In Brief: Demons lose perfect record
Monday November 09 2009
UCC Demons and DART Killester both suffered shock defeats in the Men's Superleague over the weekend, losing to relative Dublin lightweights Hoops and UCD Marian respectively.
Hoops' head coach Ahmad Smith believed the return of two of their biggest stars from injury played a huge part in their 89-80 away win.
"Having the likes of Eoin Chubb and Joey Haastrup back from injury was a huge boost ahead of the game and it gave everyone a lift", he said.
Killester slumped to a 72-67 defeat to their rivals from south Dublin, leaving UL Eagles with the only 100pc record left in the league after they beat Ulster Elks 93-75.
Honours were shared in the two Hewison Autotest Championship rounds at the weekend, with Robin Lyons taking a last-minute win in Saturday's Sligo event and Steven Ferguson winning in Loughrea yesterday. Five-time champion Eddie Peterson led for most of the Sligo event until a five-second penalty on the last lap left him 3.8 seconds behind.
Meanwhile, Dani Pedrosa won the final race of the MotoGP World Championship season to claim third in the final standings ahead of Casey Stoner.
Andy Murray picked up his sixth title of the year and the 14th of his career with a comprehensive victory over Mikhail Youzhny at the inaugural Valencia Open, while Novak Djokovic ended Roger Federer's winning run at his home-town tournament to lift the Davidoff Swiss Indoors title in Basle.
Ireland's Conor Niland yesterday qualified for his second ITF Men's Futures final in the space of three weeks when he came up trumps in the outdoor clay court event in Birmingham, Alabama.
Ireland's Mary Cullen showed impressive form ahead of the upcoming European Cross-Country Championships in Dublin by finishing fourth, and as the second fastest European, in a high-quality 5km international race in Spain yesterday.
Ethiopia's reigning world junior champion Genzebe Dibaba won in 14:53 ahead of Kenyan Ines Chenonge (15:01) but Cullen (15:15) was just one second behind Portugal's third-placed Ines Monteiro.
Clonliffe's Mark Kenneally and Mullingar's Mark Christie also did well in the men's 8.7km race which was won by Ethiopia's current world cross-country champion Gebre Gebremariam in 24:41.
Sam Torrance came out on top in the battle for the European Senior Tour Order of Merit to claim his third John Jacobs Trophy in a thrilling climax to the 2009 season.
Torrance's third place in the OKI Castellan Senior Tour Championship meant he finished just €3,380 ahead of 2008 Senior Tour No 1 Ian Woosnam in the closest Order of Merit contest since 2000.
- BASKETBALL MOTORSPORT TENNIS ATHLETICS GOLF
Irish Independent
