Culture

U.S. women's water polo — with an unlikely hype man — eyes an Olympic record

Published

4 weeks ago

July 12, 2024

U.S. women's water polo — with an unlikely hype man — eyes an Olympic record

Flavor Flav realizes it’s an unexpected crossover.

The rap icon once had only a vague awareness of water polo, as he’d seen Olympic matches on television. But Flav has a new appreciation for the sport, marveling at the immense stamina required to play it, after recently signing a five-year sponsorship deal to serve as the official hype man for the U.S. women’s and men’s national water polo teams.

“What type of relationship does rap have with water polo? None,” said Flav.

Until now.

How the collaboration came together is well-documented: Maggie Steffens, the U.S. women’s team’s longtime captain, posted a photo of the players on her Instagram in May with a caption outlining challenges the athletes often face, including that players typically work multiple jobs while pursuing their Olympic dreams. She called on her followers to watch and support women’s sports.

Flav, who said his manager initially flagged the post, responded to the call, pledging his support. Thus, an unprecedented partnership was born. He and Steffens appeared together last Monday on “CBS Mornings,” where Flav announced he would give $1,000 to each team member and a Virgin Voyage cruise to the squad.

The 65-year-old Rock and Roll Hall of Famer told The Athletic he plans to attend the Paris Games, cheering on the team as they aim for a fourth straight Olympic gold medal, a feat that has not yet been accomplished by any men’s or women’s water polo team.

“I’m there to hype them up. I’m there to try to get them into that spirit of winning that fourth gold medal,” Flav said with a confidence befitting his role. “… And I know we can do it. We’re gonna get it.”

Flav also said he plans to attend the women’s team’s final pre-Olympic home match against Hungary. He wrote in a post on X he’ll be at Tuesday’s match in Berkeley, Calif., and will take photos and sign autographs “before and after the game but not during the game” so he can stay locked in.

Imma be at the game on Tuesday,,, I will be taking photos and signing autographs before and after the game but not during the game,,, we all here to cheer on these women https://t.co/8AHYAtzE0R
— FLAVOR FLAV (@FlavorFlav) July 3, 2024

“I’m trying to get as many people as I can involved,” he said. “Hopefully what I’m doing will open up the doors for other celebrities like myself to help sponsor these Olympic teams, because these (athletes) are out there busting their butts to make the United States look good.”

The U.S. women’s water polo team has welcomed the additional eyeballs as they go for an Olympic record. Coach Adam Krikorian, who has guided the United States to more Olympic golds than any coach on any team in women’s water polo, called it “a sport that’s been starving for attention and looking for notoriety.”

“We are a team that feels like, at times, we go unnoticed,” he said. “And so, when you have someone who’s in the spotlight share their love and their passion for our team, it’s touching. We love it. We embrace it. We hope it inspires others to hop on.”

Krikorian said he doesn’t mind if Flav’s interest encourages a bandwagon group to follow their journey this summer: “We’ll take ’em all. You didn’t need to be with us in the beginning.”

What any new fans will be rallying around is a squad synonymous with success. Since he was hired in 2009, Krikorian and the U.S. women have gone on a staggering run, claiming gold at the last three Olympics and six of the last nine world championships.

But Krikorian — a former UCLA water polo standout who calls the late basketball legend John Wooden his coaching idol — is less concerned with the results. The scores don’t even come up when his staff reevaluates a practice or a game. He preaches presence over perfection, a philosophy he highlighted when discussing Emily Ausmus, an attacker who Krikorian said has taken on a larger role as a defender “headfirst.”

At 18 years old, Ausmus is the team’s youngest player and represents a corps with no Olympic experience on a roster nearly split between first-time Olympians (seven) and returners (six). That experience level is a shift from the last Olympic cycle in Tokyo in 2021 when most players were part of the group that also won gold in Rio in 2016.

On the opposite end of the experience spectrum is Steffens, who helped lead the U.S. to gold at the last three Games. At the Tokyo Olympics, she became the all-time leading scorer in women’s Olympic water polo. And if the U.S. women get gold in Paris, Steffens will become the first water polo player to win four Olympic gold medals in a row.

