分类： sports

Australian Rules Football icon and one of the nation’s most inspirational public figures Neale Daniher has passed away at 65, bringing a close to a 13-year public battle against motor neurone disease (MND). He died surrounded by his immediate family, leaving behind a transformative legacy of courage, fundraising and advocacy that has changed the global fight against the devastating neurodegenerative condition.

In a public statement released Monday afternoon, the Daniher family paid tribute to the man they described as the unshakable heart of their clan. “From day one, Neale was a fighter. His determination was unmatched – choosing every day to find opportunity where others might see only challenge, and taking the fight to the Beast with everything he had,” the statement read.

Even as his illness progressed through its most debilitating stages, Daniher never lost his signature playful charm and sharp wit. “Even in the toughest times, he kept pushing forward, determined to land as many blows as he could against his toughest opponent, all with a cheeky grin and a sharp sense of humour that never left him,” the family shared.

Raised as one of 11 children, Daniher built a reputation for bringing light and connection to every room he entered long before his MND diagnosis. He first made his mark on Australian sport as a fierce, strategically brilliant player for the Essendon Football Club, before transitioning to a legendary coaching career with the Melbourne Football Club, where fans affectionately nicknamed him “Coach” and “Reverend.” Across every stage of his life, he drew people in as a natural leader, beloved far beyond his titles as a husband, father, proud grandfather, music lover, and the person with the loudest laugh in any gathering.

Daniher’s activism against MND began after his own diagnosis in 2012, when he launched the “Beat The Beast” campaign that evolved into the national FightMND movement and the iconic annual Big Freeze match held at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG). Over 13 years, his work raised more than $100 million for MND research globally. This year’s Big Freeze match, scheduled to take place in just a few weeks, will mark the first edition of the event held without Daniher present.

In 2025, Daniher’s extraordinary contributions to public life were recognized when he was named Australian of the Year, an honor that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese noted was met with unanimous national approval. He left a simple, powerful legacy for current and future MND fighters: “No matter the odds, no matter the diagnosis, we all have the power to fight, to smile, and to do. Because the mark of a person isn’t what they say, it’s what they do.” The family closed their statement with Daniher’s iconic catchcry: “Play On.”

AFL chief executive Andrew Dillon described Daniher’s passing as a devastating loss for the entire Australian football community. Beyond his on-field achievements, which included leading Melbourne to six finals series and a 2000 Grand Final appearance, Dillon emphasized that Daniher’s greatest impact came from his selfless advocacy.

“His contribution to wider Australian life was simply incredible in the way he put himself at the forefront, despite the challenge of his own MND diagnosis, to raise awareness of the disease, champion fundraising efforts and search for a cure that he knew would likely not help him, but may help many thousands of other Australians in the future,” Dillon said.

Melbourne Football Club President Steven Smith echoed that sentiment, noting that Daniher’s courage extended far beyond the boundaries of the football pitch. “It is impossible to encapsulate in words the impact of Neale Daniher. His courage transcended the football field, and his determination inspired an entire country,” Smith said. “Neale was not driven by personal motivation, he was driven by helping others, right until the very end. He was a true leader and the definition of what it means to be selfless.”

Prime Minister Albanese joined tributes, calling Daniher one of Australia’s greatest modern figures. “The devastating impacts of MND stole so much from Neale, but he held onto everything that people loved and admired about him: his selflessness, his bravery, his humour, his ability to look on the bright side and his fierce determination to make a difference for others,” Albanese said. “Neale Daniher’s remarkable legacy lives all around us.”

Daniher’s death comes just days after 30-year-old NRL star Jai Arrow revealed his own MND diagnosis and immediate retirement from professional sport, a revelation that cast renewed national attention on the condition.

The Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, a leading Australian medical research institution that has received $17.5 million in funding from FightMND, called Daniher an extraordinary force for the global fight against MND. “Through his powerful advocacy work, Neale helped to raise millions of dollars for researchers in Australia and around the world working to find a cure for MND,” the institute said in a statement.

Executive Director Professor Peter van Wijngaarden noted that Daniher turned a personal battle into a global movement that continues to accelerate research. “Even in his own battle with MND, Neale was fighting for everyone who would come after him,” van Wijngaarden said. “We will forever be grateful to him and FightMND for putting this disease in the spotlight, inspiring so many and supporting vital research at The Florey and across the globe.”

The first edition of the highly divisive Enhanced Games, an event that openly permits competitors to use performance-enhancing drugs banned by every major international sports governing body, wrapped up in Las Vegas on Sunday with just one unofficial world record broken, falling far short of organizers’ bold predictions of multiple record-breaking performances.

