World and European indoor gold medallist is keen to share his “experience and enthusiasm” with the squad at the IAAF World Championships

Sprinter Richard Kilty has been voted captain of the Great Britain & Northern Ireland team for the IAAF World Championships taking place in Doha from September 27.

Kilty, who won the world indoor 60m title and European indoor gold medals in 2015 and 2017, received the most votes after every member of the 73-strong British team was given the chance to nominate their choice of captain.

“It feels incredible,” said Kilty, who also recently captained Team Europe at The Match in Minsk. “It’s always a huge honour to represent the British team but to be selected as captain feels amazing. It will definitely go down as a special moment in my athletics career.

“The squad is so talented with many star athletes. A lot of the athletes in the squad have leadership skills and would do an amazing job at being captain so to think that they have voted me in is a huge honour and I’m over the moon with being captain.”

A European gold medallist in the men’s 4x100m relay from 2014 and reigning Commonwealth champion in the event, Kilty won the 200m at the European Team Championships last month and this season has also come within 0.05 of his 20.34 PB set in 2013.

Selected for his fourth successive world championships as part of the world champion men’s 4x100m relay squad, Kilty is the sixth British athlete to have been voted as captain by his fellow athletes and, as part of his role, will deliver the pre-championships captain’s speech at the British team meeting.

“It makes it extra special that my fellow athletes have selected me as their captain,” Kilty added. “I have lots of experience and enthusiasm, which I be sharing with the squad.

“I will bring energy and confidence to everyone around me from the athletes to the team staff. I’ve got a great story to tell and I will try my best to inspire the team every moment from my team speech and on a daily basis over the course of the championships.”

Team leader Neil Black said: “I am extremely happy for Richard that he has been voted as captain of the Great Britain & Northern Ireland team for the IAAF World Championships. Richard is having a brilliant season, running as fast as he ever has, battling to victory at the European Team Championships and, as always, forming an integral part of the men’s 4x100m relay team, which was typified by his performance at the Müller Anniversary Games in July.

“Richard is an inspiration to his team-mates on the track and to so many off it as well, in particular through his work with young people, especially at his home in Teesside. It is no surprise that his peers have voted him as captain of the British team for Doha and I’m looking forward to seeing Richard embrace the roles and responsibilities of being captain from now right through to the end of the championships.”

Find the full GB team for Doha listed here.

Johanna Konta will not play any tournaments in Asia this autumn and so will not be able to qualify for the season-ending WTA Championships.

The British number one has withdrawn from the China Open in Beijing because of "slight knee pain" and did not enter next week's lucrative tournament in Wuhan in China.

She is next expected to play in Moscow in the middle of October.

Konta, 28, is currently 11th in the annual WTA singles race.

The top eight players qualify for the WTA Championships in Shenzhen in China, but the next 11 - plus a wildcard - are eligible to compete in the Elite Trophy.

Konta is still likely to qualify for this event, which is staged in the Chinese city of Zhuhai at the end of October.

George Horne's capacity to cut holes in defences is clear, but it's only when you put his statistics in context that you get an angle on how ruthless the scrum-half can be.

Horne might be Scotland's third-choice scrum-half in Japan, but in other categories he's out on his own.

The younger Horne has scored 22 tries in 42 games for Glasgow, which means he's scored in 52% of the matches he has played in for the Warriors - plenty of them off the bench.

It's a figure that looks impressive at first glance, but it only gets better when you place it alongside the best finishers the club has had in recent times.

Horne is ahead of all others. DTH van der Merwe is the nearest with a try in 48% of his Glasgow games, Tommy Seymour and Niko Matawalu are on 34%, while Stuart Hogg finished his time on 25%.

The scrum-half might only be the size of the leg of a chair (he is 5ft 9ins and 79kg) but he has the kind of stamina and gas that could prove influential in the stifling humidity of the World Cup.

"I try to get the team playing at a high tempo and, to be honest, a lot of those tries don't come from me doing anything special," he says.

"It's the guys making breaks and me just getting on the end of them. I think that ability to track the ball and just get on the inside has counted for 75%-80% of those tries.

"A lot of the credit goes to the guys making the breaks. But, yeah, if there's a gap there I will try and take it."