Steffens, 31, can rattle off a list of younger players on this year’s roster with whom she connected in earlier phases of life, highlighting the full-circle experience for her this Games:

— Ryann Neushul, 24, is the third Neushul sister Steffens will play with at the Olympics. “I remember when she was just a kid,” Steffens said;

— Jenna Flynn and Steffens posed together for a photo at the Rio Games when Flynn was a young fan. “Now she’s at Stanford and here on Team USA and one of my closest friends on the team, and we’re 11 years apart.”

— Jewel Roemer is a Northern California native like Steffens, and Steffens grew up attending men’s scrimmages at Diablo Valley College coached by Roemer’s father. “I remember getting cute videos from (Jewel) saying, ‘Good luck.’”

— Ausmus attended camps and clinics organized by Steffens’ company, 6-8 Sports. “(She was) somebody we talked about five, six, eight years ago, like, ‘Oh my gosh, this girl’s so good and we’re really excited to see her potential.’”

“We’ve really created this special bond,” Steffens said of the younger group. “And I think as much as they look up to me as a leader and have looked up to me since they were kids and followed that path, I think what’s really amazing is I look up to them just as much.”

The U.S. women’s water polo team huddles during the Tokyo gold-medal match. The Americans are vying for a historic fourth straight Olympic gold. (Marcel ter Bals / BSR Agency / Getty Images)

Steffens is sincere in her praise, as she is in her belief in her teammates. Ashleigh Johnson, who is making her third Olympic appearance with Team USA, called Steffens “a dreamer in all senses.”

“When you’re around Maggie, anything is legitimately possible,” said Johnson, 29, the team’s goalkeeper who is widely considered the best in the world at her position. “She’s our captain, but as her friend, she will build a way for any dream to come true. And if you believe something, she believes it and you guys are going to accomplish it together.”

For example, Johnson said, Steffens typically encourages others while grinding through the hardest parts of training or pushing through a final swim set. Outside of the pool, Steffens is the one to land in a new city after 24 hours of traveling and either have a full itinerary ready or explore without a plan. She has an “Energizer Bunny attitude,” according to Johnson.

That boundless energy has carried over into other facets as Steffens and Johnson have become de facto ambassadors of their sport, a role that wasn’t always natural to them. In 2016, Johnson became the first Black woman to make the U.S. Olympic water polo team. She said, over time, she’s felt more empowered to speak about her experiences, share her story and champion diversity to inspire others.

Steffens, who joined the team when she was 15 years old, said it’s taken her 15 or 16 years to find her voice in terms of advocating for women’s athletes and more openly discussing the financial challenges of pursuing the sport.

Olympic water polo training takes place in Southern California, an area of the country with a notoriously high cost of living. In an Olympic year, training is six days a week and is essentially a full-time job for the athletes, Steffens said.

Payouts at the Games depend on the sport, country and finish, but the International Olympic Committee and each sport’s governing body have not traditionally paid winners. In a first for an international federation, World Athletics, which oversees track and field, announced in April it would award $50,000 in prize money to gold medalists at the Paris Games.

The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee gave athletes $37,500 for winning gold, $22,500 for silver and $15,000 for bronze at the Tokyo Olympics.

Steffens said she would play water polo — which doesn’t have a professional women’s league in the U.S. — if she made no money and had to couch surf, but her hope is for future water polo athletes to not have to work other jobs to support themselves while performing at the highest level.

“I would love to see in the future people retire much later in their career because they can afford to keep playing water polo and don’t feel like they have to retire at 22 to get a ‘real job,’” she said.

Any support helps, Steffens said, and Flav’s sponsorship is an example of the payoff she’s seen after posting about the topic.

“One thing that I love about water polo and about our team is it’s a very head-down, humble, hard-work mentality,” Steffens said. “And one of my dreams is to leave the sport and the women in this sport better than when I came in, and hopefully provide more opportunity, provide more exposure, let their stories be told, let their names be heard.”

