SNOOKER: Ken Doherty last night ended John Higgins's hold over him with a 9-6 victory to progress to the semi-finals of the UK Championships in York.
Doherty, who had not beaten Higgins in a ranking tournament since 1997, began by rattling off a break of 110 on his way to taking the first four frames.
The Dubliner cleared up in the second after Higgins missed a brown and notched up a 60 break on the way to winning the third.
Higgins won the fifth and then put in breaks of 83 and 62 to cut the deficit to 5-3 after the first session.
The Scot then took the first two frames of the second session to level the match.
He hit breaks of 118 and 113 in the first three evening frames and looked to be getting the upper hand.
But from 6-6, Doherty won three in a row to end Higgins's title bid.
SAILING: Italian team Prada gambled and then took advantage of a bad tactical error by US America's Cup challengers OneWorld to win the second race of their semi-finals series by 20 seconds yesterday off Auckland, New Zealand.
OneWorld won the first race in the best-of-seven series on Tuesday but Prada now holds the advantage after an arbitration panel levied a one-point penalty on Seattle-based OneWorld for possessing boat design secrets from other teams.
In the other semi-final, leading contenders Alinghi of Switzerland opened a 2-0 lead over US software billionaire Larry Ellison's Oracle BMW Racing with a 29-second victory in their second race.
OneWorld will be penalised a point for every remaining stage of the regatta after the panel heard protests by Prada and beaten syndicate Team Dennis Conner, who wanted OneWorld disqualified over the long-running design secrets scandal.
But the $75 million team backed by telecoms investor Craig McCaw and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen appeared to have put that penalty well behind them as they led defending Louis Vuitton Cup challengers champions Prada through the first four legs of the six-leg race off New Zealand's largest city.
Prada skipper Francesco de Angelis and tactician Torben Grael, however, decided to split away from OneWorld and took to the left side of the course on the fifth leg in the hope of finding a major windshift on a squally, difficult day of 10-14 knot winds which shifted constantly between the south and west.
SWIMMING: Six Irish swimmers, headed by 21-year-old Andrew Bree, are in Riesa near Dresden in eastern Germany this week for the 2002 European Short Course (25-metre) championships, an event which will be held in Blanchardstown in Dublin in 2003.
Bree is considered a potential Olympic medallist in the breaststroke at the Olympic Games in Athens 2004.Michael Williamson is also a breaststroke specialist and he will hope to at least equal his performance in last year's championships in Valencia in Spain when he made the final and was ultimately placed seventh overall in the 200-metres event.
Emma Robinson, one of three Irish women in the team, made the final of the women's 50-metre breaststroke at the long-course gala in Helsinki in 2001 and may be in line to do something similar here.The rest of Ireland's team is William Carey, Julie Douglas and Leonore Kelleher.
ATHLETICS: Olympic legend Haile Gebreselassie of Ethiopia broke the 10km road race world record and won the $1 million prize in Doha, Qatar, yesterday.
Gebreselassie, double Olympic 10,000 metre champion, clocked 27 minutes two seconds in his comeback after a calf injury sustained during the London Marathon in April, to break Kenyan Sammy Kipketer's world best of 27: 11.
SPORTS AWARDS: Lennox Lewis and Paula Radcliffe have been named sportsman and sportswoman of the year in the 54th annual poll of Britain's sports writers, which is supported by Sport England.
