England's Ashes win in 2005; Usain Bolt smashes the world record in Beijing; and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's winner …
We've long made it a tradition at Eurosport-Yahoo! to share with you our favourite sporting moments of the year.
Whether it be a last-gasp winner in a match to decide the Premier League, a gold medal performance from a British icon or an unforgettably thrilling finish to an obscure French rugby match, we're always enjoyed sharing our views on the best moments of the year - and enjoyed equally reading your contributions in the comments section.
This year, we're keeping that tradition going - but adding a new twist. Eurosport celebrates its 25th anniversary in February 2014, so we decided that it would be a good time to pick out our favouritesporting moments of the last 25 years as well as the last 12 months.
We hope you enjoy our choices - and please share your favourite moments with us in the usual place down below.
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Alex Chick
Best moment of 2013: The widening gap between football’s moneyed elite and the mere mortals has made genuine shocks increasingly rare. Even playing well below their best, the top sides usually find a way to muddle through.
So it was at the FA Cup final, where Wigan dominated Manchester City for most of the game but couldn’t find a way to capitalise. We all knew what would happen next - City would bring on £25m Edin Dzeko to bag a late winner.
A substitute did indeed score in stoppage time, only it was Wigan’s Ben Watson. An uplifting reminder that sometimes spirit and application can still overcome pure money.
Best moment of the last 25 years: I first went to a cricket match in 1989, on day one of the fifth Ashes Test at Trent Bridge. Australia ended the day on 301 for no wicket. Looking back, it was a good primer for life as an England fan over the next decade and a alf. England lost the series 4-0, and the next seven Ashes went to Australia 3-0, 4-1, 3-1, 3-2, 3-1, 4-1 and 4-1.
At times it was, and this is no exaggeration, impossible to imagine England winning the urn back. So, when it happened in 2005 after a summer of outrageous twists and nerve-shredding drama, it not only qualified as a great sporting moment, it was genuinely life-changing. If England could win the Ashes, anything was possible.
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Tom Adams
Best moment of 2013: Having been weaned on Jeremy Bates and then teased by the ever-valiant, perennial semi-finalist Tim Henman, a British Wimbledon champion seemed a rather abstract concept growing up. But Andy Murray made it gloriously real with a contest against Novak Djokovicwhich made the country stand still. That dramatic final game was bursting with 77 years’ worth of tension, hope and desire as Britain realised one of its greatest sporting ambitions again.
Best moment of the last 25 years: Forget Sergio Aguero’s winner in 2012, the greatest end to any league campaign came on May 26, 1989, when Arsenal somehow won 2-0 at Anfield to give George Graham’s side the title.
That Michael Thomas’s crucial goal came in injury time in the final game of the season was astonishing enough, but the fact it came against the team Arsenal were tussling with at the top of the table took it fully into the realms of the obscene.
Sean Fay
Best moment of 2013: My favourite sporting moment of 2013 came in a game that barely raised a ripple over here but saw Twitter explode in the States. It was a college American football game between the University of Auburn and the University of Alabama.
The two teams are massive rivals, there were 90,000 people in the stadium (and it could have been sold out 10 times over) and this was arguably the biggest meeting between the sides ever as whoever lost would see their season over. I even recommended a friend, who likes NFL but has never seen a college game, to watch it, and he just so happened to get one of the greatest games ever.
It was a fantastic match even before its unbelievable ending. The sides were level and one second was added back onto the clock for overwhelming favourites Alabama as they made a late bid to find a winning score.
They decided to go for a 56-year field goal despite missing three kicks earlier in the game. With their regular kicker's confidence shot, they let a freshman try instead. He made great contact with the ball and it looked good for moment but fell just short…but the real drama was to come.
An Auburn player had hung back and caught the ball, it was still a live play, he started running and running and running. He got a couple of blocks and he was away to score the winning touchdown. 90,000 people went wild, Twitter in the States went into meltdown and I jumped off my coach and started screaming despite having no rooting interest in either side.