Steffens knows there’s more work to do and more fans to rally. But each one counts, and so far, she’s hitting her goals.

GO DEEPER

From Stanford to Team USA, a water polo dynasty eyes an Olympic four-peat

(Top illustration of Maggie Steffens and Flavor Flav: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; photos: Ronald Martinez / Getty Images, Jerod Harris / Getty Images for The Recording Academy)

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Culture

NBC wants Snoop Dogg to return for future Olympics

Published

9 mins ago

August 7, 2024

Press Room

NBC wants Snoop Dogg to return for future Olympics

Follow live coverage of Day 12 of the 2024 Paris Olympics, with 21 gold medals on offer

Bow-wow-wow, yippie-yo, yippie-yay, Snoop Dogg may continue on NBC’s Olympics coverage in a big way.

Asked by The Athletic this week if NBC Universal plans to ask Snoop to return for on-air work at the 2026 Milano-Cortina Games and Olympics beyond, two key members of NBC Universal’s leadership group answered in the affirmative.

“Snoop has done everything and beyond what we ever expected him to do here in the Paris Games,” NBC Sports president Rick Cordella said. “He has been enthusiastic. He has been optimistic. I think we’d be really thrilled to have Snoop back in any capacity he would want to come back in.”

Cordella’s boss, Mark Lazarus, the chairman of NBCUniversal Media Group, when asked if the company would ask the performer to return to the Olympic family, quickly responded, “Yes.”

Snoop Dogg has been ubiquitous on NBC’s Olympic coverage and at various Paris venues. He has become such a part of the Olympics that BBC News ran a headline tagging him as” America’s cheerleader at the Olympics.” The 52-year-old had a small role at the Tokyo Games in 2021 as part of a recap commentary show on Peacock alongside comedian Kevin Hart but has exploded in Paris where he has put himself in all sorts of situations with athletes and sports as a roving correspondent. It’s resonated.

Watching the #ParisOlympics steeplechase got us thinking about Snoop Dogg’s unforgettable commentary. 😂
📺 NBC & Peacock pic.twitter.com/GawPPJXoDO
— NBC Sports (@NBCSports) August 5, 2024

“This all dates back to Tokyo in 2021. Kevin Hart and Snoop Dogg were co-hosts of a comedy highlight show on Peacock called ‘Olympic Highlights,’ and there were several clips that went viral, but also what stood out to me was Snoop’s passion for the Olympics, and also in his own unique way his reverence for the athletes and their stories,” said Molly Solomon, the executive producer and president of NBC Olympics production and the point person who championed Snoop’s increased on-air visibility.

“Over the last year and a half, we got together with Snoop and really brainstormed what this role could be. I called him an Ambassador of Happiness. If you watch his content, everybody wants to meet Snoop, take a selfie with Snoop and just be around Snoop. We’ve been pleasantly surprised by his popularity, but you never ever underestimate Snoop Dogg. He’s this wonderful mix of swagger and positivity and just the charisma and vibes are so positive. He’s got this curiosity about the Olympics that is undeniable.”

Said Snoop to The Associated Press this week: “This opportunity was nothing but a chance for me to show the world what it’s supposed to look like when you put the right person in the right environment.”

#FollowTheDogg Snoop n Phelps!! Tune in tonite 😁😆🔥💪🏿 🏊🏽‍♂️ 8/7c on @nbc & @peacock pic.twitter.com/6EuMHgVjBR
— Snoop Dogg (@SnoopDogg) July 30, 2024

The performer has been part of an Olympics that has been wildly successful for NBC Universal so far. Through the first full 11 days of the Games, NBCUniversal said it had a total audience delivery average of 32.6 million viewers across the combined live Paris prime time (2-5 p.m. ET) and U.S. prime time (8-11 p.m. ET/PT).

“We judge success here first and foremost by having a product that is appealing to audiences in that they come to in large numbers — and that is clearly happening in the Olympics,” Lazarus said. “The last few haven’t been as large as we had thought they would be. These Games are exceeding all of our expectations.”