Greek swimmer Kristian Gkolomeev delivered the sole standout result of the night, clocking 20.81 seconds in the men’s 50-meter freestyle to beat the existing official world mark of 20.88 seconds set by Australia’s Cameron McEvoy earlier this year. Competing in a synthetic full-body supersuit banned from Olympic and other mainstream sporting events for decades, Gkolomeev’s achievement will never be formally recognized by global athletics regulators, but it earned him a $1 million bonus from event organizers. “It was a great race… I got it,” Gkolomeev said after the win. “I’m going to continue. Maybe next year I’ll break it again.”

Organizers had built hype around the event by promising that the open use of sophisticated doping regimens would lead to dozens of new records across swimming, sprinting, and weightlifting. Gkolomeev’s last-minute win spared the event from a total record drought, though most athletes came within fractions of a second or kilograms of existing marks without surpassing them. Earlier in the competition, Gkolomeev had also come close to breaking Pan Zhanle’s 100m freestyle world record of 46.40 seconds, finishing with a time of 46.60 and saying he was frustrated to fall just short.

Other high-profile competitors also narrowly missed record targets. Britain’s Ben Proud, a 2024 Paris Olympics silver medallist who admitted to using multiple performance-enhancing substances, won the men’s 50m butterfly in 22.32 seconds — just 0.05 seconds off the world record. “We all know what we came for. And that’s world records. And so to be that agonizingly close, it’s frustrating,” Proud said.

In a surprising turn of events that defied the event’s core premise, several clean, unenhanced athletes claimed event titles against doped competitors. American swimmer Hunter Armstrong took gold in the opening swimming event, the men’s 50m backstroke, with a time of 24.21 seconds to beat two rivals who used performance-enhancing drugs. Former 100m world champion Fred Kerley, currently serving a suspension for missed drug tests, also won the men’s 100m sprint clean with a time of 9.97 seconds, joking of his doped rivals: “Man, they got to do better than that. They need to train a little harder. Get on that shit a little bit more.” Barbados sprinter Tristan Evelyn also won the women’s 100m sprint clean, finishing in 11.25 seconds. US Olympic medallist Cody Miller, another clean competitor, rolled back the years to win the men’s 50m breaststroke, cutting seven-tenths of a second off his own personal best at age 34, though he did not come close to challenging Adam Peaty’s world record.

The pattern of near-misses extended to the weightlifting platform, where multiple athletes failed to hit the record lifts they had achieved in training. Dominican Republic weightlifter Beatriz Piron, who reportedly hit a world record lift in training, narrowly failed to complete a 100kg snatch to open the competition. Canadian Boady Santavy and American Wesley Kitts also fell short of their target record snatch lifts of 183kg and 197kg respectively, even after organizers bent competition rules to grant each an extra fourth attempt. “I hit a lot of PRs in training. Not 197 yet… Man, if I had about four more weeks (in training) I’d say I’d have had a good shot at it,” Kitts said. Even Hafthor Bjornsson, the former World’s Strongest Man best known for playing The Mountain on *Game of Thrones*, failed to break his own existing 510kg deadlift world record.

Backed by high-profile investors including billionaire tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel and former U.S. President Donald Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr., the Enhanced Games was held at a custom-built temporary arena on the parking lot of a Las Vegas casino, with large cash prizes — up to $1 million for a world record and $250,000 for an event win — luring a field that included multiple current and former Olympic medallists.

The event has faced widespread condemnation from global sports governing bodies, who refuse to recognize any records set at the competition and have called it a dangerous experiment that normalizes harmful doping. Public health experts have also raised urgent alarms, warning that the open use of banned substances such as testosterone and anabolic steroids carries major long-term risks, including life-shortening heart, liver, and kidney damage, with little research available on the full health impacts of the regimens athletes are using. Enhanced Games officials have pushed back against these criticisms, noting that all substances used by athletes are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and the event’s parent company already sells many of these substances directly to the general public.

The controversial inaugural Enhanced Games, a competition that unapologetically permits the use of performance-enhancing drugs for all participating athletes, got off to a surprising start in its opening swimming event on Monday in Las Vegas, where one of the sport’s most recognizable former champions failed to deliver on the high expectations he helped build. Australian swimmer James Magnussen, nicknamed “The Missile” and the first athlete to sign on to the privately backed competition, crossed the finish line in last place in the men’s 100m freestyle, finishing more than two seconds slower than his decade-old personal best.

The 35-year-old, who made headlines ahead of the event with a bold claim that he would “juice to the gills” and break a world record within six months of joining the Games, clocked a final time of 49.44 seconds. That result put him well behind the three other competitors in the field, with Greek swimmer Kristian Gkolomeev taking first place with a time of 46.6 seconds. Gkolomeev’s finish came just 0.2 seconds off the current world record of 46.4 seconds set by Chinese swimmer Pan Zhanle at the 2024 Paris Olympics earlier this year. Completing the field were American swimmer Hunter Armstrong and Irish swimmer Shane Ryan, both of whom finished comfortably ahead of Magnussen.

