SKIING: Ireland's Tamsen McGarry moved up from 81st place to 39th in the women's slalom at the World Alpine Ski Championships in St Anton, Austria yesterday.
Earlier, in the men's downhill event, Austrian hopes were high for a win from Hermann Maier. However, it was another Austrian, Hannes Trinkl, who claimed gold, finishing two-tenths of a second ahead of Maier. Germany's Florie Eckert finished third. The Irish men go today in the giant slalom.
BASKETBALL: Scoil Ruain Killenaule produced an outstanding display to defeat Presentation Thurles 44-29 in an entertaining Bank of Ireland Senior Girls A Final at the National Arena in Tallaght yesterday. Despite the absence of their injured star player, Anne Marie Healy, Killenaule, who led 23-18 at the interval, proved too strong for their county neighbours thanks to impressive displays from MVP Irene Codd, Sarah Healy, top scorer Aine O'Dwyer (12 points) and Teresa Cleary. St Eunan's Letterkenny defeated St Mary's Moyderwell, Tralee, 63-52 in the Boys Senior B final, while Our Lady's Castleblayney withstood a comeback to pip St Joseph's Cluny 52-45 in the Girls Senior B decider.
TENNIS: Ireland's Davis Cup duo Peter Clarke and John Doran are making impressive strides on the Australia/New Zealand ITF tour. Clarke, beaten in the final in Sydney last week, advanced yesterday in Gosford, as did Doran, a 6-0 6-4 first-round winner over Australia's top junior Adam Kennedy. Clarke beat South African Dirk Stegmann 7-6 4-6 6-4, despite twice being set points down in the first set. But Conor Niland went out in the qualifiers to South African Conenie Van Wyk. Scott Barron was beaten 6-4 6-2 by seventh seed Jon Salzenstein, who has an ATP ranking of 171.
CYCLING: Following the introduction of world ranking points for this year's FBD Milk Ras, race organiser Dermot Dignam has reported a high degree of interest from foreign teams.
Several trade teams have applied to line out in the eight-day round-Ireland race which runs from May 20th-27th. As a result, Dignam has had to impose an earlier-than-usual closing date of March 18th for county teams.
