What's up? The tallest Chinese basketball story ever, that's what

"This is the biggest sports story in the world," the Houston Rockets owner Leslie Alexander claimed grandly last week as the 7ft 5in, 20st 2lb Chinese basketball star Yao Ming prepared to make his NBA debut. "There are two billion Asian people in the world and in two years Yao will be bigger than Michael [Jordan] and Tiger [Woods]. He's going to be the No1 icon in the world."

The Rockets have given the 22-year-old rookie an $18m (£11.5m) contract and a lavish house which also accommodates his 6ft 7in father and 6ft 3in mother. They have ordered a 9ft bed and the largest bicycle yet seen in Houston - as well as a new Rockets song, Yao Ming! Yao Ming!, which approximates the beat of a Chinese march.

Yao failed to score a point on his debut in a 91-82 defeat to the Indiana Pacers. He will improve. Apart from being hailed by Allen Iverson, the NBA's usually truculent homeboy, as "a gift from God", he now understands the chorus of "What's Up?" that starts every NBA day. During his first anxious weeks in Houston he had confused all the "Wazz-ups?" with a sound which, he says, "is like a common profanity in Mandarin".

· South Africa's first black showjumper, 57-year-old Enos Mafokate, has slightly cooler credentials than most of his international contemporaries. Apart from the fact that his son Arthur is one of the biggest stars in township pop music, or kwaito, Mafokate tells a gritty story about his showjumping start.

After he successfully defended his South African Derby title last month, he remembered "the wall of apartheid which made me want to prove a point to those who thought show-jumping was a white man's sport". He had a young white friend "who would let me ride his pony. His father always beat me up when he found out, but I didn't stop."

Mofokate, however, is still a sucker for the more traditional horsey set. "I met Queen Elizabeth in 1984," he gushes. "She was watching Prince Charles play polo. What a lady."

· Having disposed of his bitterest rival, "Ferocious" Fernando Vargas, in a brilliant and brutal display, Oscar de la Hoya is now attempting to woo another old enemy. Boxing's Golden Boy believes his courting of the retired Felix Trinidad has finally worked. "Felix has accepted my invitation for a dinner date, which I take as a very good sign," Oscar beams.

Since De la Hoya is ridiculed in Latino fight circles for his lack of machismo, this latest and almost flirtatious little foray will confuse some of those hardcore aficionados who had just begun to admit he can really fight.

Of course he is motivated by a desire to pick up a multimillion-dollar purse for a Trinidad rematch and avoid a less lucrative fight against the awkward Vernon Forrest, but at least he is willing to risk his reputation against the hard-hitting Puerto Rican.

Three years ago, although the decision was patently wrong, Trinidad inflicted De la Hoya's first defeat. Trinidad's wife's grandparents have now intervened on De la Hoya's behalf and persuaded Trinidad to answer the Golden Boy's repeated calls. "I don't want to pressure him," De la Hoya insists like a typically nervous suitor. "It's just going to be a quiet dinner. But I'd love it if Felix agrees to take things further. I'd be very excited. This, after all, is boxing."