Magnussen’s slow final time was 2.34 seconds off his personal best of 47.10 seconds, which he set at the Australian Olympic selection trials back in 2012, when he was at the peak of his competitive career. Competing in an eye-catching gold swimsuit that marked his status as the face of the new event, Magnussen never mounted a serious challenge to the rest of the field throughout the race.

Despite his underwhelming last-place finish, the former world champion still walked away with a $70,000 payout for just competing in the event, a sum that is nearly double what Australian Olympic gold medalists receive for winning a top prize at the traditional Games. The Enhanced Games offers outsized financial incentives to draw competitors: total prize money across all events sits at millions of dollars, with a $1.4 million reward on offer specifically for any athlete who breaks the 50m freestyle world record. Total prize money for all winners across the inaugural event is set at roughly $350,000, a payout structure that far outpaces traditional elite swimming competition for many lower-ranked finishers.

Backed by deep-pocketed supporters including private equity firms, tech billionaires, and entrepreneurial investment funds, the Enhanced Games has drawn widespread global scrutiny for its rule that allows unlimited use of performance-enhancing substances, a direct rejection of decades of anti-doping policies that govern the Olympic Games and all other mainstream international sports. For Magnussen, the competition is not over yet: he is still scheduled to compete in the 50m freestyle later in the event, where he retains a chance to claim the massive $1.4 million world record breaking prize.

The inaugural edition of the controversial Enhanced Games, an event that openly permits athletes to use performance-enhancing substances banned from traditional elite competitions like the Olympics, kicked off Sunday in Las Vegas. Despite the allowances for banned drugs and technologically advanced swimsuits, participating athletes narrowly missed out on breaking existing official world records in early competition, leaving organizers and competitors just short of their high-stakes goal.

A total of 42 athletes across sprinting, swimming and weightlifting took part in the event, with the vast majority using stacks of testosterone, peptides, anabolic steroids and other substances blacklisted by global athletics governing bodies. These governing bodies have already roundly condemned the competition as dangerously reckless, and have confirmed they will never recognize any records set at the Enhanced Games.

Lured by lucrative prize purses — $1 million for any athlete who breaks an existing world record, and $250,000 for individual event gold — the field includes several former Olympic medalists, such as retired elite swimmers James Magnussen, Cody Miller and Ben Proud. In the most closely watched early swimming contest, the men’s 100-meter freestyle, Greek competitor Kristian Gkolomeev posted a time of 46.60 seconds, just 0.2 seconds behind Pan Zhanle’s current official world record of 46.40 seconds.

“It was very close to the world record. I really wanted to do it, but it’s OK,” Gkolomeev told reporters after the race. “I felt at the end I died a little bit, but I didn’t really train for the 100 this year, definitely I will take that.”

On the women’s side of the same event, Britain’s Emily Barclays took gold with a time of 24.09 seconds, approximately half a second off the standing world mark.

Enhanced Games co-founder Max Martin had predicted ahead of the competition that “quite a few” world records would fall unofficially, but the first half of the event did not live up to that projection. In the opening weightlifting contest, Beatriz Piron — who had reportedly surpassed the women’s snatch world record in training — attempted 100kg but came up short of the mark. For the men, Canada’s Boady Santavy and American Wesley Kitts attempted 183kg and 197kg respectively, and both failed, even after organizers broke standard rules to grant each an extra fourth attempt to hit the record.

“I hit a lot of PRs in training. Not 197 yet… Man, if I had about four more weeks (in training) I’d say I’d have had a good shot at it,” Kitts said after his attempt.

In a surprising upset, the men’s 50-meter backstroke was won by Hunter Armstrong, one of the small minority of competitors who chose not to use any performance-enhancing drugs, who beat two rivals who did use PEDs with a time of 24.21 seconds. American former Olympian Cody Miller, who won the men’s 50-meter breaststroke, said he was thrilled to cut seven-tenths of a second off his own personal best at age 34, though his 26.55 second time remained well off Adam Peaty’s 25.95 second world record.

Unlike traditional elite swimming competitions, the Enhanced Games permits competitors to wear the same full-body “supersuits” that caused a wave of record-breaking at the 2008 Beijing Olympics before being banned by global swimming governing bodies over concerns about unfair technological advantage.

Former 100-meter sprint world champion Fred Kerley, another clean competitor at the event, topped the men’s sprint heats with a 9.93 second run, just two-hundredths of a second ahead of “enhanced” athlete Emmanuel Matadi, who clocked 9.95 seconds.

