Both on and off the track, the baton has been transferred from the old to the new.LORD MacLAURINECB chairmanEngland beating South Africa at Headingley in the last Test match of the summer was a very special time for our cricket. “I signed a contract with Salt Lake City and assured them of all the Arab votes,” he added.. DAVID MOORCROFT

UK Athletics chief executive
Doug Walker, Julian Golding and Doug Turner finishing first, second and third in the 200m at the European Championships in Budapest symbolised the future of British athletics. With Linford having retired – and the sport being on a downer – it is a tremendous credit to all our young sprinters that they have won so many races. olympics

Fresh investigations into vote buying
Two fresh investigations into allegations of bribery to secure the 2002 Winter Olympics for Salt Lake City were under way this weekend. The Salt Lake Organising Committee has appointed an ethics panel to report on the city’s efforts to cozy up to key International Olympic Committee (IOC) members – including providing college scholarships to some of their children The FBI have also started a preliminary investigation The IOC earlier launched their own inquiry into vote buying. Among those likely to be questioned is Tom Welch, who ran the Salt Lake City bid.

Yesterday he said of the scholarship programme that benefited six children of IOC members: “This isn’t the Olympic competition. It’s the business side of it.” This, he said, involves giving IOC members gifts and “letting them know who their friends are”. At the centre of the allegations, for Salt Lake and other cities, too, are the role of vote-broker agents. One, Mahmoud El- Farnawani, said on Friday that in 1995 that he “assured” the IOC’s Arab vote for Salt Lake in return for $58,000 (pounds 35,000). Alexandra Meissnitzer, of Austria, won the women’s World Cup downhill in Veysonnaz yesterday. It was her first downhill victory but her fifth World Cup win this season France’s Regine Cavagnoud was second..

football

Asian World Cup boycott unlikely
China’s national coach Bob Houghton joined a chorus of criticism yesterday over a decision by Fifa to allocate Asia just four places for the next World Cup. Fifa decided earlier this month that Asia would have four spots in the World Cup finals – but two would be for the co-hosts Japan and South Korea, leaving 40 countries to compete for the remaining two. But a threatened boycott of the event was unlikely, the Englishman said. “The calls for a boycott are a sign of how enormously disappointed Asian countries and federations were,” Houghton said.. Kjus, who was seeking to become the first man since Franz Klammer in 1976 to win back-to-back downhills at Val Gardena, was second. Sadly, the French Olympic champion Jean-Luc Cretier announced his retirement after a crash which left left him with a fractured hand and damaged knee ligaments.