Required reading

(Photo: Tom Weller / VOIGT / GettyImages)

Culture

F1 midseason driver rankings: Young drivers ascend while veterans fight back

Published

7 hours ago

August 7, 2024

Press Room

F1 midseason driver rankings: Young drivers ascend while veterans fight back

After visiting four continents, covering 14 races, and seeing seven different drivers win, the paddock enjoys a well-deserved rest during the summer shutdown. This mandatory 14-day break, during which teams are prohibited from making any changes to the car’s performance, is a crucial period for reflection and planning. It’s a time when teams can’t do any work on the car’s performance, but it’s hard to imagine some won’t reflect on their performance ahead of the final 10 races.

The expectation heading into 2024 was that Max Verstappen would continue to dominate. Instead, the Ferrari, McLaren, and Mercedes drivers have won races this year (Lewis Hamilton is the only two-time 2024 race winner out of those six competitors). McLaren is closing the gap to Red Bull thanks to the consistency of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, and the fight at the top of the grid is tight.

There have been plenty of surprises up and down the grid compared to this time last season. Here are our top 10 drivers from the first 14 races of the season. As always, let us know your thoughts in the comment section at the bottom.

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It hasn’t quite been the dominant Max Verstappen of 2022 or 2023 when F1 Sundays became routine: lights out, wait 90 minutes, and hear the Dutch national anthem. Yet he has remained at the very top of his game, making up for Red Bull’s slip in performance compared to its rivals.

The early phase of the season followed the well-worn script, as Verstappen won at a canter at Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Japan and China. But since the start of F1’s European season, he’s been forced to dig deep and produce some terrific displays to keep winning. Winning at Imola and Barcelona despite the threat of Lando Norris in the McLaren required Verstappen to be at his very best; he didn’t miss a beat. Even a race like Spa, where he could only finish fourth, took a mighty effort from 11th on the grid.

It hasn’t been a spotless season so far by any means. Verstappen’s clash with Norris in Austria and his move on Lewis Hamilton in Hungary showed that his aggressive edge, not required in the past two years, is still there—not always to his benefit.

Despite Red Bull’s recent performance dip and McLaren’s emergence, Verstappen has extended his points lead in five of the last six races. He may no longer have the outright quickest car, but Verstappen remains remarkably hard to beat.

Photo:

(GIUSEPPE CACACE/AFP via Getty Images)

Five seasons, more than 100 grands prix, nearly 1,900 days. Lando Norris waited a long time for his first F1 win since joining the grid in 2019, finally coming at the Miami GP this year.

Since that moment, the McLaren driver has taken the battle to Verstappen. The talent is evident, and the car is strong. He should have more than one win to his name this year. There’s been a few close calls, like at the Spanish GP when he felt “I should have won. I f—d the start.” More recently, he also dropped at the start of the Belgian GP after starting fourth, losing multiple spots after misjudging the exit of Turn 1.

“I’ve given away a lot of points over the last three or four races just because of stupid stuff—mistakes and bad starts,” he said after the race. “I don’t know why. It’s just silly things, it’s not even difficult stuff. It’s just Turn 1, trying to stay out of trouble, trying to make sure there’s a gap and not get hit.”

Norris can fight for wins, but small mistakes and iffy starts have proved costly, points-wise. Only 78 points separate the McLaren driver and Verstappen. Because the Dutchman operates at a high level, these little details matter.

Photo:

(Qian Jun/Xinhua via Getty Images)

Watching Piastri this year, you’d be astonished to learn this is only his second season on the F1 grid. The Australian takes everything thrown at him gracefully and calmly, even as McLaren’s surge puts him amid a constructors’ title fight going into the remainder of the season.

Piastri hasn’t quite been on Norris’s level this season, trailing 11-3 in their qualifying head-to-head, but the gap is typically marginal. He was the only driver capable of challenging Charles Leclerc through the Monaco weekend, ending up P2, and finally got the victory he deserved in Hungary despite McLaren’s best efforts to make a mess of the situation.

