LATEST FILINGISSUE Nº 008 · “AN ITALIAN STARTED NINETEENTH AND WON ITALY”READ IT →
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Plus the Williams sisters lose a tiebreak from five points up, Cleveland wins four games with the final swing, and the NFL opens at a cricket ground.
The Sportsball Newsletter
ISSUE Nº 008 · WEEK OF SEPTEMBER 7, 2026

Kimi Antonelli, who is twenty and Italian, started Sunday's Italian Grand Prix in nineteenth place and won it. The United States women's basketball team beat Italy by three points at the World Cup in Berlin. Venus and Serena Williams played doubles together at the US Open and lost. Everything below is safe to repeat out loud.

FORMULA 1
Kimi Antonelli (file photo)
KIMI ANTONELLI, PHOTOGRAPHED IN 2025, BEFORE THE PENALTY
EXHIBIT A

Kimi Antonelli won the Italian Grand Prix from nineteenth on the grid

Antonelli is twenty, from Bologna in Italy, drives for Mercedes and leads the world championship. He was given an engine penalty before the race, which moved him to nineteenth of twenty-two on the starting grid at Monza, near Milan. On the second lap Charles Leclerc of Ferrari crashed heavily and the race was stopped for about half an hour while the barrier was repaired; Leclerc walked away. After the restart Antonelli worked his way through the field, passed his teammate George Russell for the lead with three laps left, and won by just under four seconds. He is the first Italian to win the Italian Grand Prix since 1966. It is his seventh win of the year, and he now leads Russell by sixty-six points.

The penalty was meant to cost him the afternoon. He treated it as a slightly longer commute.

PHOTO: KUYPER / CC BY-SA 4.0 / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

THE BIG ONE
Caitlin Clark (file photo)
CAITLIN CLARK, PHOTOGRAPHED IN 2024, BEFORE BERLIN
EXHIBIT B

The United States beat Italy by three points at the basketball World Cup

The women's basketball World Cup, the world championship for national teams, is being played in Berlin, Germany, and runs to September 13. The United States, who have won the last four, beat China 94-61 on Friday and then Italy 55-52 on Sunday, which put them into the quarterfinals with a game to spare. Caitlin Clark, playing in her first World Cup, had ten assists on Friday, which are passes that lead directly to a basket; nobody had managed that many in a World Cup debut before. Italy's Cecilia Zandalasini had a shot in the final seconds on Sunday that would have tied it, and missed. The WNBA, the American professional league, has paused its season until September 17 so its players can be there.

The Americans scored ninety-four on Friday and fifty-five on Sunday, so somewhere in Berlin there is a very quiet team meeting.

PHOTO: JOHN MAC / CC BY-SA 2.0 / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

TENNIS
Venus and Serena Williams (file photo)
VENUS AND SERENA WILLIAMS, PHOTOGRAPHED AT THIS TOURNAMENT IN 2013, ALREADY CONFERRING
EXHIBIT C

Venus and Serena Williams played doubles at the US Open and lost from five points up

Venus Williams, 46, and Serena Williams, 44, played together as a doubles pair at the US Open in New York on Thursday for the first time in four years. They lost 6-3, 6-7, 7-6 to Hao-Ching Chan of Taiwan and Maya Joint of Australia. The deciding tiebreak is first to ten points; the sisters led it 5-0 and lost it 10-7. Earlier in the week Venus lost her singles match to Sofia Kenin, in a match that began at thirteen minutes past midnight, the latest start in the tournament's history, and ended at two in the morning. The tournament runs to September 13. Carlos Alcaraz, the defending men's champion, reached the quarterfinals on Sunday.

The singles match began at thirteen minutes past midnight, a start time otherwise reserved for flights nobody wanted.

PHOTO: EDWIN MARTINEZ / CC BY 2.0 / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

GOLF
THE GOLF BALL, ON ITS FOURTH TRIP DOWN THE EIGHTEENTH
EXHIBIT D

Thriston Lawrence won in the Swiss Alps on the fourth extra hole

Lawrence, of South Africa, won the European Masters at Crans-Montana, Switzerland on Sunday, beating Paul Casey of England in a playoff. Both finished the four rounds tied at eighteen under par, so they went back to the eighteenth hole and played it again, and again, until on the fourth attempt Lawrence made a birdie, one shot better than the expected score, and Casey did not. Lawrence also won this tournament last year. Casey, who is 49, had led after the third round with a front nine of 29, which is very low. The course sits about 1,500 metres up a mountain.

