Word had it early last week that Tiger Woods' people requested permission to have armed guards protect their man during the British Open at Troon, presumably so that they could shoot any over-eager autograph hunters. "Guffaw, guffaw, you're not in America now young Tiger," was the gist of the response from Royal and Ancient secretary Michael Bonallack. However, having witnessed the problems competitors encountered with spectators during Saturday's 13th stage of the Tour de France - the nightmarish ascent to the peak of L'Alpe d'Huez - these lads should be given permission to mount Uzi sub-machine guns on their handle-bars. "This nutcase here, I hope that motorcycle runs him down," said irritated Eurosport commentator David Duffield as we watched a big eejit of a spectator jogging alongside Marco Pantani, patting him on the back, attempting to have a chat, as the Italian neared the end of his five-hour, 120 mile-long climb up the side of several picturesque peaks. "That's just incredible David, you'd think people would have a little more sense," sighed co-commentator Stephen Roche.

But sense was in short supply on that mountain on Saturday, where an estimated 500,000 people lined the narrow route all the way to the top. As Pantani and his pursuers tried to swallow the little oxygen that was available to their lungs during the ascent, they had to contend with back-slapping, head-patting, cries of "ya-boy-ya" in 37 different languages and cycle around the countless flags and banners held out on front of them.

Then there was the inebriated chap (dressed up, for some peculiar reason, as a Red Indian) who ran so close to Pantani that the Italian had to push him away. "This is very dangerous, he may well have been drinking since very early morning and have slow reactions," commented Channel Four's Paul Sherwin, understating the absolutely obvious.

Having fended off the Red Indian, poor, old, dehydrated Pantani then had to resist the temptation of drinking the water thrown at him by members of the crowd. "You very rarely see riders drink from bottles given to them by spectators on the mountains," explained Sherwin. "Because quite often the water is taken from nearby streams - that's why many of the riders who do drink the water end up with intestinal problems." Uggggh.

So, if proof were needed, it's the Tour de France riders who need armed protection a whole lot more than Tiger Woods. As it turned out, the spectators at Troon were more of a help than a hindrance to Tiger - one even helped him pick up a birdie at the seventh hole on Saturday when he seemed destined to drop a shot. Five-year-old Vanessa Black, from nearby Prestwick (where all those planes that drowned out most of the words of the BBC commentary team came from) was minding her own business, standing at the side of the fairway, wondering was "This the place Daddy disappeared to every weekend," when all of a sudden: gadunk. Just as Tony Cascarino nodded on all those Packie Bonner goal-kicks during his career, Vanessa's glancing header sent Tiger's sliced drive back on to the fairway, lining him up for a birdie. Depending on which report you heard, Vanessa sustained a "graze on the side of her head" (the BBC), a "swollen jaw" (ITV), "massive facial injuries which means she may never see/walk/hop/skip or hear a Spice Girls' record again" (Sky News), all of which left her mother none too pleased.

"I was disappointed Tiger didn't apologise or say anything to us, but he has his job to do I suppose. It's such a shame that it ruined our day and now we're in two minds whether to go back," she said, perhaps feeling it's the spectators who need protection from Tiger's wayward drives. A graze on the side of the head was a whole lot more than Naseem Hamed suffered during his brief fight against Juan Cabrera, former butcher and cobbler (we were never told why he swapped butchering for cobbling), on Saturday night. The Argentinian, who had never fought outside his country before, was brought in at seven days' notice to fight Hamed, and not even Sky Sports could summon up the nerve to hype this one.

"Often these entrances last longer than the fight," said commentator Ian Darke as Hamed made a typically modest entry to Wembley Arena. He was right. The entrance lasted seven minutes; the fight was over in five.

Cabrera had entered the arena to the strains of Don't Cry For Me Argentina and loud boos - we half expected pictures of a sinking Belgrano to be flashed up on the screen just to whip the crowd into a bigger frenzy. Hamed came out decked in Adidas gear from head to toe ("respect to Adidas and Allah" he is now heard to say - in that order - after each fight); Cabrera's sponsor? Nike? Puma? Nope: Autoservicio - Super Fram's, presumably the Argentinian equivalent of Super Frank's Car Servicing on the Long Mile Road. "Totally, totally one-sided, embarrassingly so in fact," said Darke at the end of the "fight", but then he could have been talking about every one of Hamed's recent bouts.

Paul Dempsey, our host for the evening, is usually the master of hype, but on this occasion his only selling point for the fight was, amusingly enough, the fact that it was going to be Hamed's live debut on ABC, one of America's terrestrial channels. Terrestrial? A dirty word, that, in the Sky corridors.

"Another promise fulfilled by Prince Naseem Hamed. This performance was watched coast to coast, live on terrestrial television in America, and I think the message is getting out . . . that this is a very special boxing commodity," he said at the end of the evening. Mmm. Was this an admission on Paul's part that the message only gets out when a boxer appears on free television? But forget Tiger and Prince Naseem, the biggest sporting story of the week was revealed on Sky Sports' Soccer AM on Saturday morning. In the review of the week's papers, football writer Ivor Baddiel told us of the Sun's exclusive, under the heading: "Vinnie Jones, the FBI and the Versace murder". Oh my God, what's Vinnie done now?

"Apparently Vinnie was filming on the steps of the Versace mansion in Miami 10 days before the murder, making a film about his favourite places, and the FBI are hoping he may have caught the killer on film," explained Baddiel. "But," gulp, "is Vinnie a suspect," we wondered? "Na, I wouldn't have thought of Vinnie as a Versace man, more an Armani guy," said Baddiel, putting the minds of all Wimbledon fans (Vic and Sam) at ease. Phew.