McLaren’s belief that it has the best driver lineup in F1 has been justified so far this year. We always knew how good Norris was, but Piastri’s ability to duke it out at the front was something we had yet to see in F1. Now, it’s abundantly clear just how good he is. Piastri’s mistakes are rare, and if he can find that extra tenth, then it may be a more even split between him and Norris through the closing 10 races.

Photo:

(ATTILA KISBENEDEK/AFP via Getty Images)

In true Charles Leclerc fashion, the Monegasque’s season has been one of dizzying highs and gutting lows, rarely leveling out into any sustained, consistent form. Not that it’s entirely his fault.

The emotional home victory in Monaco, delivered through the tears in his eyes in the closing laps as he achieved the childhood dream he shared with his father, looks set to kickstart Leclerc’s season. Ferrari seemed to be back in contention at the front, building on a steady start to the year.

However, the upgrades on the SF-24 car have yet to work as anticipated. Even if the team can see more performance in the car, it is a) not enough relative to Mercedes, McLaren or Red Bull and b) hard to harness, particularly with a return to the bouncing for the first time in years.

Leclerc admitted after Silverstone that the recent races had been “worse than a nightmare,” but he has continued to perform. His lap at Spa was a significant achievement. He took pole after Verstappen’s penalty before finishing third in what is currently the fourth-fastest car. Leclerc remains Ferrari’s best asset, even if luck has not been with him recently.

Photo:

(Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)

This is George Russell’s strongest season, with fewer mistakes than in 2023.

Once again, the year didn’t start smoothly for Mercedes, which seemed to still struggle with its car concept. However, it brought an upgrade to Monaco that came alive at the following race in Canada, where George Russell put the W15 on pole position.

But after leading for 20 laps and holding an advantage, the Briton lost it on the straight when Norris breezed past and to Verstappen moments later when Russell misjudged the final chicane. Later in the race, as the track was drying following some rain, Russell was hunting down the lead again. Still, he went wide at Turn 8, allowing Norris to slip past him again for second.

“For me, it was just one too many mistakes at key moments that cost us a shot of fighting with these two towards the end of the race,” Russell said after securing his first 2024 podium finish. Mistakes do happen, but drivers need to be able to seize a moment when the opportunity presents itself. Russell had the chance to do so two races later at Austria. When Verstappen and Norris tangled, the Mercedes driver zipped past into the lead and held off Piastri, giving Mercedes its first win since the 2022 season.

Even with a few mistakes this season, Russell has stayed ahead of his teammate, outqualifying and finishing ahead of Lewis Hamilton in most races. But he has endured heartbreaking moments, like a DNF at Silverstone due to a suspected water system issue and disqualification after winning the Belgian GP due to an underweight car.

Photo:

(Mark Thompson/Getty Images)

Carlos Sainz’s season has been an absolute roller coaster.

It started before Bahrain when news broke that Hamilton would join the Prancing Horse in 2025, throwing Sainz’s F1 future into question. This question followed him throughout the first half of the season, and the speculation ran rampant. It wasn’t until after Spa that he announced he’d join Williams next season. But on top of the rumor mill, the Spaniard missed a race after being sidelined with appendicitis in Saudi Arabia, with Ollie Bearman competing in his place.

In Spa, Sainz admitted that “it hasn’t been easy having to deal with, first of all, having to miss a race, but mainly with all the discussions about my future going on in the background.” But he still has shown up and performed decently well, considering the circumstances. Sixteen days after surgery, Sainz won the Australian GP, capitalizing on the moment after Verstappen retired early.

Ferrari had a competitive car early in the season, but Sainz’s results began falling away as others progressed more than the Italian crew. But in the teammate battle, Leclerc outqualified Sainz, 8-5, and finished ahead of the Spaniard, 7-5, in races they’ve been classified.

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(Peter Fox/Getty Images)

Seventh may seem harsh. After all, Hamilton has won two of the last three races and ended a two-and-a-half-year-old win drought. But this hasn’t been his finest season.

Russell has remained the quicker of the two Mercedes drivers, leading their qualifying head-to-head 10-4. He’s also 7-4 up on Hamilton in races, and both have been classified.

