A round-up of today's other stories in brief
Veale to lead Irish team at Worlds
Athletics:Kate Veale leads a 15-strong Irish team announced for the IAAF World Junior Track and Field Championships, to be held in Barcelona from July 10th-15th. Veale is IAAF World Youths champion in the race walk, or under-17 grade, and will look to complete the double in the under-19 grade.
Mark English will chase 800 metres glory having run 1.45.77 this season to break his national junior record. Fellow Donegal athlete Karl Griffin is also set to compete over this distance – with 16-year-old Síofra Cleirigh-Buttner in the women’s 800m.
European Youth Olympic champion Ruairi Finnegan (Letterkenny AC) will compete in the 1,500m having run 3:46.27 this year; and Sarah Lavin is selected for the 100m hurdles having began 2012 in style by equalling Derval O’Rourke’s national indoor junior record in the 60m hurdles in 8.46.
IRISH TEAM: Marcus Lawler - 200m, Joanna Mills - 400m, Sarah Lavin - 100m, H Ben Kiely - 400m, H Mark English - 800m, Karl Griffin - 800m, SÃofra Cleirigh-Buttner - 800m, Ruairi Finnegan - 1,500m, Sean Tobin - 1,500m, Sarah Collins - 3,000m, Kevin Dooney - 10,000m, Kate Veale -10k walk, Emma Prendiville - 10k walk, Dempsey McGuigan -hammer James McCabe - hammer.
– IAN O’RIORDAN
Chambers secures Olympic place after long struggle
Athletics:Six years after he first returned from his two-year ban, Dwain Chambers' struggle to make the London Olympics is over. Chambers was left out of the GB squad for this week's European Championships and his omission is a sure sign he will be included in the Olympic team.
Chambers won the 100 metres at Birmingham’s Aviva trials on Saturday but he was expecting to have to run in Finland to obtain an “A” standard of 10.18 seconds to secure his place. It seems he has been told he will be in the Olympic team regardless and so he can save himself from running three rounds in four days.
Instead, Britain will be represented in the 100m by Harry Aikines-Aryeetey and Mark Lewis-Francis. Neither man has much of a chance of making the Olympics, unless they do something spectacular here.
One of the two spots alongside Chambers will go to Adam Gemili, the 18-year-old who shot to prominence earlier this month when he ran 10.08 seconds at a meeting in Germany. Gemili’s coach Mike Afilaka says he is unsure whether Gemili will take up his Olympic opportunity but it would be a strange decision if he did sit it out.
Guardian Service
England unchanged for clash against Australia
Cricket:England will begin an acid test of their one-day international credentials with a predictably unchanged and full-strength squad for the NatWest Series against world number ones Australia.
Alastair Cook’s men, who completed England’s sixth successive ODI series victory on home soil when the third and final match against West Indies was washed out at Headingley last Friday, were unsurprisingly retained in their entirety yesterday.
The selectors have stuck with the original list of 14 players, who beat the Windies 2-0, for a five-match series set to get under way at Lord’s on Friday.
There was minor controversy when England chose to rest frontline bowlers Stuart Broad, Tim Bresnan and Graeme Swann for Leeds — with the three-match series against West Indies already in the bag – as part of the ongoing rotation policy to try to prevent player burn-out in an alreday packed and tiring international schedule.
But the prospect of such circumstances being repeated against Australia, joint-hosts of the next World Cup in 2015, are remote.
