Outside Edge: Young, tall, fast and very sharp

Everyone is still kicking up a fuss about the eight-year-olds fighting in a cage in Preston but as taekwondo's Jade Jones says in these pages it's quite normal to start martial arts at an early age (if not in front of a load of braying drunks).

There seem to be far more dangerous activities that can keep the kids amused. Stella Noble has become the youngest person to climb the 14,259ft Diamond at Long's Peak in the Rocky Mountains at the age of nine. It took her 12 hours to clamber up the sheer east face with her father and come back down again.

Belle Wheeler of Wellingborough, Northamptonshire qualified for the national drag-racing finals at Santa Pod one day after her eighth birthday, when she passed her test.

And Kane Luter of Taunton has joined the Steve Brown Darts Academy in Bristol at the age of three, even if he can't add up yet. He stands just 3ft 3in tall and is perhaps more of a danger to others than he is to himself.

8.93m

Distance achieved by Lutz Eichholz in Tel Aviv to break the world record for unicycling along the necks of a line of beer bottles, beating the previous best which he set earlier this year, 7.99m.

The 25-year-old from Germany rode down a row of 127 bottles; we assume he didn't drink them all first.

Bath stripped of all their dignity

There were plenty of early baths to run in the FA Youth Cup when Bath City took on Newport County, with five Bath players and their manager being sent off in a 6-0 defeat. It all kicked off when referee Darren Adie enforced the rule that players' underpants should be the same colour as their shorts and told two Bath players to go and change their cycling shorts in front of a crowd of 200. Newport opened the scoring while they were disrobing, which prompted angry exchanges that led to four players, a substitute and coach Billy Clark being dismissed.

Meanwhile Barcelona's players are steaming about their new strip, which retains all their sweat. They weighed their shirts before a match and at half-time and found they were two and a half times heavier. Ironically, they are made of recycled plastic water bottles. A load of drips, if you ask us.

Good week

Gareth Thomas, the Crusaders rugby league player, has had a range of shoes made in his honour by designer Christian Louboutin, known as Alfie flat sneakers and costing upwards of £580.

Andrew Henderson, a 19-year-old from Truro in Cornwall, won the World Freestyle Football Championships (or keepy-uppy) in Kuala Lumpur.

Greg Hancock of California became the oldest ever speedway world champion at the age of 41 at the Croatia Grand Prix, 14 years after he first won the title.

Bad week

Inmates at Parc Prison in South Wales are threatening to sue the Government for breaching their human rights because their TVs only receive Sky Sports 1, not 2 and 3, so that they miss some Premier League matches.

Pipe band drum majors at the Cowal Highland Gathering in Dunoon were banned from tossing their maces in the air because of concerns about health and safety.

David de Gea, the Manchester United goalkeeper, was allegedly caught eating a £1.19 Krispy Kreme doughnut without paying for it at a Tesco supermarket in Altrincham.

There's surveys as far as the eye can see

It's been a big week for surveys. The University of Portsmouth is publishing a study of the "science of breast movement" in a bid to discover the perfect design for a sports bra. It sounds like one of the more interesting research projects, and no doubt they raise a couple of valid points.

The alternative Nobel prizes, known as the "Ig Nobels", awarded their physics category to Philippe Perrin for his treatise on why discus throwers get dizzy while hammer throwers do not, though he may have found himself going around in circles with that one.

And the Chinese have published a report into the culture of cheating prevalent among sportsmen in their country. It describes how, at the Ethnic Minority Games in 2006, a male team wore wigs in their attempt to win the women's dragon boat race. They were spotted before the contest began, perhaps because they didn't have a fitness conditioner.

The rug was certainly pulled out from under their feet. Toupee, touché.