AUDLEY HARRISON insists he is ready to deliver on the promise he made a decade ago and beat David Haye to become WBA world champion.

FORMER 400m world champion Antonio Pettigrew has been found dead in the United States, according to the university where he worked as an assistant track coach.

DUTCH superstar Laurence Docherty has backed the decisions by former Ireland internationals Iain Lewers and Mark Gleghorne to switch their allegiance to Great Britain.

IRELAND’S assistant coach Marco Tardelli has claimed his side have a ‘David v Goliath’ challenge on theirhands to get past France in the World Cup play-offs next month.

MICHAEL ROCHE, one of Bernard Dunne’s closest friends in boxing circles, said yesterday that the now former WBA world super bantamweight champion should not even consider retirement at this stage.

As far as Semenya’s father is concerned, Caster is his girl, writes Dan Buckley.

Former world champion Maurice Greene believes Usain Bolt remains in a world of his own as the Jamaican begins his attempt to add World Championship glory to his three Olympic gold medals.

SONIA O’SULLIVAN, silver medallist at the 2000 Olympics, said yesterday it was time for all the sports bodies in Ireland to put their differences aside and get down to the business of planning for the 2012 London Games.

China isn’t the only country to fake a musical performance during an Olympic opening ceremony - it turns out that Australia knows a thing about miming music, too.

THOUSANDS of pilgrims have converged on Sydney as it braced itself for this weekend’s arrival of the Pope and the start of World Youth Day, the biggest event held in Australia since the 2000 Olympics.

Thousands of pilgrims converged on Sydney today as the city braced itself for the weekend arrival of the Pope and the start of the World Youth Day festival, the biggest event held in Australia since the 2000 Olympics.

Controversial Greek sprinter Katerina Thanou has been awarded a 100m silver medal from the 2001 World Championships in Edmonton after the disgraced Marion Jones was stripped of all her medals having admitted use of the banned steroid THG.

Marion Jones reported to the Federal Medical Center Carswell yesterday, four days before she was required to begin serving her six-month prison sentence.

THE spectacular fall from grace of Marion Jones, the 32-year-old US sprinter who was sentenced to six months in prison last week for lying to federal prosecutors about her steroid use, is a reminder of how difficult it can be to take professional athletics seriously in the modern era.

Former world and European high-jump champion Kajsa Bergqvist has announced her retirement from athletics.

Athlete Sonia O’Sullivan wants to run in the London Olympics in 2012 - when she’s 43.

OLYMPIC medallists Kostas Kenteris and Katerina Thanou have accepted bans for doping violations prior to the 2004 Athens Olympics and will be eligible to compete from December.

ALISTAIR CRAGG took another big step towards European gold this summer with a personal best in a historic 5,000 metres in New York.

AUSTRALIANS were warned yesterday to stay away from beaches in three cities this weekend with police saying they have credible evidence that racial violence was being planned.

TWO-TIME Irish Olympian Sinead Delahunty-Evans will attempt to relive past glories when she goes to the line in the renewed Fifth Avenue Mile in New York tomorrow.

Australian prime minister John Howard today welcomed news the Pope is to visit Sydney for the World Youth Day celebrations in 2008, an event expected to draw thousands of overseas pilgrims to the city.

THE lawyer for Marion Jones has challenged the man who alleged he supplied the former Olympic sprint champion with performance-enhancing drugs to take a lie detector test.

INTERNATIONAL Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge has set up a disciplinary commission to investigate allegations against US sprinter Marion Jones.

Olympic 5,000 metres finalist Jo Pavey has been selected for the Norwich Union Great Britain and Northern Ireland team to compete in the Spar European Cross-Country Championships next month.

Yevgeny Kafelnikov’s days on the ATP Tour look to be over with the former French and Australian Open champion telling a British newspaper he has decided to retire.

A lawyer representing American sprinter Marion Jones insists her former husband CJ Hunter “is lying” over claims she used a number of illegal substances during the 2000 Olympics in Sydney.

UK Athletics chief Max Jones today admitted Britain’s track team will struggle to match their Sydney medal haul in Athens next month – but insisted comparisons between the two games are unfair.

THE Olympic Council of Ireland may extend their qualification deadlines for the Athens Games, according to OCI President Pat Hickey.

Mark Scanlon and Ciarán Power will be Ireland’s two representatives in the Olympic Road Race.

International Olympic Committee Vice President Kim Un-yong was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison on embezzlement and bribery charges in Seoul today in a ruling that will probably end his long, powerful career at the IOC.

Thousands of people waving Danish and Australian flags lined the streets up to 10-people deep to celebrate the wedding of Crown Prince Frederik and his wife, Crown Princess Mary, as the couple rode in a nearly 100-year-old horse-drawn carriage.

WITH wind-driven flames threatening the densely populated San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, firefighters dug in yesterday for another brutal day of battling one of the most destructive and deadly wildfire seasons in Californian state history.

IT IS ironic that a word as cumbersome as tetrahydrogestrinone should be the name of a drug so easy to digest.

Olympic gold medalist Vera Shimanskaya has been arrested in Spain and accused of being a card sharp.

ELIUD KIPCHOGE of Kenya won a thrilling men’s 5,000 metres world final in Paris denying Hicham El Guerrouj a second title at the championships.

KELLI WHITE of the United States became the first woman since East Germany’s Katrin Krabbe in 1991 to clinch the world championship sprint double when she won the women’s 200 metres title in Paris last night.

Al QAIDA-LINKED terrorists wanted to attack the 2000 Olympics in Sydney but decided against it, a newspaper reported yesterday.

Al-Qaida-linked terrorists wanted to attack the 2000 Olympics in Sydney but decided against it, a newspaper has claimed.

One of the most influential figures in the Olympic movement has backed Manchester as a possible host for the 2012 Games.

Arsenal spoke of their ‘‘relief’’ after a High Court judge today rejected a challenge by local residents to Islington Council’s decision to grant the club to build a new stadium at Ashburton Grove.

Cathy Freeman will be running from memory when she competes in the women’s 4x400metres relay at the Commonwealth Games in Manchester.

Arsene Wenger insisted Arsenal had shown the mental strength needed to win the title after full-back Lauren held his nerve to clinch victory in a frenetic North London derby with a late penalty.

Venus Williams has become the first black player to hold the top spot in the WTA computer rankings.