Getty Images31 minutes agoUFC president Dana White says he cannot stop Jon Jones from retiring, despite the American having “agreed” to fight Tom Aspinall.White was responding to the social media activity of the UFC heavyweight champion, who suggested he was retired before calling out ex-UFC fighter Francis Ngannou.Speaking at the UFC 316 post-fight news conference, White said 37-year-old Jones had said nothing about retiring to him and that he was only interested in matching him with Aspinall.”Tom Aspinall is the guy. If the guy wants to retire and doesn’t want to fight, there’s nothing you can do,” White said.”I didn’t want Khabib [Nurmagomedov] to retire, I thought [Daniel Cormier] should’ve stayed in it longer, so it’s none of my business.”I’ll do what I can to make the fight, if we can, if he’s talking that crazy, I didn’t realise that.”With Ngannou fuelling speculation he might be open to a return to the UFC, White played down the chances even if it was to fight Jones.”It’s Aspinall’s fight,” White said.Aspinall, 32, has been the interim champion for 18 months and has publicly said he believes Jones is retired.White has been insisting since last November, when Jones last fought, the bout with Aspinall would happen next and clarified that – while Jones had agreed to the fight – he had not signed a contract.”John agreed to fight Tom,” he said.”Jon Jones agreed to do the fight. Jon Jones was offered the deal and accepted the deal.”What information do we collect from this quiz?Related topicsMixed Martial Arts

Lorena Wiebes wins the fourth and final stage of the Women’s Tour of Britain in Glasgow, with Ally Wollaston sealing overall victory by finishing third and taking bonus seconds to push overnight leader Britain’s Cat Ferguson into second place.WATCH MORE: Ferguson takes Tour of Britain lead with brilliant stage winAvailable to UK users only.

Rex FeaturesGemma StevensonBBC Radio Cambridgeshire at Roland Garros7 minutes agoAlfie Hewett says he is “extremely disappointed” with French Open organisers after his wheelchair singles final was moved to a different court less than an hour before the start “without really consulting the players”.The Norfolk player’s match against Tokito Oda on Saturday, which he lost 6-4 7-6 (8-6), was switched from Court 14 to being straight after the women’s wheelchair final on Suzanne Lenglen. They were only given about 35 minutes to prepare after being informed of the change at just past midday.”I understand the reasoning behind it because of the changeable weather this week but I think they could have communicated that the night before – like given us a heads-up and said ‘if this quads match goes on longer than the women’s final then you boys will be on Lenglen, if it doesn’t happen then you will stay on Court 14’,” he said. “None of that communication was had the night before, or even in the morning.”The BBC have approached Roland Garros and the International Tennis Federation for comment.As the wheelchair draw progressed there was a lot of discussion around the scheduling and last-minute changes, with different courts offering varied conditions for the players.”It’s a completely different environment,” said Hewett, who won his sixth consecutive Roland Garros doubles title with partner and fellow Brit Gordon Reid, and who – by also finishing with runners-up honours in the singles – improved on his 2024 performance at Roland Garros.”Gordy [Gordon Reid] was saying it when we were playing doubles. The ball was slower, the balls pick up more clay because there is more clay on those courts.”On the outdoor courts it’s slightly livelier, it’s slightly bouncier, there’s shorter back runs. It completely changes the tactical game of the match and usually you know that you’re going to be playing on a show court, so you practice on that court beforehand.”As elite-level athletes who are competing for the top prizes in tennis, a lot of thought goes into pre-match preparations for the wheelchair players – not just at the Grand Slams but every week they compete on tour.”I’m not one to come out here and criticise tournaments often because I know we are as players, and I am, incredibly grateful to be at events like this, to be celebrating wheelchair tennis and showcasing it on a big stage but what happened today was unacceptable,” said Hewett.”There are standards I believe that have got to be set and you know as players we weren’t listened to, we weren’t heard. “We tried to ask for the court to be pushed back, but unfortunately the priority was for fans to watch the women’s final on a screen rather than giving the wheelchair players more time to warm-up and prepare for a Grand Slam singles final.”This isn’t me making excuses for my performance, Tokito was in exactly the same boat as me. I’m very happy with the way I performed actually. “This is more about the players and our welfare, and actually treating us like professionals, because I can guarantee there’s no way Jannik Sinner or [Novak] Djokovic would get told ‘sorry you can’t have a proper practice, you’ve got to go on court in 30 minutes’.”He added: “You put everything on the line for these matches. It’s not the reason why I lost the singles final – Tokito was the better player in the bigger moments – but these are the things that people higher up have got to take into consideration – and which I know they are taking into consideration with the other players.”They didn’t take that into consideration with us and I feel really disappointed in that.”Related topicsTennisDisability Sport

