Saturday, 25 April 2009

Sport Preview, 24-26 April (Part II) : The car in front is a Toyota

Formula 1 qualifying
Jarno Trulli took pole from Timo Glock as Toyota managed to fill the front row for the first time for the Bahrain Grand Prix tomorrow.

Trulli will hope that this fifth career pole will bring him a second career win after he last tasted victory in Monaco in 2004.

And both he and Glock, in only his second F1 season, have both been in good form all year.

Trulli finished third in Australia and Glock managed to get on the podium in the shortened Malaysian GP.

Sebastien Vettel qualified third as he seeks a second successive win after victory in China but disaster hit his team mate Mark Webber.

Vettel will share the front row with the current championship leader, Brawn GP's Jenson Button.

And Button admitted his car was unable to challenge the Toyotas and Red Bulls over one lap but will hope to do better in the race itself. Team mate Rubens Barrichello starts from sixth.

Just behind Button is his compatriot and current world champion Lewis Hamilton who put in a good shift for McLaren.

McLaren were one of four teams using Kers, the others being Ferrari, BMW and Renault.

Kers was expected to benefit these times on Bahrain's long straights but only Hamilton and seventh-placed Fernando Alonso performed particularly well.

The Ferraris of Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen were eighth and tenth respectively.

And the BMWs fared even worse with Robert Kubica and Nick Heidfeld posting 13th and 14th.

McLaren's Heiki Kovalainen also got knocked out in Q2 and will start 11th while Renault's Nelson Piquet Jr may have completed his last F1 qualifying session after qualifying in a miserable 15th.

Stuck in the bottom five alongside the Force Indias and Toro Rossos is Webber.

He qualified in 19th after Force India's Adrian Sutil weaved his car in front of Webber on the Aussie's flying lap in Q3 and it seems highly likely that the stewards will penalise the German.

But that won't help Webber who admits his race is "screwed" before it has even begun.

Athletics - London Marathon
One of the capital city's biggest events of the year takes place on Sunday as a few hundred elite athletes and thousands of fun-runners pound the streets of London.

In the men's race, Martin Lel is favourite to win his fourth race in five years.

And it would be Kenya's sixth successive win after Evans Rutto (2004) and Felix Limo (2006) also enjoyed recent success.

But it has been Lel who has utterly dominated the event and he set a new course record of 2:05:15 in 2008.

In the women's race, Britain's Paula Radcliffe will not be able to add to her three London Marathon wins.

Radcliffe, who won the event in 2002, 2003 and 2005, broke a toe when training in the US.

And she has been advised by current Olympic champion Constantina Dita to cut her workload if she still harbours ambitions to overcome her previous Olympic failures in 2012.

With Radcliffe out, Britain's best hope lies with Japanese-based Mara Yamuchi who finished sixth in the Beijing Olympics.

But the favourite for Sunday's race is German Irina Mikitenko who won in London and Berlin last year although she did not compete in Beijing.

And Mikitenko's closest challengers are expected to be Kenyan Catherine Ndereba and China's Zhou Chunxui.

Snooker latest
Mark Allen stunned Ronnie O'Sullivan to come from behind in their final session and win their second round match 13-11.

O'Sullivan began the final session at 9-7 but Allen took the first three frames to lead 10-9.

A break of 105 by O'Sullivan leveled the scores again going into the mid-session interval but Allen had showed he was prepared to push as hard as he could.

The next two frames were shared before a break of 80 put Allen one frame away with two to play.

But the Northern Irishman only needed one more to the shock of the Crucible theatre.

O'Sullivan's premature exit ends his chances this year at least for a fourth world title and means the honour has failed to be defended for the thirteenth successive season.

Allen joins Stephen Hendry and Shaun Murphy - who thrashed Marco Fu 13-3 - in the quarter finals.

Murphy had been booed by sections of the crowd when making his appearance for the first session.

But, yesterday, he stormed to a 7-1 over-night lead and then ruthlessly won the tie with a session to spare.

Murphy and Fu shared the opening four frames this morning, making the score 9-3.

But Murphy kicked on again and won another four frames on the spin, finishing with a break of 101.

And, after an edgy first round performance, he looks a real contender again.

So far, my predictions have been terrible with Allen, Hendry and Murphy all progressing at the expense of O'Sullivan, Ding Junhui and Fu.

At least it looks as if my Ryan Day-Nigel Bond prediction will come off, with Day leading 11-5.

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