Sports Digest/ EQUESTRIAN: Former British Olympic rider Ginny Elliot has been appointed high-performance manager for Irish eventing and will take up the position on March 7th having signed a two-year contract with Horse Sport Ireland, reports Margie McLoone.
Elliot (formerly Leng) won four Olympic medals, three European Championships, a World Championship, five Burghleys and three Badminton Horse Trials. She retired from international duty in 1998.
The 53-year-old has previous coaching experience with the British, Italian and Portuguese event teams and was co-ordinator for the British team in the run-up to and during the Atlanta Olympics.
HSI has appointed Brian Mangan, chief executive officer of Eventing Ireland, as chairman of the Eventing High Performance Management Committee.
O'Rourke returns
ATHLETICS: Derval O'Rourke will tonight return to competitive athletics in the 60-metre hurdles at the Athens Indoor international. It will be O'Rourke's first race of the indoor season, and a crucial step towards the defence of her world indoor title in Valencia next month, reports Ian O'Riordan.
A foot injury sustained in training last month forced O'Rourke to delay her competitive programme. She faces some strong opponents, including the top American Damu Cherry. It will be her first race since last summer's World Championships in Osaka.
She is still determined to make it to Valencia, but defending her title looks like an increasingly difficult challenge given one of her likely opponents, Sweden's Susan Kallur, last weekend lowered the 18-year-old world record to 7.68 seconds. O'Rourke ran 7.84 when winning the world title in Moscow two years ago.
Chambers unwanted
ATHLETICS: UK Athletics have made it abundantly clear they did not want to select Dwain Chambers for the World Indoor Championships in Valencia. The 29-year-old was named in the Britain side to travel to Spain next month after his victory in the 60 metres in a world-class time of 6.56 seconds at the trials in Sheffield at the weekend.
However, UKA had already made it clear they did not want Chambers to represent Britain and issued a strongly worded statement when they announced the first wave of selections yesterday.
The statement read: "The committee was unanimous in its desire not to select Dwain. Unfortunately, the committee felt that the selection criteria pertaining to the winner of the trials, coupled with the manner of Dwain's performance, left them no room to take any other decision."