Hamilton has been open about his struggles, even as the Mercedes car has improved, admitting that it feels like it is on more of a knife-edge compared to what Russell has reported. This is partly because Hamilton’s driving style hasn’t quite gelled with this generation of cars, leading to more time to adjust and adapt. As Hamilton put it at Spa, “I just keep trying to drive the way I want to drive, but then I realize it doesn’t always work.”

But Silverstone was an emphatic reminder of Hamilton’s enduring quality and class. He made the most of the tricky conditions to win on merit, capitalizing on Red Bull’s struggles and McLaren’s strategy miscue. He will want to harness more of those displays through the second half to sign off from his time at Mercedes on a high.

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(Rudy Carezzevoli/Getty Images)

Nico Hülkenberg made the most of his full-time return in 2023 to show he’d lost none of his edge in his years away from F1. But this season has made it unthinkable that he was ever without a seat.

Haas never expected to be a regular points-scorer this year, owing to the late development of its car and the off-season changes. But with a car that’s actually raceable, not chewing through its tires, Hülkenberg has flourished, going under the radar as one of this year’s most impressive performers.

Hülkenberg has scored 22 of Haas’s 27 points, including two sixth-place finishes. He’s also finished 11th on five occasions and, remarkably, reached Q3 more times than he’s gone out in either Q2 or Q1, fighting higher up the grid than he or Haas should be. See Hülkenberg’s last-lap pass on Sergio Pérez (who did have damage) in Austria to grab P6.

Sauber and Audi may have missed out on Carlos Sainz, their top target for next year, but the first half of this season shows that by already signing Hülkenberg, they’ll have a quality driver ready for the start of the factory program in 2026.

Photo:

(BENJAMIN CREMEL/AFP via Getty Images)

Yuki Tsunoda enters the summer break with a contract for next year (announced in June) and outperforming his RB teammate, veteran Daniel Ricciardo.

He started the season strong, securing the team’s first points in Australia with an eighth-place finish, which was later upgraded to seventh after Fernando Alonso’s penalty. Those six points pushed RB ahead of Haas for sixth in the constructor standings. RB remains ahead of Haas during the summer break, partly thanks to Tsunoda scoring 22 out of the team’s 34 points.

Tsunoda has advanced to Q3 eight times this season and secured seven-point finishes, the highest being P7 at Melbourne and Miami. Between the Australian GP and Monaco at the end of May, Tsunoda finished in the top 10 in five of those six races. He is one of the stronger drivers out of the midfield this year but has made mistakes. Take the Canadian GP, for example. He was in points contention before he locked up and spun, eventually ending the race P14.

Photo:

(Rudy Carezzevoli/Getty Images)

Williams’ 2024 is very different from last season, and yet Alex Albon still has managed to squeeze four Q3 appearances and two top 10 finishes, amounting to four points, out of the FW45. This trend continues from 2023, when Albon continued to put together high-level performances and extract the maximum out of the car. He’s out-qualified teammate Logan Sargeant, 14-0.

Some of his races have been affected by no fault of his own, like the wheel nut issue and penalty at Imola and Carlos Sainz spinning in Canada. During that latter race, Albon pulled off an impressive double overtake on Daniel Ricciardo and Esteban Ocon, and he was in the fight for points before the Ferrari driver spun and made contact with Albon.

One big moment, though, that’ll stand out from the first half of the year is what happened in Australia. The heavy crash in practice resulted in significant damage. Because Williams didn’t have a spare chassis at that race, it had to withdraw the car. And the team opted to give the remaining car to Albon, leaving Logan Sargeant on the sidelines.

Albon can extract the maximum from the car, even under pressure from higher-performing competitors. But what he needs to be a consistent top-10 contender and compete alongside the top teams is just that—that type of car.