My friend who was the watching his first college game sent me a three word text back: "Oh. My. God" it read – "They're not all like this" was all I could say in reply.
Best moment of the last 25 years: I doubt many people would pick the first-leg of a UEFA Cup preliminary round tie as their all-time favourite sporting moment, but seeing my Irish club Shelbourne go 3-0 up against Rangers in 1998 brought up emotions never matched since. The match was rather bizarrely played at Tranmere Rovers ground as security concerns saw 'Shels' move the game away from Dublin.
Shelbourne have never been a political club but there was understandable tension in air with an Irish club facing Rangers. We had lots of difficulties even getting to the ground which I'd rather not get into and missed the start of the match. But the match itself was a dream… for the first hour at least. Rangers had a multi-million pound squad back then but Shels rather unfathomably were 2-0 up at half-time. The first song on the PA at half-time was 'C'est la vie' by B*Witched. None of us knew how to properly Irish dance but that didn't stop us trying.
Then, early in the second-half, our striker Pat Morley was one-on-one with keeper. I can still close my eyes, think about that goal, and smile. I remember saying "just hammer it" as he gently lifted it over the keeper. I remember looking at my friends in shock for a moment just after the ball hit the back of the net. I remember us all going mental. I remember my mate Ross spilling a hot cup of tea all over himself and not wincing once at the pain of it all. I remember a feeling of complete and utter bliss.
And I remember it lasting less than a minute.
Rangers went up the other end and immediately scored with a penalty, then scored four more before the end as they went on to win 5-3. I try to forget about that part but what came before will stay with me until my grave.
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Toby Keel
Best moment of 2013: After the endless British sporting pyrotechnics of 2012, it was always going to be tough for sport to hit the same high notes again in 2013. And while there was plenty of success, it always felt like a mere shadowy repetition of the drama from the previous year. Chris Froome winning the Tour de France felt strangely flat compared to the Wiggins original; Andy Murray's victorious Wimbledon final was simply too easy to be exciting (barring that final game, of course); Justin Rose won a Major at last, but sadly only the boring old US Open where all you have to do is avoid making bogeys; and Mo Farah's two golds weren't on the same level as his Olympic success, simply because this time round we all knew full well that he simply couldn't be overtaken if he was leading at the bell.
So for sheer drama, my pick goes to the greatest tennis match of the year: Novak Djokovic's utterly magnificent match at Wimbledon against Juan Martin Del Potro. The stats will tell you that it was the longest men's semi-final ever played at Wimbledon; those who saw it will tell you that it was also the best.
Best moment of the last 25 years: Until last Autumn, I wouldn't have believed that anything could topCrystal Palace's 4-3 win in extra time over Liverpool in the 1990 FA Cup semi-final. At the start of that season Liverpool had beaten newly-promoted Palace 9-0, giving the upstarts from South London a true schooling in the art of the beautiful game - so to turn that result around in such epic fashion, and in such a huge match? Remember, this was back in the days when winning the FA Cup was nearly as good as winning the league. Alan Pardew's header after nearly two hours of back-and-forth football is still fondly remembered even by neutrals; for Palace fans it remains the crown jewels.
Yet the final day of the 2012 Ryder Cup did the unthinkable: it dislodged that game as my favourite sporting memory. It all started, for me, with Justin Rose's genuinely outrageous putts on the final three greens to turn a lost cause into a point for Europe; and from that point, watching the US team fold and the European team pull off the Miracle of Medinah was genuinely unforgettable. The unique manner in which the Ryder Cup offers sustained drama and tension over the course of many hours make it almost deliciously unbearable, and that day will be burned onto my mind til the day I die.
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Reda Maher
Best moment of 2013: As a tennis fan I am supposed to say Murray winning Wimbledon, but the final was a blow-out and – as someone who cares little for the elevated status the English afford to The Championships – I personally view his US Open triumph last year as the bigger deal as it snapped the seven-decade Grand Slam duck.