A debut that left him 'distraught'

His eye for space and his pace off the mark might not be enough to get him ahead of the game management and big-game nous offered by Greig Laidlaw or the frenetic excellence of Ali Price, but Horne is the coming man, no question.

At 24, he has seven international caps and three international tries - two against Argentina last summer and one against Georgia earlier this month.

Again the strike rate is impressive; not quite as prolific as Darcy Graham, Sam Johnson or Blair Kinghorn, but better than everybody else in terms of tries to caps won.

Different players bring different things but his three in seven compares favourably to Laidlaw's four in 73 and Price's four in 27.

This road to Japan began in earnest on the summer tour in 2018, a test of resolve if ever there was one. His debut came against the United States in Houston - and it was a nightmare as Scotland lost.

"The game itself was weird," Horne says. "We got off to a great start then our own mistakes just started killing us.

"I was just distraught. I got my cap presented to me but I was just raging. I was fizzing. I couldn't comprehend what had happened.

"It was always my dream to play for Scotland and to follow in the footsteps of my brother [Peter, who has 43 caps], but it was a pretty bleak couple of days."

'Pete has been a massive influence'

The following week Scotland went to Resistencia in Argentina. Las Vegas, it was not. Scotland were cooped up in a hotel in the sticks. Horror of horrors, the WiFi was patchy.

There was a heavy air about the place that week and for a young guy who had just suffered through his debut it was a challenge.

Gregor Townsend put Horne, and Adam Hastings, straight back into the team for the Test with the Pumas. Within a minute the pair got hold of the match and dominated it.

Horne's talent was not in question but you never find out about a player's mentality until it's tested in weeks like that - and Horne stood up.

"That Argentina game was the best feeling I've ever had in rugby," he says. "I'm hoping to have some better ones in Japan, but that will take a bit of beating.

"Pete has been a massive influence on me. If you ask anyone they'll tell you he's the ultimate professional, so having him to learn from has definitely helped me get to where I am.

"He's had upsets in in his career and he's come through them. He's had injuries, he's had disappointments in games. He's shrugged it all off and bounced back.

"Everything I might go through in the game he's already been through, so it's brilliant to be in the squad with him."

'I don't sulk. I try to make a difference'

The scrum-half has had to battle. Once upon a time he was a 10, but not a highly regarded 10 by those in power.

"The coaches didn't really see me as a stand-off," he recalls. "I think there was this perception that I tried to play for myself, and they just didn't think 10 was for me. I didn't manage the game as well as others."

He always wanted to be a professional player but around the time that his brother was playing - and scoring - for Scotland against Australia in the World Cup quarter-final four years ago, Horne was in an uncertain place, unwanted by the national academy and unsure about where his future lay in the game.

Talent wouldn't have been enough to get him through the traffic at nine - he's had to play his way past Henry Pyrgos and Sam Hidalgo-Clyne. He's needed perseverance, too. Plenty of it.

"I want to start more games. Every player will tell you that," he says.

"I know how it is, though. Greig runs the game exceptionally well and that's something I need to work on. Ali's basic skills of passing and kicking are unbelievable so I need to match the boys in those areas.

"I have a lot to learn but I think I can make an impact. I don't sulk. I come on the field and try to make a difference."

And he does. His scoring rate is extraordinary and it's that cutting edge that gives him a chance of upsetting the natural order in Japan.

The Vancouver Canucks and restricted free-agent forward Brock Boeser have agreed to a three-year contract extension, the team announced Monday.

The deal holds an average annual value of $5.875 million.

"We're very pleased to have Brock re-sign," Vancouver general manager Jim Benning said. "He's a talented player, a key contributor to our offense and an important part of our team's future. We look forward to having Brock join the team in preparation for the upcoming season."

The 22-year-old missed training camp during the weekend as negotiations continued. He posted a photo of himself in a Canucks jersey on Instagram after the deal was announced, with the caption: "Excited to be back, can't wait to get going! See you soon #cominghome."

The Canucks opened their preseason schedule Monday against the Calgary Flames in Victoria and will host the Edmonton Oilers on Tuesday in Vancouver.

Boeser has been the model of consistency since he became a full-time player for the Canucks in 2017-18. He had 29 goals and 26 assists that season, despite being limited to 62 games after a scary-looking collision with the opening of the bench door. He also was named MVP of the All-Star Game in 2018. Last season, he had 26 goals and 30 assists in 69 games.