Getty ImagesDan RoanSports editor@danroan46 minutes agoA “troubling decline” in the number of hours England’s secondary school pupils spend doing physical education (PE) “should be a wake-up call to society”, according to children’s exercise charity the Youth Sport Trust (YST).The organisation says figures show “nearly 4,000 PE hours lost in the last year alone” in state-funded schools, and calls for “urgent action to protect and prioritise” the subject.The YST also claims that since the London 2012 Olympics “almost 45,000 PE hours have disappeared from secondary school timetables”, and that the number of PE teachers in England has also dropped by 7%.In response, the government said it is “determined to break down barriers to accessing PE and school sports for young people”.In its annual report, the YST says that 2.2 million children in England are now doing less than 30 minutes of activity a day, and less than half (48%) are meeting the UK’s Chief Medical Officers’ recommendation of at least 60 minutes of physical activity a day.It says the steepest decline has hit 11-14-year-olds, with more than 2,800 hours cut and 347 teachers lost for this age group in the past year, at a time of rising childhood obesity rates.YST also adds that girls, children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), and those from disadvantaged backgrounds “continue to face the greatest barriers to being active”.However, the study also found that 93% of young people believe PE is important, 71% want to be more active at school, and 96% of teachers agree that sport and play benefit mental wellbeing.’We risk failing a generation’While PE is a mandatory subject in schools, the recommended amount of two hours a week is not enforced.YST chief executive Ali Oliver said: “Our children are moving less, feeling unhappier, and losing access to the transformative power of PE, contributing to stagnant physical activity levels.”The fall in PE hours is sadly an exacerbation of a longer-term trend and should be a wake-up call to society, from policymakers to schools and parents.”Unless we take action to reverse these damaging trends and increase activity levels to improve wellbeing, we risk failing a generation.”In a statement, the government said: “These figures highlight the government’s dire inheritance, but we’re determined to break down barriers to accessing PE and school sports for young people through our Plan for Change, helping to improve their mental and physical wellbeing.”We are working across the government and with our partners including Youth Sport Trust and Sport England to boost participation and have already invested £100m to upgrade sports facilities and launched a programme to improve access to sports for pupils with special education needs and disabilities.”Our ongoing curriculum and assessment review seeks to deliver a broader curriculum, so that children do not miss out on subjects including PE and sport.”

