Mo Farah has vowed to bounce back from his second place at the Great Edinburgh Cross Country while Aljaz Bedene was beaten in the semi-finals of the Chennai Open. Here’s our review of the last 24 hours.
Mo Farah says it’s full speed ahead to Glasgow after he kicked off his Olympic year with a second-place finish at the Great Edinburgh Cross Country.
Farah will race at next month’s Glasgow Indoor Grand Prix as he begins his build-up to the defence of his 5000m and 10,000m Olympic crowns at Rio 2016.
That journey got going 40 miles west of Glasgow in the Scottish capital where Farah was beaten to the line in a sprint finish by America’s Garrett Heath.
Over the 8km course, just two seconds separated Farah and Heath at the end but it was the American who came out on top with Farah unable to find his trademark kick down the straight in slippery conditions.
But the 32-year-old was philosophical in defeat and just wants to ensure he is at his best when Rio rolls around.
“It’s early season so you don’t want to lose a race but it’s better to lose now than later in the year,” he said. “Garrett Heath is a great athlete and he always comes out every year and gets ready for this race.
“I couldn’t really sprint but it’s the same for everyone else and it was really slippery so it was quite hard.
“I’m looking forward to getting to training camp and getting my head down for the Glasgow Indoors.”
In the women’s race Kate Avery took the win with Great Britain coming on top in the team event with Europe second and USA third.
Aljaz Bedene’s run at the Chennai Open came to an end in the last four as he went down to Borna Coric in three sets.
The British number two reached the semi-finals with a win over Ramkumar Ramnathan in the last eight, but went down to the Croatian youngster 7-6 (7-5), 6-7 (5-7), 6-3.
Coric will play Switzerland’s Stan Wawrinka in the final but was pushed all the way in match that lasted two hours 56 minutes.
Trailing after the first set, Bedene battled back despite letting an early break slip, but couldn’t push on in the final set.
Requiring treatment on an injury, Bedene had his chances in the seventh game of the decider, which lasted 13 minutes, but Coric eventually held before breaking immediately in the decisive game.
Great Britain’s Lamin Deen, John Baines, Joel Fearon and Andrew Matthews enjoyed their best World Cup result to date by coming fourth in Lake Placid.
The British quartet missed out on the podium by just 0.04 seconds as a German team of Maximilian Arndt, Martin Putze, Ben Heber and Kevin Korona won the event to go top of the World Cup standings.
The fourth place follows Britain’s fifth place at last year’s World Championships, but they were just edged out by a Canadian team led by Justin Kripps for the bronze medal.
Alexander Kasjanov and his Russian team finished second, 0.28 seconds behind Arndt, who was victorious for the first time this season.
Katherine Thomson and Jack Whelbourne claimed gold on the second day of the Star Class 2016 international short track speed skating event.
Kicking things off was the ladies 500m event and having secured a bronze in yesterday’s 1500m, Thomson led the way to gold beating off stiff competition from the Netherlands and Italy.
On the ice after the ladies, Whelbourne and Paul Stanley once again skated their way to a final which saw them head to head with the Netherlands.
A close last lap left Whelbourne taking the gold and Stanley split seconds behind for the bronze.
Whelbourne said: “Today has been a really positive day for me. I managed to work on my performance from yesterday and as a result I was able to stay on my feet for the 500m.
“Tomorrow I will be skating again in the 1000m and although it is a good distance for me I will still be looking at my skate today and finding things to learn from and improve on.
“It’s been great to get back on the international scene this weekend and I’m looking forward to taking what I’ve learnt here with me into the Worlds!”
Sportsbeat 2016