Lollipop’s blog of the year

Cycling, tennis, football, Jay-Z. Lollipop covered it all in 2013. But what was our blog of the year?

For us watching Olympic athletes race on the streets of Manchester last May was definitely a sporting highlight.

Long Jump Champion Greg Rutherford and US gold medallist Allyson Felix took part in the Great City Games and were cheered on by a raucous Manchester Crowd.

The weather was scorching and the athletes were on fire as Felix ran a City Games record of 16.36 in the Women’s 150m.

The event reminded Lollipop of London 2012 and the sensational wins from Paralympics Gold Medallist Jonnie Peacock  who also ran in the Manchester event and 15,000m champion Mo Farah.

For such inspirational events to happen in our home town shows the sporting talent across Manchester and what we have to look forward to in 2014.

It was a tough year for squash as the sports governing body fought hard to add the game into the Olympics last September. To Lollipop’s dismay the International Olympic Committee (IOC) voted to reinstate wrestling rather then add squash or baseball to the bill. However the sport has enjoyed huge financial support in Manchester as the community and club programmes are nearly at capacity with children and adults from across the city. There has been a complete new refurbishment to all three courts at Moss side Leisure facility. The National Squash Centre is also home to England Squash and Manchester Squash.  From the 10-16th February the National Squash Championships will take place in the Manchester centre proving to the IOC that squash has what it takes to become an Olympic sport.

Cycling also made the news in the Summer of 2013 but this time for all the right reasons as Chris Froome became only the second British man to win the Tour De France. The 28-year-old took the title by more than four minutes last year. Now as the cycling capital – Manchester will be one of the three cities to host The Sainsbury’s Sports Cycle relief on Sunday 23^rd March. The charity event heralded by Olympic Gold Medallist Sir Chris Hoy will also take place in Glasgow and London at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. The gruelling 25 and 50-mile routes will start and finish at Old Trafford football stadium, where the 3-mile Family Cycle will take place.

Rugby was huge in 2013 as the British and Irish Lions pulled off a historic 41-16 win over Australia at the ANZ Stadium in Sydney. It was the teams first test series victory against Australia since 1989 and to top it off the boys won Sports Personality Team of the year in December. Manchester will also be taking part the sport’s success by hosting the Superleague magic weekend at Manchester City’s Etihad Stadium on 25-26^th May. All 14 Super League Clubs will return to the Etihad Stadium to battle it out once more in front of fans and reporters.

So the line up is set. No doubt Lollipop will find more events throughout 2014 to blog about. But for now lets sit back and look forward to sport in 2014.