Other Sport
NFL - London to host competitive game
London will host the first regular season NFL game to be staged outside North America next year. No venue has been confirmed but likely candidates include the new Wembley stadium or Twickenham, home of English rugby.
NFL owners voted in October to play two games outside the US every year for the next five years, with the series kicking off with a single game in 2007. London beat off competition from Germany to host the game.
The NFL staged its first regular-season game outside the US in 2005 when 103,467 people watched the Arizona Cardinals play the San Francisco 49ers in Mexico City, the largest crowd for a regular-season game in NFL history.
Rugby - France to boycott Heineken Cup
French clubs will boycott next season's European club competitions, including the elite Heineken Cup, over a conflict involving England's Rugby Football Union (RFU) and Premiership clubs, the national league (LNR) said.
The LNR said an internal dispute between the English game's governing body and the Premiership had led to uncertainty over the future of the competitions and it therefore had decided to pull out French clubs.
A spokesman for European Rugby Cup (ERC), which organises the Heineken Cup and second tier Challenge Cup, said that the French announcement would not affect the current review of the format.
Rallying - Monte Carlo Rally starts today
Frenchman Sebastien Loeb can join Finnish greats Juha Kankkunnen and Tommi Makinen this season as the only men to win four world rally titles. The Citroen driver, champion for the past three years, begins his quest in the season-opening Monte Carlo Rally starting today.
Loeb, 32, won the title in a works Citroen in 2004 and 2005 before defending it last year in a privately-entered Citroen Xsara.
If he defends his crown again he will be only the second driver to win four crowns in a row. Makinen was champion from 1996 to 1999 while Kankkunen's titles came in 1986, 1987, 1991 and 1993.