Boeser and rookie sensation Elias Pettersson form the core of the Canucks forward group as the team rebuilds following the Sedin era.

The 23rd pick in the 2015 draft, Boeser is coming off his entry-level deal that had a cap hit of $925,000.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

For the past decade or so, every single Champions League campaign has begun with a kind of unspoken agreement among everyone watching. We tune into the qualification playoffs as if the fourth-best team from Italy or England could actually make some noise come the knockout rounds. We watch the group stage draw to see who ended up in the Impossible Group and to complain about whatever other group Manchester City inevitably receive. We watch the group stages themselves to figure out whether this was the year Napoli, or Porto, or Arsenal, could finally put a real scare into one of the contenders.

But deep down, we all knew that either Barcelona, Bayern Munich or Real Madrid were going to win and for the most part, and we were right.

In the 10 editions of the tournament before 2018-19, that trio of teams won 80% of the European Cups. Bayern nabbed one, Barca won three and Madrid took home four. Perhaps more incredibly, one of those three teams were in every final and in the years where Bayern, Barca and Madrid didn't win, it required either a historic outlier or a literal volcanic eruption to prevent them from doing so. The title changed each year, but the natural order of things was for either Bayern, or Barcelona, or Real Madrid to be the best team in the world.

However, that all changed last year.

Madrid, the three-time defending champs, got uppercut into outer space by Ajax in the round of 16 while the eventual winners, Liverpool, took out Bayern in the same round and then Barca in the semis. Liverpool's victory marked the first time since 2012 that someone outside of the Bayern-Barca-Madrid triumvirate lifted the European Cup. And the final itself, with Tottenham finishing runner-up, marked the first time that none of the three continental superpowers appeared in the final since 2008, which, coincidentally, was also an all-English matchup between Manchester United and Chelsea.

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Liverpool have now been to back-to-back finals, imposing their own kind of short-term dominance over the world's premier club competition. Except, as they've done so, they've only been the second best back home. Manchester City have established themselves as the best Premier League team of all time and the most consistent club in the world right now. If Liverpool are the best team in Europe, then City are the best team on the planet, which raises the question: How many teams realistically have a shot at the Champions League this season?

Europe's old Big Three is dead. The only one preventing Liverpool and City from turning it into a Big Two is the greatest soccer player we've ever seen. This season, City will win their first title, Lionel Messi will snag his fifth Champions League trophy or Liverpool will take home their second European Cup in a row.

Here's why anything else will be a surprise.

Just how good are Man City? On the one hand, it's hard to say. They've put together the two highest point totals in English soccer history in consecutive seasons, but they've also been dumped out of the Champions League in the quarterfinals in consecutive seasons, losing both times to English sides they dominated domestically that same year. On the other hand, it's not that hard: stunning loss to Norwich aside, they're freaking great.

According to data from the website Sports Odds History that goes back to 2010, the only teams who were bigger favorites to win the Champions League at this point in the season were Pep Guardiola's Barcelona teams, Tito Vilanova's Barcelona team that had 100 points in La Liga and Luis Enrique's Barcelona teams with Messi, Luis Suarez and Neymar. (City's current odds are +320, which is an implied probability of about 24%.)

In other words, people with actual money on the line have as much faith in City as they did in a handful of the best teams of the sport's modern era.

If Guardiola has turned City into the new Barcelona, then Liverpool and Barcelona are the, uh, new Real Madrid and Bayern Munich. According to the same data from Sports Odds History, the collective odds of this year's top three (City, Liverpool and Barcelona) are roughly the same as they were for the peak Barca-Bayern-Madrid seasons. In fact, Liverpool's and Barcelona's odds of winning it all this season (both +550, or around 15%) are the same as they were for Madrid in 2013-14 and Barcelona the following year. Spoiler: Both of those teams won the Champions League.

The lasting memory of the Liverpool-Barcelona matchup in last season's semis is, of course, the fact that Liverpool won the second leg 4-0 to win the tie 4-3. It marked the second year in a row that Barcelona had blown a massive second-leg lead and it seemed to suggest that there was something intangibly right with Liverpool -- a team capable of an incredible, emotional collective comeback -- and something intangibly wrong with Barcelona -- why couldn't they just, you know, not give up four goals?

