Stuart Bithell and British team count down to start of 49er and 49erFX World Championships in Argentina while Jamie Murray opens ATP World Tour Finals bid with a win. Here's our review of the latest news.
Olympic silver medallist Stuart Bithell admits he and John Pink will be aiming to lay down a marker for Rio when they take to the water later today for the 49er World Championships in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Argentina will host some 100 crews aiming to be crowned 2015 49er or 49erFX World Champion, and with just nine months to go to Rio 2016 the stakes are high.
At the recent South American Championships in Buenos Aires, all three British Sailing Team 49er pairs, James Peters and Fynn Sterrit, Pink and Bithell, and Dylan Fletcher and Alain Sign, finished inside the top eight.So far this season Bithell and Pink have tasted medal success twice, winning silver at July’s 49er European Championships in Porto and bronze at the ISAF Sailing World Cup Weymouth and Portland a month earlier.
“It has been an interesting season with the World Championships at the end of the year, we also have the 2016 World Championships in February, but we have planned our peak around that schedule,” said Bithell.
“We made sure after the test event in the summer that we took a good bit of time off, so we are fresh for the busy winter we have ahead.
“The World Championships is important on our road to Rio, it's within nine months of the Olympic Games itself, so you need to be looking at putting in consistent medal winning performances.
“That being said, although fairly close to Rio, the racing conditions are very different.”
Murray and Australian Peers, runners up at Wimbledon and the US Open this year, won a dramatic match against the Italian duo of Simone Bolelli and Fabio Fognini 7-6 3-6 11-9.
They face Rohan Bopanna and Florin Mergea in their next round robin match on Tuesday.
"I guess we're one of the best teams in the world, that's why we're here," Murray told BBC Scotland.
"Every time we step on court we feel we've got a chance to win our match.”
Dan Evans and Kyle Edmund served up a reminder of their capabilities ahead of the Davis Cup final later this month by claiming ATP Challenger events wins on Sunday.
GB face Belgium in the Davis Cup final in Ghent from November 27-29 with captain Leon Smith set to name his team on Tuesday.
Edmund beat Carlos Berlocq 6-0 6-4 to claim the Buenos Aires Challenger clay court tournament, while Evans won on a hard court in Tennessee
Evans, who won the Knoxville Challenger title by beating American Frances Tiafoe 5-7 6-1 6-3 in the final, was selected ahead of Edmund and James Ward in the singles for GB's Davis Cup semi-final defeat of Australia.
The team failed to qualify for the medal finals at the recent World Cup meeting in Cali, despite winning gold at last month's European Track Championships.
But it was the performance in the ride-off for fifth place that left 22-year-old Doull encouraged, with Great Britain showing glimpses of world-record pace in beating Germany.
"We're aiming to break the world record at next summer's Olympics and the World Cup proved to us that we have it in us to do that, even nine months out from the Games," Doull told skysports.com.
"There's no escaping it: finishing fifth was a disappointment. However, if you look closely at our performances and results, it's easy to see where we went wrong and realise that, despite the outcome, we were possibly the fastest team there.”
Sportsbeat 2015