Tiffany Porter booked her spot on the plane to Portland for the World Indoor Championships, while Sir Ben Ainslie continued his charge for another America’s Cup berth. Here’s our review of the last 24 hours:
European sprint hurdles champion Tiffany Porter admits her 2015 World Championships disappointment is what is spurring her on this year, after she claimed the British indoor 60m title on Sunday.
The 28-year-old, a competitor for Team GB at the London Olympics, outclassed the rest of the field in Sheffield to win by seven-hundredths of a second, with Serita Solomon and Lucy Hatton completing the podium.
The gold medal secures Porter’s place on the British team bound for the IAAF World Indoor Championships in Portland in March, but after finishing fifth at last year’s worlds in Beijing, she insists she is more determined than ever for success with the Rio Olympics also on the horizon.
“I’m really happy to come away with the win but it was a bit sloppy – overall it was quite good though,” she said.
“I’m using Beijing disappointment as motivation this year. It all happened very quickly, I need to start quicker but my finish was okay.
“British hurdling is in phenomenal shape right now, I’m very happy to be pushed. Now I need to focus on the last bits of preparations for Portland.
“I’m racing in the Czech Republic next weekend and then I am going into the IAAF World Indoors hoping to win, like I do ahead of every race.” Read more from the British Indoor Athletics Championships here.
Sir Ben Ainslie showed all his trademark fighting spirit as his British boat won the America’s Cup World Series leg in Oman.
Ainslie and his Team BAR crew - which includes Olympic-bound Finn world champion Giles Scott - topped the standings heading into the Sunday’s three double points races after a third, first and first on Saturday.
But they still had to win it the hard way and rebounded from a disappointing start to finish second in the fourth race but two penalties, for being the wrong side of the start line, meant they posted a fourth and third in races five and six.
And while the results of others went their way meaning they topped the overall leaderboard with 76 points, four-time Olympic champion Ainslie insists there will be no relaxing when the team return to their base on the Solent next week.
“We would have liked to have had some better starts but we were really pushing it,” admitted Ainslie.
“But the guys stayed positive and we worked our way through the fleet and that was enough to give us the overall victory.
“We made such a hash of our starts and if we’d lost because of that I’d have felt pretty bad. We are just very relieved right now.” Read more here.
Winter Olympian Billy Morgan toasted one of the finest achievements of his impressive career so far, after he claimed a sensational bronze medal at the X Games in Oslo on Saturday.
The 26-year-old GB Park and Pipe rider performed a backside 1440 triple cork on one of the largest ski jumps ever built to post a score of 79.33.
Japan's Yuki Kadono took the gold with an incredible 90.66, just ahead of Canada's Max Parrot who scored 90.33.
Morgan only returned to the snow in December after having knee surgery in April, but his first ever X Games medal more than made up for the time spent on the sidelines.
He finished tenth in slopestyle at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, but with Big Air making it’s Olympic debut in PyeongChang in 2018 the future is bright for Morgan.
He said: “I've always seen X Games as one of the biggest, raddest things out there. So to be on the podium and compete with so many riders I look up to is amazing.”
Olympic qualification may hang in the balance at this week’s Track World Championships in London, but Jess Varnish insists the women’s team sprint trio will not crack under the pressure.
The 25-year-old will race alongside Katy Marchant and Becky James, hoping to book their spot on the plane by finishing two places clear of France in the team sprint, to ensure they can field a second rider in the keirin and individual sprint.
The side has been inconsistent since London 2012, but rather than focusing on past disappointments, Varnish is firmly focused on the task at hand this week.
“Every other team in the squad has qualified other than us, so we’ll see what happens,” she told Cycling Weekly.
“We’ve had a messy run up in qualification. Obviously things haven’t gone perfectly, and we’ve always been trying different combinations rather than just committing to one thing.
“It is going to be hard and we are in an awkward situation, but there’s nothing we can do about it. We just need to step up.
“Everything we are doing now is for next week. We are doing everything we can; we have been since the last World Championships, there’s not been one stone left unturned.”
Olympic hopefuls Marcus Ellis and Chris Langridge landed their first title of the year as the English pair won the Austrian Open men’s doubles title.
The national champions and world number 25 partnership overcame Japan’s Kenya Mitsuhashi and Yuta Watanabe 21-14, 21-16 in Vienna.
Ellis and Langridge, who remain in a good position as far as Olympic qualification is concerned, last won on the international circuit at last November’s Scottish Open Grand Prix.
This win, coupled with their unbeaten form at the recent European Team Championships, was the perfect tonic ahead of their German Open campaign next week, the lead-up tournament to the All England Championships next month.
Sportsbeat 2016