So I am going to put myself in the firing line and say Mo Farah’s World Championships double, which – following on from his Olympic dominance – gave him a double-double that had only been achieved once before. In the wider scheme of things it is the greater achievement as someone wins Wimbledon every year; that Murray is British is only of consequence to these Isles.
Best moment of the last 25 years: The dramatic completion of Manchester United’s famous treble of 1999 has to go down as the moment when English football – after years of (relative) underachievement – truly returned to the European stage (Cup Winners’ Cups don’t count).
That Bayern Munich were the better side on the night merely emphasised the unbeatable status of United, who were missing a handful of key players due to suspension and injury and started the match with the likes of Jesper Blomqvist in the starting XI and Jonathan Greening on the bench. United were already the formidable force in English football, but now they were feared by everyone.
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Dan Quarrell
Best moment of 2013: It was rightly described as one of the greatest comebacks in sporting history when Oracle Team USA fought back from the brink to beat Team New Zealand in a dramatic America’s Cup finale. Britain’s greatest sailor, Sir Ben Ainslie, came onboard with the Americans trailing 8-1 and duly inspired the most unlikely run of wins imaginable to secure a tense win by 44 seconds in a winner-takes-all clash.
As far as ‘I was there’ moments go, it was very difficult to follow the action from San Francisco’s famous Pier 39 with the boats powering across the bay, but the disbelief from all the spectators as the comeback took shape was something very special to behold as Ainslie further secured his legendary sporting status.
Best moment of the last 25 years: Jaws dropped. They really did. In 2008, Usain Bolt left the world utterly stunned as he jogged through the line in setting a new world record of 9.69 in the 100m of the Beijing Olympics. To say it was emphatic would be a gross understatement with Richard Thompson finishing second way back in 9.89.
Not only was the record shattered without a favourable wind but he visibly slowed down to celebrate, his shoelaces were very clearly untied and he has admitted to eating 1,000 chicken nuggets during the course of the game.
We will never see his like again. The world of athletics changed at this moment. In that race he took the sport to a new level and all while being the greatest entertainer we have seen.
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Liam Happe
Best moment of 2013: Mo Farah, Andy Murray, Ben Ainslie and that Sir Alex chap are all winners. Huge winners, no doubt about it. But how many of them can say they've been called the lovechild of Rocky Balboa and Cinderella, Darren Barker was one of just two British boxers to enjoy a truly memorable 2013, with the other – Carl Froch – souring his year somewhat with his behaviour towards George Groves.
The nature of Barker's world title win, and the backstory behind it, couldn’t have been scripted better by a professional storyteller. The fact that he suffered a likely career-ending recurrence of his haunting hip injury in his very first defence only adds extra poignancy to his fleeting flirtation with the pinnacle of his profession.
Best moment of the last 25 years: Witnessing your team win promotion at Wembley is one of those moments every English football supporter outside of the ‘big clubs’ hopes to be blessed with. With the ‘old’ Wembley gone, being there for it has become even more sacred. And when such an occasion happens to be one of the single greatest games in the venue’s history – well…
Charlton 4-4 Sunderland pretty much represented the pinnacle of my younger days as an innocent supporter before becoming a jaded, cynical, flippant, sarcastic, miserable, knows-it-all hack.
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Desmond Kane
Best moment of 2013: A teetotaller, the art of self-improvement and self-awareness is the very essence of Andy Murray. He looked at where he needed to improve, worked himself into the ground and the result was what we witnessed on the hottest day of the year against the daunting Novkak Djokovic in the Wimbledon final: a figure oozing self-belief and a man who gradually realised he was talented enough to grow bigger than he could ever have imagined.
That is the real lesson of the Murray story: live in the moment, live for the moment by practicising self-discipline and espouse a work ethic to improve one’s self. Nothing worthwhile in life comes easy. Nobody can do the hard yards for you. It is only ever about you.
