Athletics: Christie's Lewis match off

LINFORD CHRISTIE, the Olympic 100 metres champion, has decided to postpone his proposed 'showdown' meeting with Carl Lewis until next season.

After announcing on Monday that he was prepared to meet the world record holder in Tokyo on 19 September, Christie has had a change of heart, saying that he wants the race to take place in front of the British public next summer, prior to the World Championships in Stuttgart.

Lewis was beaten yesterday over 100m for the second time in two weeks by his fellow-American Dennis Mitchell, at the Grand Prix final in Turin. Olapade Adeniken, the Nigerian who has beaten Christie three times since the Olympics, could finish only fifth, but by doing so he tied with Christie for the Grand Prix 100m title.

The men's overall Grand Prix title, and dollars 35,000 (pounds 17,500), went to Kevin Young of the United States, who won again last night and completed the perfect season after picking up the Olympic 400m hurdles gold medal and the world record in the process. The women's title went to Germany's Olympic long jump champion, Heike Drechsler.

Dan O'Brien, the American world decathlon champion, is on course to break Daley Thompson's eight-year-old world record after the first day of a multi-events meeting in Bordeaux yesterday. O'Brien, who missed selection for the Olympics when he failed to register a height in the pole vault during the US trials, finished the first five events with 4,720 points, 46 more than Thompson's first- day total at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. The pole vault is among today's five remaining events.