A round-up of today's other stories in brief
Kuerten has to settle for fourth
EQUESTRIAN: Jessica Kuerten, who went into yesterday's concluding round of the Rolex FEI World Cup final on a zero score, failed to capitalise on her position with Castle Forbes Libertina, reports Margie McLoone.
Lady Georgina Forbes' mare lowered two fences in round one and then knocked the first in round two for a score of 12 penalties and a share of fourth position in the overall standings. The winner was Germany's Meredith Michaels-Beerbaum on the great Shutterfly, the only horse to jump a double clear yesterday.
The first leg of the season's Citroen/Showjumping Ireland Premier Grand Prix series was the feature class at the Louth County Show with top points going to Tholm Keane on Ronan Tynan's Warrenstown You 2. Keane pulled out all the stops to narrowly beat Cian O'Connor and Complete.
Impressive Wenbo takes 6-2 lead over Swail
SNOOKER:China's Liang Wenbo produced an impressive display of snooker to ease into a 6-2 lead against Joe Swail at The Crucible.
The 21-year-old began by winning the first two frames with breaks of 84 and 90 before Swail finally scored points in the third only to subsequently lose the frame.
Swail won the fourth after Liang missed a long blue but the Chinese player won the next frame thanks to a fortuitous red he initially had not noticed. Liang claimed the next two frames, which included a 78 break, before Swail won the final frame.
Stuart Bingham holds a 5-3 lead over Joe Perry going into the second session of their last-16 match.
Ronnie O'Sullivan will take a two-frame lead into the final session of his second-round clash with Mark Williams. O'Sullivan held a 5-3 overnight advantage and extended that to 9-5 with the help of breaks of 102, 50 and 78. But Williams crucially hit back to claim the final two frames of the evening with breaks of 81 and 73 to trail just 9-7 going into today's decisive session.
Hennessy takes over presidency
ATHLETICS:A relatively uneventful annual congress of Athletics Ireland in Dublin this weekend included the passing of the presidency from Michael Heery to Liam Hennessy. After two terms in the position, Heery stepped down to allow Hennessy get elected unopposed, and it's just reward for one of the finest servants of Irish athletics, reports Ian O'Riordan.
Hennessy was first elected on the old management committee of BLE back in 1978, and the Tipperary native was also the national PRO for four years, while also serving two years as vice-president and six years as international secretary. For the past two years, Hennessy held the role of chair of the high performance committee.
A new board was also voted in, and this went mostly as expected. Patsy McGonagle, athletics manager for the Beijing Olympics, takes over as Chair of High Performance, while Paddy Fay was voted Chair of Coaching, Brendan McDaid as Chair of Competition, and Gerry Giblin as Chair of Risk and Finance.
Irish fencer qualifies for Beijing
OLYMPICS:Ireland's leading fencer Siobhán Byrne sensationally qualified for the 2008 Beijing Olympics by winning the silver medal at the European qualifying tournament in Istanbul on Saturday. In doing so, Byrne becomes the first Irish fencer to reach an Olympic Games since Michael O'Brien in 1992.
Only the two finalists at the tournament would qualify for Beijing and Byrne booked her place by beating the tournament's number one seed Andreea Pelei of Romania 15-14 in a thrilling semi-final.
Byrne, who competes in the Sabre weapon category, and is supported by the Irish Sports Council, was one of nine fencers from around Europe competing for only two qualifying spots in Istanbul. Byrne recorded three wins in the pool stage and defeated Britain's Joanna Hutchinson 15-8 in the quarter-final before overcoming Pelei. After ousting the favourite, she just lost out on a gold in the final, losing 15-14 to Spaniard Araceli Navarro.