Murray has had to take some hard knocks but the empty fears of self-doubt were purged by his voracious appetite to seek, to find and not to yield. He ended Britain's 77-year wait for the Wimbledon men's singles title because he believed he could.
Best moment of the last 25 years: Over 80,000 Celtic fans - starved of a major European final since becoming the first British club European Cup in 1967 - travelled to Seville to watch Martin O'Neill's team lose to Jose Mourinho's Porto 3-2 after extra-time in the 2003 UEFA Cup final. "I fell a bit in love with Celtic, because the atmosphere was amazing and the crowd was magnificent," said Mourninho."The way they behaved with the Porto fans."
At one point, an estimated two per cent of the world's air traffic was bound for Andalusia. The final was a titanic contest in conditions akin to a sauna, but this became more about how football can bring people together as a force for good.
The final was made by the fans from Scotland whose good nature, grace in defeat and willingness to embrace the good natured and welcoming locals of the host city saw them showered with plaudits by the mayor of Seville. They collected the Fifa Fair Play award.
It was a magical sort of week, and one that continues to be etched in the memory banks. No major European final has or will come close to what Seville witnessed a decade ago.
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Marcus Foley
Best moment of 2013: The Lions winning in Australia. The Lions edged the first Test 23-21, with George North scoring one of the all-time great Lions’ tries. A resolute Australian side sent the series to a decider after they ground out the second game 16-15.
There was shock and no little anger in some quarters when Warren Gatland elected to drop the hitherto indispensable Brian O’Driscoll for said decider. Big matches demand big decisions and the damage to Gatland’s reputation could have been irreparable if they lost. However, his bravery was rewarded as the Lions demolished the Australians 41-16 to claim a first series win in 16 years.
Best moment of the last 25 years: The 2005 Champions League final encompassed much of the beauty of sport. Liverpool were a beaten side as they went to half-time three goals down following strikes from Paolo Maldini and a Hernan Crespo double.
Retrospectively hindsight clouds one’s cynical side but as soon as Steven Gerrard rose to head past Dida on 53 minutes it seemed inevitable that Liverpool would steal victory from the jaws of defeat. It took only a further seven minutes to restore parity before the game went to extra-time. There was many a distinguished performance from a Liverpool player as the game wore on but Jerzy Dudek’s spaghetti legs in the penalty shootout will live long in the memory.
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Josh Hayward
Best moment of 2013: My favourite sporting moment of 2013 came in the year's penultimate month. And though everybody knew it was coming for a while, it was still a surreal moment to see Sachin Tendulkar walk out to an adoring Mumbai crowd for the final time in his long and illustrious career.
The 'Little Master' decided that his 200th Test match was to be his last, and from start to finish - despite the West Indies' heavy defeat – it was a truly glorious spectacle to watch.
It seemed that history had already been written as Tendulkar worked the ball beautifully around the field, though the dream century never came. Instead he was dismissed on 74, leaving the stunned crowd in Mumbai utterly silent.
Regardless, Tendulkar will go down as a sporting great and his presence throughout the game will be sorely missed.
Best moment of the last 25 years: I was eight, nearly nine, during the time of when the World Cup was being played in France. Now, if you ask me anything else that happened in that year; whether it be what my school was like or who my closest friends were, then there's not a chance in hell I could tell you the answer. But, for some reason, that World Cup - my first 'proper' World Cup - sticks out in my mind like it was yesterday. And one moment in particular.
Born in England but with a father hailing from the Netherlands, I have had a big soft spot for the Oranje all my life. And maybe that's why Dennis Bergkamp's incredible goal against Argentina in the quarter-finals is one of my fondest memories.
Plucking Frank de Boer's raking cross-field pass out of the air, Bergkamp delightfully flicked the ball through Roberto Ayala's legs before find the back of the net with the outside of his boot. Stunning.
