Outside Edge

There will be some fancy footwear on show this morning in the London Marathon, but entrants would be better off running in cheap plimsolls according to Dr Bernard Marti, a Swiss preventative-medicine specialist. He surveyed 4,358 runners and found that those who ran in shoes costing £65 or more were 123 per cent more likely to suffer injuries than those shod in flimsier, under-£30 shoes. Too much cushioning is dangerous, it seems. But Valerik Kashkin, a clown in the Moscow State Circus, probably wished he had more when he fell off a high-wire in Liverpool last week and broke a bone in his foot. He has now been banned from wearing his size-18 clown's shoes "on health and safety grounds". No word yet whether he will be forced to have his exploding car MOT'd as well.

10pm

Not Laura Robson's bedtime but the time play will stop at Wimbledon now that a roof is in place over Centre Court.

Spot the ball competitions of the week

No sooner did we mention in these pages that the Corinthians amateur football team disdained to score from penalties, on the grounds that no gentleman would commit a deliberate foul, than word reached us of the Rapid Bucharest midfielder Costin Lazar, who recently refused to take a penalty awarded after he had tumbled in the box. He insisted he had been fairly tackled, and persuaded the referee to reverse his decision. Fortunately for him, Rapid still won 4-0. For keepy-uppy rather than fally-downy, visit London's Covent Garden on Thursday, when freestyle footballer Dan Magness will attempt to set a world record by juggling a ball non-stop for 24 hours. That will take around 250,000 touches, roughly the same number of times Cristiano Ronaldo has fallen unassisted in the penalty area to set his own world record.

Good week for

Seb Coe after a three-day IOC visit confirmed the London Olympics are "on time and budget"... Brad Wierzbicki, whose last-gasp three-pointer helped Leicester Riders reach the BBL finals... Pamela Cookey, netball's player of the year after captaining Team Bath to 18 wins out of 18... and England's women footballers, beat Norway 3-0 in European Championship warm-up.

Bad week for

Southampton FC, relegated to League One having been deducted 10 points after their parent company went into administration... the British Grand Prix at Donington, under threat once again... and six-time world snooker champion Steve Davis, knocked out in the snooker World Championship's first round, losing 10-2 to Neil Robertson.

Little house on the prairie of the week

Golf club membership is apparently declining rapidly in these recessionary times, but business was curiously brisk at Prairie Village, Kansas, until recently. But then police arrested two women, Karen Rutherford, 32, and Michelle Segal, 27, who had attended a number of events at the club in order to recruit clients for their brothel across the street. Titter away about shafts and swinging if you really must, but please, no jokes combining the words Prairie and dogs. It's not clever, it's not funny.

a.tong@independent.co.uk