The two of them played the same hole four times in a row, like two people at a doorway insisting the other go first.

NO LICENSED PHOTO ON FILE. THE MASCOT WILL REPRESENT THE SPORT.

BASEBALL
THE BASEBALL, LEAVING EARLY, FOUR TIMES
EXHIBIT E

Cleveland's baseball teams won four games with the final swing in one evening

On Friday the Cleveland Guardians played two games against the Detroit Tigers and won both on the last swing of the game: Brayan Rocchio hit a home run to end the first, and Travis Bazzana hit a single in the tenth inning to end the second. Within minutes, two of Cleveland's minor-league teams, the farm clubs in Lake County and Akron, both in Ohio, also won with a hit in the final inning, also in the second game of a doubleheader. A win like that is called a walk-off, because the game ends so suddenly that the losing team simply walks off the field. Four of them, one organisation, about three hours.

A walk-off is when the game ends so abruptly the losers just leave. Cleveland arranged four of them before bedtime.

NO LICENSED PHOTO ON FILE. THE MASCOT WILL REPRESENT THE SPORT.

SOCCER
Martin Odegaard (file photo)
MARTIN ØDEGAARD, PHOTOGRAPHED IN JUNE, PLAYING FOR NORWAY INSTEAD
EXHIBIT F

Arsenal beat Chelsea 2-1, and five of Saturday's seven games were draws

Arsenal beat Chelsea 2-1 in north London on Sunday; both clubs are from London, so this counts as a local argument. Morgan Rogers scored early for Chelsea, Kai Havertz equalised before half-time, and Martin Ødegaard, Arsenal's captain, scored the winner five minutes into the second half. On Saturday, five of the seven Premier League games ended level, two of them without a goal. Manchester United led twice at Everton on Sunday and still drew 2-2, after Ainsley Maitland-Niles scored in the sixth minute of stoppage time, the extra minutes added at the end to make up for delays.

Five of Saturday's seven games ended level, so a nation spent its afternoon watching people agree to split the bill.

PHOTO: BRYAN BERLIN / CC BY-SA 4.0 / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

FOOTBALL, AMERICAN
THE AMERICAN FOOTBALL, PACKED FOR MELBOURNE
EXHIBIT G

The NFL season starts on Wednesday in Seattle, then on Thursday in Australia

The season opens on Wednesday night with the Seattle Seahawks, last season's champions, at home against the New England Patriots. It is the league's first Wednesday opener since 2012, and the date moved so that Thursday could go to the first regular-season game ever played in Australia: the Los Angeles Rams against the San Francisco 49ers at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, kicking off at about 8:35 in the evening Eastern time, which is Friday morning in Melbourne. Sixteen games follow across four days, through Monday night. In the college game on Saturday, South Florida beat Florida, ranked thirteenth in the country, 18-16 with a kick on the final play.

It begins on a Wednesday, which the league insists is a scheduling matter and not a sign it has lost track of the days.

NO LICENSED PHOTO ON FILE. THE MASCOT WILL REPRESENT THE SPORT.

HOCKEY

Nothing happened. You're welcome.

Hockey is still between seasons. Training camps open this week and the first game is September 29. The department has nothing to report and no intention of inventing anything.

ALSO FILED
⚲ Tennis, also: the US Open finals are next weekend, the women's on Saturday afternoon and the men's on Sunday afternoon, both in New York.
⚲ Basketball, also: the World Cup final is next Sunday, September 13, in Berlin.
⚲ Cycling: Sunday's stage of the Tour of Spain was cut by eighty kilometres because it was forty degrees Celsius at the start. Enric Mas of Spain still leads with a week to go; the race ends next Sunday.
⚲ Baseball, also: the Milwaukee Brewers have the best record in the sport and can secure a playoff place this week.
⚲ Hockey, also: training camps open between Wednesday and Saturday, and for the first time the season will be eighty-four games long.

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