Sports digest
Fernando Alonso will take his time before choosing which Formula One team he will be driving for next year. The double world champion's manager Luis Garcia Abad was careful to add no fresh urgency to the situation, following Renault team boss Flavio Briatore's suggestion that the Spaniard would decide within two days whether to rejoin the French constructors.
It is thought that Nelson Piquet Jnr, Renault's test driver last season, will step up into one of the team's race seats - and the remaining one will be filled by Heikki Kovalainen unless Alonso goes back to the team with whom he won two world titles. Italian veteran Giancarlo Fisichella is not expected to be offered another season with Renault.
Duo share Seniors lead
American Chuck Milne and John Hoskison of England showed the benefit of being match-fit when they moved into a share of lead at the halfway stage of the European Seniors Tour Qualifying School Finals in Portugal.
Both players carded second round 67s for a four-under-par total of 138 on the Pinta Course at the Pestana Golf Resort to grab a two-shot lead over Englishmen Bob Larratt and Tim Rastall. They came through stage one of the qualifying tournament last week at nearby Quinta de Cima.
There are 14 cards available for the 2008 Seniors Tour which starts in March with the Barbados Open, where Ian Woosnam will make his Seniors Tour debut.
Nadal plays down match-fixing claims
World number two Rafael Nadal joined Roger Federer yesterday in playing down the threat posed by match-fixing, saying tennis was 100 per cent clean.
The men's game has been hit by a series of allegations about match-fixing in recent months, with a number of players saying they had been offered money to throw matches. They all said they had rebuffed the offers.
When asked if he thought the issue had been blown out of proportion, Nadal said: "Totally agree. I'm sure everything is 100 per cent clean."
His thoughts echoed those of world number one Federer, who said after winning the Masters Cup in Shanghai on Sunday: "It's a great sport. It's a clean sport and I hope that in the future it's going to stay this way."
Matches on the men's ATP tour have been under scrutiny since August when a match between world number four Nikolay Davydenko and lowly-ranked Martin Vassallo Argeullo was voided by British betting exchange Betfair because of unusual betting patterns.
Davydenko, who retired hurt from the contest, denies any wrongdoing.
Last week, the ATP suspended Italy's 124th-ranked Alessio Di Mauro for nine months and fined him $60,000 because he bet on tennis, even though he did not try to influence matches.
Federer is in the Malaysian capital for a series of exhibition matches against American Pete Sampras, who said the sport's image was being damaged by the talk of match-fixing.
"It doesn't make the sport look good when you question its integrity," said Sampras.
Landis files an appeal
American Floyd Landis yesterday filed an appeal with the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) to have his two-year drugs ban overturned. The disgraced 2006 Tour de France winner is appealing against the decision of the American Arbitration Association, who on September 20th disqualified him from last year's Tour after he tested positive for synthetic testosterone following his win.
The parties will file their written submissions in the coming weeks. No hearing date has yet been fixed but is expected to be early next year.
Landis has picked Swedish arbitrator Jan Paulsson to sit on the panel. Paulsson chaired the CAS panel that acquitted Inigo Landaluze due to a procedural error during his positive test.
