Sports Digest

A roundup of today's other sports news in brief

Mayweather pulls plug on fight

BOXING: Floyd Mayweather Jr, smarter in the ring than out of it, may have made the costliest blunder of his career by rejecting the late compromise Manny Pacquiao offered him to save their €140m fight in March, writes Kevin Mitchell.

The Filipino yesterday reluctantly agreed to take a blood test for drugs 24 days before the bout, scheduled for the MGM Grand, Las Vegas, on March 13th; Mayweather, immovably suspicious of Pacquiao’s punching power through the weights, insisted on random tests at any point during the 30 days before the fight.

And that killed stone dead the independent mediation of the retired federal judge Daniel Weinstein in Santa Monica. By walking away so close to a deal, Mayweather simultaneously shocked his advisers, who told him to settle, and angered Pacquiao’s people to the point where legal actions are now hurtling towards the courts. Guardian Service

All hockey junior cup matches off

MEN’S HOCKEY: Due to the severe weather conditions all Irish junior cup matches scheduled for tomorrow have been postponed. The decision was taken in light of the current weather conditions and in the interest of the safety of players.

The replay dates for the fixtures will be announced early next week but they will not take place on January 16th because of the Irish Senior Cup schedule.

All Leinster Branch fixtures have also been postponed and clubs have been asked to look at re-fixing the games.

WOMEN’S HOCKEY: The wintry conditions have, predictably, resulted in all of this weekend’s women’s hockey fixtures being postponed, including Irish Junior Cup and Irish Hockey Challenge games. The rescheduled dates for these ties will be announced early next week, but they will not take place on tomorrow week due to a clash with the Irish Senior Cup.

Manca in intensive care after fall

MOTOR SPORT: Italian rider Luca Manca is in intensive care after falling off his motorbike in northern Chile yesterday during the sixth stage of the Dakar Rally being run in South America, a hospital spokesman said.

Manca was in ninth position in the general classification when he came off his KTM bike during the Antofagasta to Iquique leg in the far north. The Italian had been admitted to the intensive care unit, said a spokesman at the Hospital de Cobre in Calama, near Chile’s giant Chuquicamata copper complex.

Local media said Manca had suffered a skull fracture and would be flown to a hospital in the capital, Santiago.

Federer and Nadal breeze into last eight in Qatar Open

TENNIS: Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal wasted little time booking their places in the last eight of the Qatar Open in Doha yesterday.

Top seed Federer needed just 63 minutes to see off the challenge of Evgeny Korolev in his second-round match, dispatching the Russian 6-2 6-4.

The Swiss broke his opponent four times in the match, winning 84 per cent of points on his first serve.

Nadal was on court for just nine minutes more than his great rival, posting a 6-2 6-2 victory over Italy’s Potito Starace.

The Spanish second seed also had four breaks of serve during his match to set up a quarter-final clash with Belgian Steve Darcis, who beat Younes El Aynaoui 6-3 6-1.

Third seed Nikolay Davydenko overcame Marco Chiudinelli 6-3 6-4.

Clijsters and Henin still on course

TENNIS: Kim Clijsters and Justine Henin were forced to draw on their vast experience to avoid being eliminated from the Brisbane International yesterday.

The two Belgians, both back on the professional circuit after retiring from the sport, scraped through their quarter-finals to remain on course for a possible showdown in tomorrow’s final.

Henin advanced after downing Hungarian Melinda Czink 6-2 3-6 7-6 while Clijsters overcame a second-set wobble to beat Czech Lucie Safarova 6-1 0-6 6-4 in one of the major lead-up events to this month’s Australian Open.

“That’s the kind of match that I need,” Henin said. “I came here to play matches and that’s what I have done, so I have no complaints.”

Briatore won't get off - Mosley

MOTOR SPORT: Former Renault Formula One team boss Flavio Briatore will not escape sanction for his role in a race-fixing scandal despite a Paris court overturning his lifetime ban, ex-FIA president Max Mosley said yesterday.

“The idea that in the end, when all the dust has settled, Briatore will get off is fiction. It won’t happen,” he told the Times newspaper.