Poor Mick Schumacher – even his Wikipedia page can’t help itself. The first entry under his name reads: Not to be confused with Michael Schumacher. Which is a big ask when he’s your dad, and you’re about to have your maiden test drive for Ferrari. Mick was born 20 years ago this month, when his dad was still in the process of turning the Prancing Horse back into a title-winning prospect. In fact, only two weeks before the birth of his second child, his father Michael – with just the two world championships to his name back then – had watched his own little brother, Ralf, take third place in the opening grand prix in Australia, while he finished a lap down in eighth; the crash that would break his leg and ruin his 1999 season was still to come.

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In the five record-breaking years that followed, however, he won back-to-back F1 titles; when he finally relinquished his crown his baby son was already at school. And as Mick follows his father into the family business, those are some tough tyre tracks to fill. The young Schumacher even used his mother’s maiden name in his earliest races to avoid too much comparison, competing as Mick Betsch.

It’s a decent-sounding idea, until you get a look at him: his mouth and chin give the game away the moment he takes off his helmet. His first name can’t particularly help, either. “Sons of” are, of course, commonplace in motor racing, which can feel like a regular aristocracy with its hereditary lines of Piquets, Hills, Villeneuves, Fittipaldis and Rosbergs. At Red Bull right now, Max Verstappen is doing all he can to live up to the image of a Prodigal Hal.

Play Video 1:09 Mick Schumacher: 'Being compared to my father was never a problem for me' – video

But then, sport is scattered with noble lineages. Only this week, the House of Botham (crest: three lions rampant, family motto: ne dice Kath) announced its latest distinction. James, the rugby-playing heir to Liam and grandson of Sir Ian, has signed his first professional contract, with Cardiff Blues. A famous family name can be a heavy burden for a young athlete and not every generation will live up to past glories. All credit to those such as Liam and James who decide to step into the arena anyway.

Quick guide Schumacher finishes eighth on F2 debut Show Hide Mick Schumacher made an assured Formula 2 debut for the Prema Racing team, finishing eighth in Saturday's race in Bahrain after qualifying in 10th place. The 20-year-old had a confident start, jumping up one place. He drifted down the field before climbing back into ninth place, and then made a smart overtaking move inside the Japanese driver Nobuharu Matsushita on the final lap. The German driver finished about 35 seconds behind the winner, Nicholas Latifi of Canada. Schumacher has another F2 race on Sunday before the spotlight increases when he makes his F1 testing debut with Ferrari at the Bahrain desert circuit on Tuesday. AP



Among this ancient patriarchy, what has become of the legend of sporting daughters? Their stories have been perhaps less celebrated but no less complicated. Muhammad Ali’s daughter Laila and Joe Frazier’s daughter Jacqui both faced criticism during their boxing careers, battling the not-always-silent slur that they were cashing in on their respective fathers’ fame. Since retirement, Laila has become a wellness guru and Jacqui a municipal judge, but this month brought the sadder news that George Foreman’s daughter Freeda, who won five of her six fights in the early 2000s, has died at only 42.

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Two beloved tennis players of the modern era, Elena Baltacha and Kim Clijsters, inherited famous surnames from their footballing fathers – Kim may never have taken up the game at all if the Belgium defender Lei Clijsters hadn’t won a golden shoe award and treated himself and his family to the installation of a clay court at their home. But their athletic abilities stemmed equally from their mothers. Kim’s mother, Els, was a national gymnastic champion and Olga Baltacha was offered a place as a pentathlete on the Soviet Union’s 1980 Olympic team.

The more professional women’s sport becomes, the better the recognition of a mother’s contribution to her athletic progeny will become. No one doubts the importance of Judy Murray in Andy’s career, and there was a lovely moment in A Question of Sport last week with the Olympian Eilish McColgan when her own mother, Liz, came up as one of the answers in her team’s quickfire round.

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But with the exception of Princess Anne’s and Zara Phillips’s mutual horsemanship, sporting bonds between mothers and daughters have been rather neglected in the annals. Beryl Burton, whose 25-year career as Britain’s greatest cyclist of either gender went long neglected, was celebrated by Maxine Peake in a recent play. Beryl dramatised her growing obsession with the sport she was introduced to through her husband (and later soigneur), Charlie, and the 1967 12-hour time trial when she overtook Britain’s fastest man to lay down a record that still remains untouched.

But Burton’s autobiography, published in 1986, revealed a far more difficult relationship with her daughter, Denise, who followed her on to the bike and became a fierce competitor in her own right. It seemed a heartwarming enough story to observers – the pair representing Great Britain together in the 1972 world championships – but within a few years they had fallen out, not least because Beryl considered her daughter was not doing enough housework.

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By 1976, when they faced each other in the national road race championships, their rivalry was so intense that when Denise beat Beryl in a photo-finish her mother would not even shake her hand on the podium. Apparently Beryl thought Denise hadn’t shouldered her share of the burden in the breakaway, although maybe she was just still sore about the washing up. They had an emotional rapprochement a year later after Denise trounced her mum in a semi-final; Beryl herself described them as “ordinary people with jangled nerves and emotions, our bitter conflict played out in almost gladiatorial fashion”.

Perhaps they could have taken a leaf from the book of Mary and Margaret Abbott, the first and still the only mother-daughter duo to compete against each other at the Olympics. They were living together in Paris at the turn of the 20th century, Mary working as a journalist and novelist, her daughter learning art from the French masters – including Rodin and Degas. When the Paris Exhibition was held in 1900, 22-year-old Margaret – who had worked up a two-handicap at home in Chicago – asked if she could enter the Prix de la ville de Compiègne tournament that was being held in October, and her mother, no slouch herself, agreed to chaperone her.

Little did either woman know the nine-hole championship was part of a pioneering move to include women in the Olympic Games (their other options would have included archery, tennis, croquet and, apparently, life-saving). And Margaret herself never discovered that her 47-shot total made her the USA’s first ever female Olympic champion, because golf’s official part in the programme was not understood until after her death. Her mother tied for seventh, and was never heard to grumble about it.