Today's other stories in brief
Six Irish through to EU finals
BOXING:IRELAND will be targeting six gold medals at the European Union finals in Poland tomorrow after five Irish boxers marched into the finals with convincing semi-final wins in Cetniewo, Poland yesterday.
Irish skipper Ken Egan, Darren Sutherland, John Joe Nevin, David Oliver Joyce, Con Sheehan and Paddy Barnes, who received a bye into tomorrow's light flyweight decider, are all just one bout away from claiming gold medals.
Nevin booked his spot in the bantamweight final after an impressive 25-14 win over Spanish puncher Rafael Puyol. And Egan set up a light heavyweight clash with England's Tony Jeffries courtesy of his 27-9 last four victory over Turkey's Canar Sayak.
Sutherland will meet another Englishman James DeGale in the middleweight final while Joyce chalked up a 16-10 win over Hicham Ziouti of France to progress to the featherweight decider.
Pakistan bowler to be deported
CRICKET: Pakistan pace bowler Mohammad Asif will be released from detention and deported from Dubai today after spending nearly three weeks in detention over a drug-related incident, officials said yesterday.
"The public prosecutor has decided not to pursue any case against Asif so he will be deported early Friday morning," a Pakistan embassy official said.
Trial of Greek sprinters deferred
DRUGS IN SPORT: A Greek court yesterday postponed until next year the trial of disgraced Olympic sprinters Costas Kenteris and Katerina Thanou, implicated in a doping scandal at the 2004 Athens Games.
Kenteris and Thanou, both medallists in Sydney in 2000, are charged with giving false statements to police after missing doping tests and claiming they were involved in a motorcycle crash.
"The trial was put off until February 2nd, 2009, because neither the defendants or their lawyers could appear in court for personal reasons," a court official said.
Christie bemoans omission from Olympic torch relay
OLYMPICS: Former Olympic and world 100m champion Linford Christie has reignited the row over his not being part of the Olympic torch relay team in London in April.
Christie, who was banned for two years after testing positive for the steroid nandrolone in 1999, was not nominated by the British Olympic Association (BOA) to be part of the parade.
"I think it should be my right as a stalwart of our sport, I've done my country proud," Christie told the BBC in an interview to be broadcast on Sunday.
"I went out there and I battled against other countries and put British sprinting on the map and so therefore I don't think it's something I should want to do, I think it's something I should be asked to do," he said of the torch relay.
