Sports Digest/ATHLETICS: It's been a stop-start season for Alistair Cragg, but it literally reached a stop this weekend when he dropped out of the 3,000 metres at the Tyson Invitational indoor meeting at his US base in Arkansas, writes Ian O'Riordan.
Cragg was well placed to make a winning move with 500 metres to go when he suddenly walked off the track, saying afterwards he just "didn't feel comfortable".
His failure to finish leaves a big question mark over his participation in next month's World Indoor Championships in Moscow.
Although the back injury that sidelined him for the past year was apparently cleared, there is fresh concern about his fitness over the coming months.
Kürten seals place in World Cup final
Jessica Kürten continued her relentless ascent of the western European league World Cup table in Spain at the weekend, writes Grania Willis. With 48 points to her credit and a share of seventh, she must surely now have done enough to earn her place on the starting grid at the World Cup final in Kuala Lumpur at the end of April.
The world number two and compatriot Cian O'Connor were among 14 first-round clears in Saturday's qualifier in Vigo. Kürten repeated the feat in the timed decider with Quibell for a fourth-place finish and the addition of 13 points to her World Cup tally, but O'Connor and Echo Beach connected with the last two fences against the clock for 14th and just three points.
At 55, Austria's Thomas Fruhmann had disappeared from the top ranks of international show jumping, but with fresh horsepower in the form of the 10-year-old gelding The Sixth Sense, Fruhmann has bounded back into the spotlight. Wins in Geneva and Leipzig had put Fruhmann in sixth place in the league going into Vigo. He made it a hat-trick at the Spanish fixture on Saturday night and has leapfrogged up to second in the league, a mere two points adrift of Dutch leader Gerco Schroder.
Despite his disappointment in the World Cup qualifier, O'Connor had already found the winner's enclosure in the earlier accumulator, galloping the mare Zanoubia to score by an incredible two-second margin over Swiss star Markus Fuchs.
Firman slides off
Ralph Firman was again out of luck in the World Cup of Motorsport series, writes Brian Foley.
He had mixed fortunes yesterday at Sentul in Indonesia. Having qualified seventh, he finished sixth in the sprint race. Firman then moved up to a competitive fourth in the Grand Prix des Nations feature race before completing a pit stop during the second safety car period. The car was handling well on fresh tyres, but, Firman explained, "I came into turn three and got first gear instead of third which put me off into the gravel trap".
He limped back to the pits, then came out and set a fastest lap for a championship point.
