How dare you suggest that is nothing new.
All the lawyers I know are exciting human beings full of personality, not robot-like at all.
To be fair it has taken years to find them.
But this week saw the launch of LISA, the world’s first robot lawyer.
LISA stands for your Legal Intelligence Support Assistant and is the brainchild of Chrissie Lightfoot.
This Yorkshire-based and Darlington-born lawyer is a whirling dervish of energy who has combined entrepreneurship with legal insight to become one of the world’s top women “futurists”.
She brands herself The Entrepreneur Lawyer but is perhaps better known as The Naked Lawyer, the title of an ebook she wrote a few years ago.
Quite frankly, if you are organising a dull legal conference, how better to spice it up and get bums on seats than to promise delegates that there is a Naked Lawyer on the bill.
After extensive research on Google I can confirm that Chrissie has kept her clothes on during every speaking engagement.
However putting “naked lawyer” into Google does garner some rather disturbing photographs.
Back to the new robot lawyer LISA who apparently has been developed in collaboration with practising solicitors, drawing on decades of entrepreneurial, technical, corporate and commercial legal experience.
At this stage LISA, which uses cutting edge artificial intelligence technology, allows users to create legally binding non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) in less than 7 minutes at absolutely no cost. By asking questions about the users’ needs, LISA intelligently drafts the document while helping them understand the legal and commercial principles on which it is based.
The aim is to roll out the range of legal services LISA provides as well as the number of legal jurisdictions across the world where she will operate.
The groundbreaking project has been developed in collaboration with the University of Westminster and Westminster Law School
Chrissie, who is CEO of Robot Lawyer LISA, said: “Our goal is to make every day basic legal services accessible and affordable to the masses of students, consumers and business people who are unhappy with, or overly reliant on, human lawyers and law firms. Many human lawyers are adversarial by nature, even when dealing with non-contentious matters. LISA’s aim is to negate the double time and double costs involved in relation to this human lawyer behaviour by being completely impartial when assisting the parties on each side.”
That will make her popular with human lawyers.
Perhaps if enough legal “bots” are created we could get Harry Hill to shout “FIGHT!” and officiate over a battle between the humans and the robot lawyers.
LISA can be found at www.robotlawyerlist.com
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I SUPPOSE it had to happen.
Harrogate eventually had to show me its ugly side.
The North Yorkshire spa town where I now live hides itself behind a genteel cloak of respectability.
But under the surface lurk some very nasty people.
A jogger told my dog to “Get out of it”, when he ran in front of him the other morning.
And then a cyclist rang his bell and shouted “gangway” to both the dog and I when we were walking across the daffodil covered grassland known as The Stray.
It’s the kind of behaviour you’d find on the most run down sink estate, not a town named the best place to live in the UK.
In future I have to be prepared.
I’ve bought the dog a leather studded collar to make him look a bit tougher.
And it matches mine too.
Have a great weekend.