Snooker: Murphy sends Doherty packing
Ken Doherty's resurgence shuddered to a halt at the Shanghai Masters yesterday when the former world champion fell victim to an in-form Shaun Murphy, writes Phil Yates.
After winning five matches to reach the quarter-finals of the season's first world ranking event, Doherty was hammered 5-0 by the Englishman in just 75 minutes.
"I've only been whitewashed a handful of times in my career and I don't remember being beaten as well as I was there. It was ruthless stuff."
Doherty was outscored 478-49 as Murphy cruised into the last four.
IRELAND'S top canoeist Eoin Rheinisch, who just narrowly missed a medal when fourth at last summer's Olympics, got his World Championships off to a dream start in Spain yesterday, writes Cliona Foley.
From the packed KI slalom field of over 90 competitors, the Salmon Leap paddler pulled out two clean runs to make the top-20 and qualify for tomorrow's semi-finals.
Rheinisch opened with a run of 89.67 seconds which left him seventh but was a full second quicker (88.62) on his second run, and needed to be, as that eventually left him 13th overall.
Ireland's Ciaran Heurteau and Neil Caffrey failed to qualify.
Canadian cyclist Ryder Hesjedal won the mountainous 12th stage of the Spanish Vuelta yesterday, with Spanish rider Alejandro Valverde retaining the overall lead.
Hesjedal finished the 180km stage in 5 hours, 34 minutes, 31 seconds -- one second faster than Spanish rider David Garcia. Valverde finished 16 seconds back in sixth to maintain a seven-second advantage over Cadel Evans, who was seventh.
Donegal's Philip Deignan finished 18th and moves up to 18th in the general classification while Daniel Martin lost 8 minutes 20 seconds on Hesjedal and is 40th overall.
