The Peugeot 908 driven by Frenchmen Sebastien Bourdais and Stephane Sarrazin and Portugal's Pedro Lamy will start the Le Mans 24-hour race from pole position today.

The car clocked the fastest time in the opening qualifying session on Wednesday. Nobody could match it in Thursday's second session, which was delayed by 30 minutes because of rain. The Peugeot will share the front row with the Audi R10 driven by seven-times Le Mans winner Tom Kristensen, Allan McNish and Rinaldo Capello.

Athletics - Defar breaks 5,000m record

Meseret Defar broke the women's 5,000 metres world record with a time of 14 minutes 16.63 seconds at a Golden League meeting in Oslo last night. The Ethiopian beat the previous best of 14:24.53 she set in New York on June 3, 2006.

In the same meet, 100m record holder Asafa Powell cruised to victory with a time of 9.94 seconds. It was the 27th sub-10 second race of Powell's career and the victory set him on his way to the $1 million jackpot that goes to an athlete who wins all six Golden League events.

Tennis - Mahut puts Nadal out of Queen's

Top seed Rafael Nadal's Wimbledon preparations suffered a hiccup when he was beaten 7-5 7-6 by little-known Frenchman Nicolas Mahut in the quarter-finals at Queen's Club last night.

The French Open champion was undone by the superior court coverage of an inspired opponent ranked 106th in the world. Mahut had earlier accounted for fifth seed Ivan Ljubicic in a rain-delayed third round match and then handed out similar treatment to the world no.2.