When the Minnesota head coach, Dennis Green, handed him the job, there was a marked lack of nervousness, more an expectation of success.”I’ve never been one to doubt myself You have to be confident and cocky,” he said. “I don’t see why a first-time starter can’t set the world on fire.”"When things get rough, he’s able to maintain his composure,” said the team’s offensive co-ordinator, Sherman Lewis. “I’ve never seen anybody at this stage in his career be as poised and mature as he is He’s getting better and better. It’s exciting to be around him.” Culpepper will need all his poise tonight against the feared New Orleans defence. The Vikings went into the play-offs losing their last three games of the regular season. Worse, Culpepper sprained an ankle in the defeat to Green Bay, further aggravating the injury a week later against Indianapolis.”With this type of injury, they say you’re out for a long time, but I’ve always been a fast healer,” said Culpepper, his self-belief unimpaired “I’m moving around pretty good It’s a lot better than I thought it would be.

I think I’ll be 100 per cent come Saturday.” If he is, expect the Vikings to move a step closer to the Super Bowl Either way, Culpepper is clearly destined for greatness Theismann’s assessment has long been proved wrong. Instead, it is the Minnesota wide receiver Cris Carter who appears the visionary.Carter, a 14-year-veteran who is one of only two players ever to have caught 1,000 career passes, watched his young charge during training camp and offered a very different assessment “Right now, Daunte thinks he’s a bird,” he observed. “But when they push him out of the nest, I’ll be there to catch him, and it won’t be long before he realises he’s an eagle.”. Dodging icebergs and enduring bitter cold, Ellen MacArthur finally overtook her great rival Roland Jourdain on the 56th day of the Vendée Globe race yesterday. Dodging icebergs and enduring bitter cold, Ellen MacArthur finally overtook her great rival Roland Jourdain on the 56th day of the Vendée Globe race yesterday.
As her advantage stretched to 11 miles she reported: “When the third, fourth, fifth and sixth icebergs all appeared in a line with just a mile between them I began to be bewildered at their frequency.”She chose to change direction from South-East to North-East, threading her way between the fifth and sixth “only to see the seventh and eighth, the seventh being the most enormous of all”.After MacArthur passed the 10th iceberg, she “stayed up there for half an hour, freezing cold, but with my eyes glued to the water for growlers” – bits which break off degrading icebergs and float just below the surface. In a collision, they can rip through the hull of a yacht.MacArthur is now guiding her Open 60 north in pursuit of the race leader, Michel Desjoyeaux, who has problems of his own. With no main generator, he is having to conserve electricity to run his navigation equipment and so is forced to helm as much as possible, instead of using auto-pilot.He is 139 miles ahead of MacArthur as this trio leads the fleet of 18 and heads across that most desolate stretch of Southern Ocean south of New Zealand on the way to Cape Horn, 2200 miles away.Further problems have also struck Team Legato and its skipper Tony Bullimore.

Delayed by 18 and a half hours after the start of The Race, a non-stop event for giant catamarans which left Barcelona on New Year’s Eve, he had been making good progress towards the Straits of Gibraltar.Now he is being forced to stop at The Rock for 48 hours after the £6,000 custom-built headboard of his main sail cracked in two. A replacement is being flown from Denmark.”That was an expensive piece of kit and it shouldn’t have happened,” said Bullimore yesterday as he sailed the 200 miles to Gibraltar with “a cobbled together system”.Already in Gibraltar is Steve Fosset’s PlayStation, waiting to exchange its sails after the race-choice Cuban fibre ones failed. Joining them is the Polish yacht, Warta Polpharma, skippered by Roman Paszke. Its communications are being mended by suppliers.Racing down the Atlantic, Grant Dalton in Club Med reduced the gap on the leader, Cam Lewis’s Team Adventure, to five miles, although both were going slowly in light airs..