In reality, the totality of the two legs suggested that the teams were pretty much even. Liverpool were unfortunate to lose the first game by three and Barca were unfortunate to lose the second one by four: neither performance was as lopsided as the scoreline looked. If Ousmane Dembele doesn't miss a tap-in at the end of the first game, or if Alisson doesn't make a number of key saves at Anfield, the conversation around both teams is very different. These are tiny margins.

As their volatile early-season performances in La Liga have suggested, Barcelona's place within this top three is almost totally dependent on the presence of Messi. He hasn't played a game yet this season and isn't expected to be fit for Barca's European opener against Borussia Dortmund this week. In his absence, Barcelona have blown out Valencia and Real Betis, but they've also drawn Osasuna and lost to Athletic Bilbao.

While Messi has aged into his 30s, the team has improbably become more reliant on their Argentinean superstar. And in Europe, that's fine. In the Champions League knockout stages, tactics and systems often go out the window and games get decided by individual moments. The best way to exploit that systemic difference? Employ the best individual player there ever was. Messi shattered Europe's best defense in the first leg of the Liverpool tie and created more than enough high-quality chances to put the second leg out of reach. As long as he's still playing and is still impervious to the progression of time, Barcelona will remain among the favorites.

As for Liverpool, their success seems a little less fragile. Since the start of 2018, they've given up the fewest goals per game in domestic play (0.67) of any team in Europe's Big Five leagues. They've also scored the fifth-most goals per game (2.33). City, who are third in goals scored (2.60) and third in goals allowed (0.70), are the only other team with an attack and a defense in the top five.

Thanks to savvy player acquisition and manager Jurgen Klopp, who actively makes his players better, they've built a squad with top-end talent everywhere except the midfield. There's not one injury that would really torpedo their chances of a seventh European Cup. The loss of Virgil van Dijk would certainly complicate things, but they'd still be left with the electric front three of Mohamed Salah, Roberto Firmino, and Sadio Mane, elite set-piece execution, a world-class goalkeeper and perhaps the best fullback pairing in Europe.

If you're wondering why the defending champs -- who finished second the year before, just rattled off 97 points in the Premier League and are currently five-for-five in the 2019-20 campaign -- aren't the favorites, here's why: They ran quite hot last season, racking up a goal differential of plus-67 on an expected-goals total of plus-45.3. Despite just one point separating the two teams in the table, City's underlying performances were significantly better.

In fact, City became the first team to reach 100 points in a Premier League season and their xG differential actually improved the following season. While City have spent billions in the transfer market, none of the moves break into the top 20 most expensive injuries of all time. Instead, they've shared the wealth and now have a squad filled with multiple world-class players at just about every position. Kevin de Bruyne can miss almost a full year, and they don't even miss a beat.

The paths for City, Barcelona and Liverpool to win it all are pretty clear. For City: keep playing how you've been playing and stop missing penalties and/or getting undone by VAR. For Barcelona: keep Messi healthy and don't give into a historic capitulation for the third year in a row. For Liverpool: do exactly what you guys did last year.

For every other team, the stories are a bit more complicated.

Bayern Munich, Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid, Juventus and Paris Saint-Germain all have worse odds to win it all than they did at this point last year. Bayern, who have the second-best goal differential after City since the start of 2018, seem like the team best-positioned to turn that top three into a top four, but they got thumped at home by Liverpool last year, so they remain a question until they actually take down one of the elite teams.

Madrid remain totally unpredictable in Zinedine Zidane's second term; we'll see if the Champions League magic still exists this time around. For Atletico, Diego Simeone's strategy against the top teams is to just turn the matches into a coin flip. Juventus have one of the oldest rosters in the world, and they've been less-than-dominant for all of 2019. PSG have most of the talent in the world, but come on. Until they sort out the Neymar situation and actually advance beyond the round of 16, projecting them to win the Champions League will require a breadth of imagination that I personally do not possess.

Sure, all of these teams could become the European champs, but none of them are likely to. Instead, it's probably going to be City, it might be Liverpool and it could be Barcelona. This isn't to say that they're all going to go deep into the competition. In fact, one of the three will probably get upset early on in the knockout stages; that's just the nature of two-legged, knockout soccer. But as the past 10 years have shown, the problem with getting by one of the favorites is that you still have to outlast the other two.