Snooker: John Parrott suffered one of the cruellest defeats of his career last night, losing 6-5 on a re-spotted black to Stoke potter Dave Harold in the Masters at Wembley.
The former world champion led 5-1 and seemed set for a semi-final tomorrow against Ken Doherty or Fergal O'Brien.
But Parrott lost the seventh frame to a break of 70 and then saw the next four frames slip away in agonising fashion.
Harold won the next two frames on the black with breaks of 31 and 34 to trail 5-4.
He then came from 47-6 down to force a decider on the pink and continued to pull off a great escape as the match reached its conclusion close to midnight.
Harold knocked in green to black to force the re-spot and then potted the re-spotted black to complete a memorable win. Paul Hunter, responsible for the demise of defending champion Matthew Stevens in the last 16, beat Peter Ebdon 6-3 in a less-than-sparkling quarter-final.
Olympic Games: Beijing's crackdown on the outlawed Falungong spiritual group was nothing to do with the Olympics and should not endanger its chances of winning the bid to host the 2008 Games, officials said. "Falungong has nothing to do with the Olympic bid work of Beijing," said Beijing vice mayor Liu Jingmin. "The ban of Falungong according to law should not become an obstacle to Beijing's bidding for the Olympic Games."
Liu said other countries, such as the United States, had used weapons and strong tactics to crush cults and their actions did not affect their hosting of Olympic Games.
Only two out of 24 Olympic Games held in the past 100 years were in Asia.
Rugby: Former Italian captain Alessandro Troncon was yesterday suspended for 21 days by the Six Nations disciplinary committee for punching Ireland's Peter Stringer in last Saturday clash between the two teams in Rome.
Troncon, who received his marching orders from South African referee Jonathan Kaplan, will miss Italy's Six Nations match against England at Twickenham a week on Saturday but will be available to play France in the third round of matches a fortnight later. Roger Pickering, Chief Executive of the Six Nations Committee, said: "The committee took into account the adverse effect of foul play, particularly in the Six Nations Championship, but also the previously exemplary disciplinary record of the player during his 54-cap international career."
Tennis: Mixed luck was the lot of the Irish Davis Cup squad in Gosford Australia yesterday. The second series of ITF competition saw Peter Clarke win, but John Doran was not as fortunate.
Clarke again showed the ability to win tight matches when finally seeing off the challenge of Australian Lee Holland 6-4 7-5, to reach the quarter-finals. "Peter's performance was excellent, full of intensity," commented Irish team manager Pete Lowther.
But Lowther identified a certain "lack of confidence" in Doran's game, as the Harvard graduate slumped unexpectedly to Ricardo Schlachter (Brazil) 6-2 6-1.