Photo:

(BENJAMIN CREMEL/AFP via Getty Images)

Culture

Lost Grounds: Bradford Park Avenue – the forgotten England international venue

Published

14 hours ago

August 7, 2024

Press Room

Lost Grounds: Bradford Park Avenue – the forgotten England international venue

Once an integral part of the towns and cities they called home, dozens of the nation’s Football League grounds have disappeared over the past 30 or so years. All took with them a wealth of memories for generations of supporters.

But what happened next? The Athletic has travelled the country to find out, taking in an array of housing estates, retail parks and even the odd hospital along the way.

Kicking off our four-part series, running each Tuesday in August, is perhaps the most poignant of the lot, Bradford Park Avenue. Home to a League club for 62 years and county cricket for more than a century, Park Avenue sits forgotten and forlorn, with one of its few visitors in the past decade being an archaeological dig…

Looking up at a row of turnstiles that once led to a football ground where England played an international match, it is as if time has stood still.

Painted high on the wall is ‘5/-’, indicating an admission price of five shillings in old money. Another couple of bricked-up entrances can be found around the corner, along with a giant rusting iron gate topped with spikes to deter anyone trying to get in for free.

A gents’ toilet block can also clearly be seen towards the back of a banking where supporters last stood more than 50 years ago, while a stroll inside reveals two massively overgrown terraces and a crumbling perimeter wall staring out over the bumpy remains of a pitch once graced by greats such as Stanley Matthews and Len Shackleton.

(Richard Sutcliffe/The Athletic)

Also buried amid the shrubbery that has been allowed to run wild are two floodlight pylon bases, plus a mountain of sporting memories. Welcome to Park Avenue, Bradford, the forgotten home of the former Football League club who went by the same name that is now the ghostly preserve of Mother Nature.

In an age when the demolition crews seem to move in almost the moment the gates close for the final time at great sporting cathedrals such as Highbury, Roker Park and White Hart Lane, this one-time sporting mecca really is a throwback.

Not only does the cricket ground where Yorkshire played for more than a century until 1996 remain, albeit in a semi-derelict state, but enough survives on the adjacent football side — the two sports shared a main stand, designed by leading architect Archibald Leitch — to leave supporters of a certain vintage misty-eyed.

Cricket at Bradford Park Avenue in the summer of 1949 (S&G/Getty Images)

Park Avenue was always regarded locally as superior to Valley Parade, the home of Bradford City — once of the Premier League and now of League Two. For a start, it had cover for 14,000 and a capacity of 37,000. The railway station and tram spur that could be found where the ornate Grand Mosque now stands just across Horton Park Avenue meant thousands of fans could also be ferried to and from the area in hardly any time at all.

Then there was the corner pavilion, nicknamed the ‘Dolls’ House’ by visitors. This charming two-storey building served a similar purpose to Fulham’s Craven Cottage, housing the football club’s dressing rooms and committee room with officials able to watch matches from an upstairs balcony.

This, though, could not save it as Bradford’s fortunes declined markedly as the Swinging Sixties morphed into the next decade.

Voted out of the League in 1970, the club stumbled on in the Northern Premier League for another four years before folding amid debts of £57,652 ($73,580 in today’s exchange rates). By then, the football ground had been sold to a property developer, with Avenue playing their final season across the city at Valley Parade.

Bradford Park Avenue, as seen in 1955 (George W. Hales/Getty Images)

A restrictive covenant that dictated the land could only be used for sport and recreation pursuits meant the football ground ended up being left to wither and die, even after the local council stepped in to purchase the site with grandiose plans to build a sports complex.

By 1980, Leitch’s ornate main stand had become so unsafe it had to be demolished. The news sparked a wave of nostalgia across the city, as hundreds of fans streamed to the old ground for one last look.

A pensioner was even helped onto the weed-infested Canterbury Avenue End and left, leaning unsteadily on a rusting crash barrier, to stare silently over what must have felt like an unkempt grave.

Tim Clapham, a supporter since 1963 and now the club historian, was among those making one last pilgrimage before the wrecking ball claimed not only the 4,000-seat main stand and its distinctive three gables, but also the Dolls House and the Horton Park End roof.

