The English Premier League is facing the possibility of having to delay its Project Restart after a pair of crucial meetings with players and managers provoked a series of robust exchanges and diverging views. Issues over protocols for a safe return to play and concerns over the need for more training look set to push the league's resumption back to June 19th. Tottenham midfielder Dele Alli has sustained minor injuries after being held at knifepoint and punched during a robbery in his London house.
In her column this morning, Sonia O'Sullivan asks how long will it be before a woman runs a sub-four minute mile? While she believes it to be "quite far-fetched to think a woman could ever break four minutes for the mile . . . time stands still for no man or woman, and we must always prepare to push beyond our own limits and not settle for what was once considered near impossible." Irish hurdler Sarah Lavin missed out on the Rio Olympics four years ago after developing relative energy deficiency, now back on track for Tokyo, she tells Ian O'Riordan of having to gradually build back up from the dangerously low weight of 57kg; after going 10 months without a menstrual cycle in 2015, she'd effectively "stopped working as a woman".
In the latest entry to our sporting controversies series, Malachy Clerkin looks back on the 2004 Olympics in Athens when Cian O'Connor and Waterford Crystal won Ireland's first ever equestrian Olympic medal - and it was gold. Before a failed drugs test took it away: "This is not something I shy away from," O'Connor told The Irish Times. "It's a part of me. I'm not the kind of guy who's going, 'Ah look, don't be writing about that, I'm ashamed of the whole thing.' It was a mad time. And it's a part of my story."
Meanwhile former Kildare manager Cian O'Neill has revealed how he received a sneak preview of Normal People star Paul Mescal's acting ability during a brief stint on the panel. Athletics Ireland has confirmed both Sport Ireland and Government clearance to resume limited club and other athletic activity beginning from next Monday - either individually or in very small groups (maximum of four people) and where social distancing can be maintained. Ascot is odds-on to be the first major British sporting event to take place behind closed doors this summer - if the five-day event opens as scheduled on June 16th it'll be with with no royal procession, morning suits or millinery and without England's Queen Elizabeth in attendance for the first time in her 68-year reign.