SNSAlasdair LamontBBC Sport Scotland Commentator2 hours ago”I had a feeling, a bad feeling, after the League Cup final.”The passing of four months has afforded Philippe Clement time to reflect on his turbulent 16-month reign as Rangers manager.Distance from Glasgow, and the febrile environment in which he became engulfed, has allowed him to pinpoint one particular game that he believes marked the beginning of the end of his time in charge at Ibrox.Mid-December 2024. Pressure is building. Rangers are nine points behind Celtic. Only a series of good Europa League results are keeping the dogs at bay.Just three days before the season’s first domestic silverware is awarded, Clement’s side earn another of those in a creditable 1-1 draw with Tottenham Hotspur.Then to Hampden, with Celtic heavy favourites to wrest back the League Cup.Rangers, however, go toe-to-toe with them and are denied a spot-kick before losing on penalties following a 3-3 draw. “I think it was a vital game,” Clement tells BBC Sport Scotland. “If we had won, there would have been more patience with the fans also and the board could have stayed much calmer.”But Rangers did not and Clement endured a winter of highs and lows before being relieved of his duties following an abject defeat by St Mirren at Ibrox in February.In the week that Russell Martin was appointed his full-time successor, the Belgian talks to BBC Sport Scotland about cutting costs, recruitment, mentality and the players he left behind. ‘It’s pity board didn’t have patience’Every manager wants patience – and few get it. But Clement arguably got more than predecessors Michael Beale and Giovanni van Bronckhorst. After all, neither of them suffered the ignominy of a Scottish Cup home defeat by second-tier Queen’s Park.Protesting that his squad needed time to develop and grow became a regular refrain of Clement’s and the passing of time has not changed his view on that. “It’s a pity that the story stopped, that the board didn’t have the patience, or maybe listened too much to some fans,” he says.”There are other clubs where there is a difficult moment and everybody sticks together because everybody knows the story, how the work is done inside the building, and they continue and they are successful afterwards.”In three or four windows, we could have closed the gap [to Celtic] with a good development of players, but the decision is made and you need to accept it.”As Rangers tried to assuage swingeing losses, Clement’s task was to usurp Celtic but with a diminishing budget. Was he initially misled about what funds might be available to him?”No, not misled, but I understand now why,” he says. “Because some people were already thinking about selling the club and selling their stocks.”I think you need to go back to one year ago. The story was that the club was not financially sustainable anymore, so that was the story of the transfer window.”Clement says he and the recruitment team were told they could spend whatever money the club were able to recoup in player sales and from cutting salary spend. But, despite taking “more than 35%” from the wage bill, an ageing squad, contracts expiring, and a lack of attractive young talent, meant the yield proved meagre. “You gain money by bringing young players in, making them better and selling them,” Clement says. “That was the idea. There was not another road to take. “In the end, it’s about deciding if the idea we had was working. You need patience to build it or you need to spend money. It’s one of the two. “Without one of the two, it’s an impossible job.”To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.This video can not be played’Squad was not ready to be consistent’It had all started so well. Rangers were seven points behind Celtic when Michael Beale lost his job at the end of September 2023. But from Clement taking over until the end of February, their only league loss came at Celtic Park. That run ended with the Ibrox side two clear at the top.Things began to go awry soon after, though. A home defeat by Motherwell. A first-ever loss to Ross County. Then a draw at Dundee. Celtic never looked back after that as Rangers’ mentality and inability to break teams down began to be questioned.”I don’t agree with that,” Clement says of the latter criticism. “In moments, it was really good, but in moments not.”It’s more a story about consistency, about having the demand – physically and mentally – to be ready for that every three days.”In the end, the squad was not ready. There were too many players who had never done this before.”Clement also bridles at suggestion mentality was an issue. Mentioning the slip-ups against County and Dundee, he points out that “two players who were not good in those games” left at the end of the season and were perhaps distracted by discussions with other clubs at the time.”It was never about not wanting to win, not wanting to work,” he adds. “For sure, they wanted to become champions and they wanted to give everything.”‘Four or five players could be sold’Rangers were unable to mount a similar challenge this season, with Clement leaving them 13 points adrift in the Premiership and out of the Scottish Cup.Interim head coach Barry Ferguson did take the Ibrox side a round further in the Europa League, but they ended the season without a trophy.Regardless, Clement believes Rangers are now better placed to succeed because of the signings made during his tenure and the development of those players.”Nicolas Raskin made a really good evolution,” he says. “A lot of clubs are interested in him. But you also have Jefte, Hamza Igamane, Clinton Nsiala, who will have a better value. Mohamed Diomande is also one of those guys. “The club has worked well the past year in that way. There are now four or five players with the value to sell and several teams would pay good amounts of money.”The club needs to build with that, or the new owners have to say ‘we don’t do it that way now because we have enough money’.”Rangers fans – have your sayWhat do you make of Clement’s comments, Rangers fans?Was the League Cup final decisive? Should the board have shown more patience? Do the club have four or five sellable assets?Let us know hereRelated topicsScottish PremiershipRangersScottish FootballFootball

Paddle UK47 minutes agoGreat Britain’s Adam Burgess claimed a first C1 World Cup silver since 2019 after a “pretty special” run in the heats.The 32-year-old saw off competition from Olympic champion Nicolas Gestin to finish in second, behind Slovenia’s Luka Bozic.Burgess produced a stunning run during the heats in north-east Spain to move to the top of the standings. The Stoke-born paddler was last to compete in the finals, but produced a penalty-free run to the start the season in emphatic fashion. Burgess won Olympic silver in the individual canoe at the Paris Games, having agonisingly missed out on a medal by 0.16 seconds in Tokyo in 2020.”I’m always there or thereabouts, and we have done a lot of work to try and bring out those runs in the final, and I guess today, my worst run was the final, but that heat was something pretty special,” said Burgess. “It was great to come close to it again there.”Related topicsCanoeing