“Only the half-time scoreboard was left standing, with even the old social club sold to a local pig farmer,” Clapham says. “Such a sad time. So many turned up, hoping to take a keepsake, something to remember the ground by.

“Some wanted the ‘BFC’ letters etched on the middle gable of the stand, while others fancied the two coats of arms at either end. But, when they came down, these things were much bigger than they had looked. You’d have needed a truck to carry them away!”

As Bradford mourned for a second time the loss of a venue that had hosted not only an England versus Ireland international in 1909 but also what remains the fastest-ever Football League goal (four seconds, Jim Fryatt against Tranmere Rovers in 1964), cricket at least survived.

GO DEEPER

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That was until 1996, when Yorkshire County Cricket Club opted to focus primarily on Headingley as their home with a small number of games every season also played in Scarborough. Others to lose their status as out-grounds were Middlesbrough, Harrogate and Hull, where part of the MKM Stadium now sits on the old Circle cricket ground as the dual home of Hull City and rugby league club Hull FC.

Park Avenue had become a shell of its former self long before that final County Championship match against Leicestershire in 1996.

(Richard Sutcliffe/The Athletic)

Just what anyone able to remember Park Avenue in its heyday would make of the old place in 2024 is anyone’s guess. The cricket square has, in recent years, been brought back to first-class standard, allowing Yorkshire’s second XI to return and play the odd match.

But the surroundings are in a sorry state. Where the grand-looking pavilion once stood until the late 1980s is now just a wasteland and where Fred Trueman, Ray Illingworth et al would plot the downfall of visiting batsmen now sits 10-foot bushes. Time is a formidable opponent when sports arenas are left to rot.

Just in front sit a few dilapidated rows of seats, a good number vandalised and all doing battle with the weeds gradually creeping through the concrete steps. It’s a similar story elsewhere, with fenced-off sections of crumbling terraces interspersed with banks of vegetation.

The only bright spot is a mural depicting England spin bowler — and local hero — Adil Rashid that was painted to mark the launch of the Hundred competition in 2021. Even that, though, is fading to add to the rundown feel of a ground once regarded as the jewel in Yorkshire’s cricketing crown.

(Richard Sutcliffe/The Athletic)

What remains of the old football ground is no less depressing, even allowing for how its abandoned state allowed an archaeological dig in 2015 that unearthed all manner of fascinating artefacts.

The haul, captured for posterity by the Breaking Ground art project, included boot studs, coins, marbles, goal hooks and even a nappy pin. The latter, it transpired, related to the elastic on goalkeeper Chick Farr’s shorts snapping during one match, forcing the trainer to perform an emergency repair. Farr never lived the episode down, regularly finding himself showered by pins when standing between the posts.

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Hopes of Bradford ever returning to their spiritual home ended when a cricket school (now a gym) was built on half of the old football pitch in 1988. A new Park Avenue club was formed in the same year and their home for almost three decades has been Horsfall Stadium, an athletics venue that sits a couple of miles away from this old ground.

(Richard Sutcliffe/The Athletic)

On the cricket side, however, grand plans were unveiled just a few years ago to bring Yorkshire back to their old stomping ground via an ambitious £5.5million revamp.

Stage one saw a state-of-the-art changing facility, outdoor nets and a score-hut open in 2017, with England and Yorkshire team-mates Joe Root, Jonny Bairstow and Rashid among those cutting the ribbon. The nets, built between what was the halfway line and roughly the penalty area of what remained of Avenue’s old pitch, were converted to an indoor facility last year.

The rest of the original scheme — a community pavilion with changing rooms that were to be located to the side of where the original stood, a restaurant catering for 250 diners, 1,000 seats for spectators and security fencing — never materialised. As a result, the mooted return of county cricket to the city of Bradford never became reality. Instead, York joined Leeds and Scarborough on the roster of Yorkshire’s home grounds.

That may be the final nail in the coffin for any hopes of bringing professional sport back to this corner of Bradford. Now, all that’s left behind is the ghostly presence of the past to go with the abandoned turnstiles and terraces that, for the past five decades, have been home to just the worms and the weeds.