It is something that I first benefited from when I was playing for the rugby league Super League team

“It is something that I first benefited from when I was playing for the rugby league Super League team Cronulla Sharks in Australia.”They ruled that the over-30s could skip the odd physical session because they had proved themselves and were responsible. That continued at Richmond when I returned to union, and has carried on at Northampton.”If I want to put in a quality sprinting session I can tell the director of rugby, John Steele, that I want to sit out a couple of sessions earlier in the week. Obviously I am not going to skive off, because he knows I want to carry on playing for Wales and I also want to get on the Lions tour next summer, so there is no way I am going to let my fitness suffer.”But since speed is my main weapon, in attack and defence, and is what has kept me at this level for so long, I have to stay sharp, so I always like to make sure I do not have a bad sprinting session.”Bateman has a work ethic, something he had even in his amateur days. He works hard, even to the point of going running every day outside club or country training schedules.”I have always worked really hard to keep myself fit,” he said, and the fact that he has won the bulk of his 28 caps since he hit 31 in 1996 further underlines the shape he is in.His value to Wales cannot be underestimated. Mark Taylor may be his closest rival for the outside-centre spot, but a measure of how highly the Welsh coach, Graham Henry, values Bateman, and rates his speed, was that last week the North-ampton player began the Test against the United States on the wing.He finished that game in his preferred position of outside- centre after Taylor limped off, and today against South Africa at the Millennium Stadium Bateman starts in the No 13 shirt because his rival has had to undergo keyhole surgery on his right knee.”It was hard switching positions last week,” admitted Bateman. “It has nothing to do with age, rather it is the different role you fill.”I had been having a few runs out on the wing, then suddenly when Mark went off I had to put in and take a lot more hits.

That takes it out of anyone, no matter how young they are, and yet, at centre you are still expected to make the occasional break.”And it is just as difficult if a centre has to switch to the wing. If it happens late in the game you just do not have the gas, after all the tackling you have had to do, to race off down the wing or chase a kick ahead.”But with so much riding on this match – Six Nations places and the Lions tour as well as pride – Bateman can be counted on to show all his rivals, young and even younger, that age is an attitude Experience counts. And no doubt a dusty portrait in an attic helps a little bit as well.. As the late Emil Zatopek conclusively proved, races are not exciting if you tend to win them by a clear lap As with athletics, so with tennis. As the late Emil Zatopek conclusively proved, races are not exciting if you tend to win them by a clear lap. As with athletics, so with tennis.
The promotional drums have long been throbbing in anticipation of the ATP Tour’s year-end highlight, this week’s Masters Cup in Lisbon. A torrent of bulletins has attempted to sustain interest by speculating about who will end up top of the Champions Race in its inaugural year.

One problem: Marat Safin has, Zatopek-fashion, spoiled all that one lap early by becoming, at 20, the youngest-ever men’s No 1 by winning in Paris last weekend.Shamefully, the ATP ignored this historic moment, presumably because it took the spotlight off Lisbon, when they should have been trumpeting the successes this year of that engaging and gregarious pair Safin and Gustavo “Guga” Kuerten. If he maintains his clear lead through the round-robin stages of the Masters Cup, Safin will not only top the Champions Race but confirm his position as the first non-American No 1 since Stefan Edberg in 1991, in the wake of Pete Sampras’ six straight and one each for Andre Agassi and Jim Courier.Lisbon this week will be brimming with statistics and mathematical possibilities, but Safin is on the podium and Kuerten stands alongside him after a season yielding 59 victories and four titles L’Equipe was in no doubt about the Brazilian. “Guga – Simply God” declared the banner headline at the climax of the Paris event in Stade Bercy. In fact, the French have been gaga over Guga since, unseeded, he won Roland Garros in 1997 disguised as a parakeet (yellow bandana and socks, blue shorts and shoes, yellow-and-blue-striped shirt). After he had repeated that Grand Slam triumph in Paris this year the runner-up, Sweden’s Magnus Norman, expressed disgust with his fellow Europeans for being demonstrably pro-Guga.But who could possibly be anti-Guga? How can you not like an athlete who classifies his priorities as “to excite and entertain”, with not a mention of money.