The 2024 Enhanced Games is being held in a custom-built $50 million temporary arena constructed on the parking lot of a Las Vegas casino, which will be dismantled just hours after the final event wraps up. Blending elite sports, biohacking advocacy, political positioning and entertainment, the event counts high-profile backers including billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel and Donald Trump Jr., with iconic Las Vegas-based rock band The Killers scheduled to play the closing set after competition ends.

The competition has sparked widespread criticism from global health experts, who warn that the unregulated use of the performance-enhancing substances permitted at the Games carries major risks of “life-shortening and fatal consequences,” including permanent damage to the heart, liver and kidneys, since little definitive research exists on the long-term impacts of many of these drug combinations.

Enhanced Games officials have pushed back against these concerns, noting that all substances used by athletes are formally approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and that the event spared no expense to hire top-tier medical staff to monitor competitors. Chief medical officer Guido Pieles acknowledged that the health risks of the substances “clearly there” but argued they are “really manageable” with proper oversight.

Organizers have emphasized a commitment to transparency, publishing the overall percentage of athletes taking each category of performance-enhancing drug, with Martin saying “transparency is core to our DNA.” However, athletes confirmed that they are not required to publicly disclose the exact specific drug combinations each competitor is taking. Beyond the event itself, the parent company Enhanced sells many of the same substances used by its athletes directly to the general public.

The Sydney Roosters have already mapped out their contingency plan at the fullback position, with versatile utility back Cody Ramsey ready to step into the starting role if captain James Tedesco is rested for this weekend’s NRL clash against the Melbourne Storm. Tedesco is set to make his emotional return to the State of Origin arena on Wednesday night, suiting up for the New South Wales Blues in his first Origin appearance since the 2024 tournament opener. It remains uncertain whether the veteran fullback will travel straight to Melbourne after the representative fixture to compete in Saturday’s high-stakes round match, leaving coach Trent Robinson with a difficult selection call to make.

Robinson already faces a series of selection headaches ahead of the game. Key spine players Sam Walker and Reece Robson will also feature in Wednesday’s State of Origin clash, adding to questions around their availability for the club fixture. To compound the coach’s challenges, the Roosters are currently dealing with a backline injury crisis, with starting wingers Daniel Tupou and Mark Nawaqanitawase both sidelined with injuries.

For Ramsey, a potential call-up to fullback would cap one of the most inspiring comeback stories of the 2024 NRL season. The outside back made his long-awaited return to the top flight earlier this month after a gruelling, life-disrupting battle with ulcerative colitis that kept him sidelined for months. Since his comeback, Ramsey has featured in three first-grade games on the wing, but he has extensive experience in the fullback position: he has already played 14 NRL fullback games for his former club St George Illawarra Dragons, and spent the entire 2023 NSW Cup season wearing the number 1 jersey for the Dragons’ feeder side.

“I played the whole of last year’s Cup at fullback, and I trained full-time in the position all pre-season,” Ramsey told NewsWire in a recent interview. “It’s genuinely my natural position. I’ve spent a lot of time on the wing in the NRL too, so I’m happy to cover any spot the team needs. I’m more than comfortable sliding into fullback if that’s what the coach requires for the weekend.”

Ramsey noted he has not yet discussed a potential positional switch with Robinson, after the Roosters enjoyed a bye in round 12 and opened match week with a light training session on Sydney’s Bondi Beach on Monday. Even if he does not connect with Tedesco directly after Wednesday’s Origin fixture, Ramsey says he has already learned plenty from the Roosters captain during the pair’s off-season training together over summer.

“I love how Tedesco reads defensive movements as a fullback, and how he approaches different areas of the field,” Ramsey said. “I’ve learned so much about the role from him – especially how to better read developing play, because he’s probably the best in the competition at that skill. All the little tips he’s given me have been incredibly helpful. My biggest strength as a fullback is my ability to run off the back of attacking shapes, and that’s something I’ve always felt confident in. I’ve also improved my passing game drastically since I last held a fullback spot in the NRL. I wasn’t known for my passing before my time out, but over the past year in the Cup I’ve worked really hard to refine that part of my game, especially as a fullback.”

Roosters veteran forward Nat Butcher has thrown his full support behind Ramsey, saying the entire squad is confident he can capably fill Tedesco’s shoes if called upon. “He’s definitely ready for the opportunity,” Butcher said. “All of the boys know how good he is in training. He did the entire pre-season with us, and spent a lot of that time playing against our starting 17 in our training drills. He was a constant headache for our defence every session – we always had to be at our absolute best to contain him, because he’s such a quality player that you can never take him lightly. If he does get the chance to wear the number 1 this weekend, we all have full confidence in him. He’ll do a great job filling Ted’s spot.”

If Ramsey does shift to fullback, the Roosters could recall Billy Smith to fill the vacant wing spot, though both Smith and Tommy Talau are currently listed in the NRL’s official casualty ward, leaving their own availability in question.