Hot bodies will be as sought-after as gold medals this summer, as Tim Walker reports

Haile Gebrselassie's hopes of appearing at the London Olympics were dashed yesterday after the two-time Olympic 10,000m champion could only finish seventh at the Fanny Blankers-Koen Games in Hengelo.

Mo Farah was back on home ground yesterday and back in winning form. Two months on from the World Indoor Championships in Istanbul, where he was run out of the medal frame in the 3,000m final, the 29-year-old was a comfortable winner of the Bupa London 10,000 road race for the fourth successive year.

Mark Cavendish's bid to become the sixth rider in cycling history to take the points jersey in all three Grand Tours fell short almost at the final fence yesterday when overall race contender Joaquim Rodriguez deprived the Briton of victory in the Giro d'Italia classification by just one point.

Great Britain's domination of the rowing scene continued in Switzerland, with five medals secured on finals day at the World Cup event in Lucerne. The men's four, women's pair and women's lightweight double all prevailed, while silver was secured in the men's eight and the lightweight four won bronze.

Great Britain’s 200m men displayed a show of force in the second canoeing world cup event of the year, winning two gold medals and a silver in Duisburg today.

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Great Britain's men came through a dramatic high-bar finale to win their first European Gymnastics team gold medal in Montpellier yesterday only after a strong Russian squad, hosts France and Germany all made costly errors.

British record in sight for Olympic gold contender after fine first day of heptathlon in alpine setting

It was mostly downhill in stage 18 of the Giro d’Italia this afternoon as the riders descended a total of 900metres and Mark Cavendish narrowly lost out on a fourth stage win.  

The Palestinian athletics coach Mousa Qadoum was so overcome by emotion upon entering the al-Aqsa mosque yesterday that he collapsed into silent tears.

Having taken three wins in this year’s Giro d’Italia, despite suffering just as many crashes, Mark Cavendish looks as strong as he ever has.

Phillips Idowu opened his 2012 season with a victory over Christian Taylor, the American who relieved him of the world triple jump title last year, in the IAAF Diamond League meeting in Shanghai on Saturday. Competing in wet, cold conditions, Idowu jumped 17.24 metres to claim victory ahead of Taylor's American team-mate Will Claye, whose best was 17.12m. Taylor finished third with 16.96m.

As Jessica Ennis crossed the finish line on the specially constructed sprint strip stretching down Deansgate yesterday, she punched the air in celebration. Six days out from her meeting with her principal Olympic rivals in the Hypo Heptathlon at Götzis in Austria, the Sheffield woman had not only beaten two of the world's leading 100m hurdles specialists – the Olympic champion, Dawn Harper, and World Championship silver medallist, Danielle Carruthers – at their own game but she had done so in a personal best time.