Cycling: While he started his 2001 season in yesterday's opening stage of the Tour of Valencia, this may be the last year that controversial cyclist Marco Pantani appears in the peloton, Shane Stokes writes.
According to his Mercantone Uno team manager Felice Gimondi, Pantani is seriously considering gearing next season towards aiming for the world mountain-bike championships, and thus the 1998 Tour de France winner may turn his back on road racing.
Gimondi, who himself won the Tour in 1965, suggests that safety is the underlying reason for Pantani's current change of heart, with the recent death of Spaniard Ricardo Ochoa underlining the vulnerability of road cyclists.
However, the Italian climbing specialist is also known to be disenchanted with the racing scene after his recent prosecution for use of the banned performance booster EPO.
Pantani is also involved in a number of other drug-related investigations at present. He finished 133rd in yesterdays stage, 8 minutes 59 seconds behind winner Michael Boogerd.
Boxing: British heavyweight Audley Harrison yesterday enlisted his crew and insisted: "There's only one captain of the ship and that's me."
The maiden voyage of the Sydney Olympic Champion will hardly get out of port when he heads for Wembley Arena on May 19th, close to his life-long home in Brent, north London.
His cast, revealed at London's Planet Hollywood, includes American trainer Thell Torrence and Kenny Croom. London promoter Jess Harding will handle the show which pairs Harrison with a first professional opponent to be named and screened by BBC Television.
Torrence has a fine track record, having trained former world heavyweight champions Riddick Bowe and Ken Norton in addition to Wayne McCullough.
Harrison (29) had already named Colin McMillan as manager and believes it is the team to take him to his heavyweight dream.
Harrison has set himself a target of 34 to win a world title and believes he can take over the baton from Lennox Lewis.
"I'm looking to be a dominant force in British heavyweight boxing and obviously in Europe and then the world," said Harrison.
Athletics: Nigeria has included in-form sprinter Mercy Nku in its team for the World Indoor Championships in Portugal next month, an official said yesterday.
Nku, a finalist in the 100 metres at the World Athletics Championships two years ago, was left out of the original list for the indoor competition but has impressed in recent meets.
Last week the reigning All-Africa Games 100 metre champion ran 7.17 seconds in the 60 metres at the indoor invitational meeting in Ghent, Belgium.
Sydney Olympics silver medallist Glory Alozie was last Friday named in a squad of six for the world indoors beginning March 9th in Lisbon, Portugal. Meanwhile, Sunday Emmanuel, may likely withdraw from the event because of fitness problems, officials said.
Soccer: Hungary's government has postponed its regular meeting by three days to Friday because Prime Minister Viktor Orban is in training for the national soccer championship. "He is spending his holidays in a training camp," a spokeswoman for the Prime Minister's office said. Orban, (37) has been a signed player for fourth division Felcsut for years. He has been training at a camp in Croatia.
