Joanne Cuddihy made a confident start to her World Championship campaign in Osaka with a season's best in her 400 metres heat, but the Kilkenny woman will have it all to do to progress out of tomorrow's semi-finals.

AFTER a weekend that has given much promise for the rest of the season, Derval O’Rourke will be back among the best 100m hurdlers in the world at the Grand Prix 1 meeting in Lausanne tonight.

ST. Michael’s, from Athy, will have five boxers in the national senior boxing championship finals, next Friday night.

SERGIY LEBID stole the show with a devastating last lap surge to claim his fifth successive title - and his sixth in all - at the SPAR European cross-country championships in Tilburg, overcoming the challenge of Spain’s Alberto Garcia, the European 5,000m champion who only returned from a two-year ban for a positive drugs test last March.

BUPA Cork City Sports received another off-season accolade this week when last summer's edition was ranked sixth on the evaluation list of outdoor meetings for 2005, with the points total reaching a stunning 79,994 - only slightly behind the total for the second-placed meeting.

MULLINGAR clubmates Martin Fagan and Mark Christie could be reunited on the Irish cross-country team for the first time since 2001 when the squad for next month’s SPAR European Cross-Country Championships in Tilburg is announced.

MARK CHRISTIE is looking for a big performance at this year’s European cross-country championships in Tilburg, Holland, and has taken his preparations to a new level by travelling to Kenya to train at altitude.

DERVAL O’ROURKE ended an injury nightmare on Saturday with qualification for the European Indoor Championships in Madrid in March.

FREDA DAVOREN (UCC AC) is still waiting for the race that will tell her exactly where she stands as regards 1,500m running.

BOXING interest will be focused on Bethnal Green over the coming weeks in the build-up to Wayne McCullough’s long-awaited return but another Irishman has been quietly building a new professional career for himself in the area over the past year.