Australia reach 303 for 3 on the first day of the third Test at Old Trafford

The Kiwis have chosen to bypass the semi-final stage of the Louis Vuitton Cup elimination trials to challenge for the America’s Cup. By winning the preliminary round robin, Emirates Team New Zealand exercised its right to choose between selecting a semi-final opponent or going direct to the final.

Job done. Emirates Team New Zealand’s demolition of Italy’s Prada-backed Luna Rossa means that the Kiwis have already secured one of the finalist slots in the challenger series Louis Vuitton Cup as they seek to win the America’s Cup .

The climb up Mount Ventoux is legendary among cyclists and Tour de France obsessives. It’s a punishing 12-mile ascent, rising 1,500m to the summit. On Sunday, Britain’s Chris Froome smashed it to be crowned reigning King of the Mountains (KOM) and increase his  overall Tour lead.

It was supposed to be a wholesale restyling of an event that goes back to a yacht race around the Isle of Wight in 1851. It was going to be, rather insultingly to some, a switch from the Flintstone to the Facebook generation. Instead it has fallen into the age-old traps of overweening ambition and misguided dollops of greed.

A circumnavigation of waters both tidal and metaphorical makes for a wondrous read

Back from the brink. An international jury has upheld a protest by both Emirates Team New Zealand the Prada-backed Italians that changes to rules demanded by America's Cup race director Iain Murray which could have side-swiped competition for the 162-year old trophy that is the America's Cup.

The New Zealanders duly added a second point from their second race in the Louis Vuitton Cup elimination races for the America’s Cup on San Francisco Bay and for the second time they were racing against no-one. They were quicker second time around the 40-minue course.

Colombia has extradited a major drug trafficking suspect to the United States. President Juan Manuel Santos has called Daniel Barrera “the last of the great capos”. He’s also known as “el Loco”, or “the Madman”.

Italian America’s Cup challenger Luna Rossa has carried out its threat to pull out of Sunday’s opening race of the Louis Vuitton Cup in San Francisco.

Ian Williams is not a happy man. The reigning world match race champion and his Team GAC Pindar crashed out of the Stena Match Cup at the quarter-final stage and then had to watch as the semi-finalists enjoyed brilliant, even testing breezes.

Italian team Luna Rossa has said they will not show up for first race on Sunday

There are the haves and the have-yachts - and then there are those who can afford £21 million yachts.

With dispute still raging fiercely over late changes to design specifications, and with less than a week to go until the start of the America’s Cup summer of sailing, the United States Coast Guard’s necessary permit to race on San Francisco Bay has been issued.