Zoe Backstedt continued to prove her versatility as well as her huge potential when she won the Under 23 Women’s title at the European Cyclo-cross Championships in France. Backstedt added a second European jersey to her 2023 collection at the weekend, after winning the race in sensational style under tough conditions.

Joe Cordina has admitted he was below par in defence of his world title, but still too good for Edward Vazquez. Cordina retained his IBF super-featherweight title with a majority decision win over Vazquez in Monte Carlo.

Joe Cordina insists he has given “journeyman” challenger Edward Vazquez plenty of respect ahead of their world title fight in Monte Carlo on Saturday night. The Welsh IBF super featherweight champion (16-0, 9 KOs) first became world champion in June 2022 when he dispatched Kenichi Ogawa with a shuddering one-punch knockout. However, a subsequent injury lay-off necessitated by hand surgery saw the 31-year-old stripped of his crown, with Shavkat Rakhimov beating Zelfa Barrett for the vacant belt in November last year.

World champion Matt Richards heads five Welsh swimmers who have been invited on to British Swimming’s World Class Programme (WCP) for the 2023-2024 season. With just over nine months to go until the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, world and Olympic gold medal winner Richards is joined by Daniel Jervis, Medi Harris, Tyler Melbourne-Smith and Hector Pardoe.

Zoe Backstedt has been included in the Great Britain team to compete in the 2023 UEC Cyclo-cross European Championships this weekend. The Welsh rider will be in Pont-Chateau, France, to compete as part of an 11-strong mix of experienced and debutant riders, all vying to take a place on the podium to give an early boost to their cyclo-cross season.

Elfyn Evans has congratulated Kalle Rovanpera after the Finnish driver retained his World Rally Championship title. Welsh driver Evans conceded his race for the title was over at the weekend when Rovanpera’s main rival retired on Saturday from the Central European Rally, the penultimate event of the season.

Carmarthen will host the start of next month’s Roger Albert Clark Rally, which is the biggest event of its kind in the UK. Up to 170 rally cars and support crews will assemble in the West Wales market town for the biennial rally, which has attracted competitors from all over the world and headed by international star drivers Kris Meeke, Oliver Solberg and Chris Ingram.

Great Britain pair Ruby Evans and Poppy-Grace Stickler will headline for Wales as full men’s and women’s teams compete at next month’s artistic gymnastics Northern European Championships in Sweden. Wales will include five Commonwealth Games stars after selection was confirmed for Halmstad and this year’s event from November 24 to 26.

Emma Finucane is trying to ignore her new status as sprint world champion as she sets her sights on achieving Olympic glory in Paris next summer. The 20-year-old Welsh star shocked herself when she took the women’s individual sprint title in Glasgow in August, beating Germany’s favoured Lea Friedrich in the final.

Anna Hursey has become a contender for the Paris Olympics next year after seeing her world table tennis ranking rocket up from 163 to number 106. The 17-year-old – already a veteran of two Commonwealth Games with Wales – needs to break into the world’s top 80 for automatic selection for the Great Britain squad and is heading in the right direction.

Geraint Thomas has suggested he will have two more years in cycling before he rides off into the sunset. The Welsh legend has a two-year contract extension with Ineos Grenadiers which will see him continue racing until 2025.

Matthew Hirst and Declan Dear will have another chance to clinch the Motorsport UK Pirelli Welsh Rally Championship title for a third time on this weekend’s penultimate round of the series, the Visit Conwy Cambrian Rally (Saturday 28 October). In a carbon copy of last year, the Delta Salvage/Witham Group Ford Fiesta R5 crew scored maximum points on the first four rounds of their 2023 campaign, only for their Woodpecker Stages jinx to deny them a five out of five clean sweep.

Glamorgan teenage pair Henry Hurle and Asa Tribe have something to celebrate this weekend – new contracts. The two 19-year-olds have both earned rookie deals for the next two seasons.

Fresh from their recent World Championship exertions in Antwerp, Welsh gymnasts Ruby Evans and Poppy-Grace Stickler were back in action over the weekend – and helped inspire Clwb Cymru Caerdydd to an historic British club triumph. The Great Britain pair, along with team mates Mali Morgan, Evie Flage-Donovan and Ellie Lewis, were crowned Women’s Artistic British Team champions in Stoke-on-Trent yesterday.

Gary Carlisle is a man on a mission at Whitchurch Hockey Club and is not afraid to spell it out. “If I can get one of our teams – men’s or women’s – eventually up into the National League, then I have done my job,” says the club’s recently appointed director of hockey. That’s a tough assignment, given that Whitchurch men’s first team currently play in the competitive second tier West Regional Premiership and the women’s firsts – known as Whitchurch Saints – are in Premier 1 of the South Wales Women’s League.

Cardiff Met student and professional cricketer Bhavya Doshi has arrived in Wales, just as the eyes of the cricket world are focussed on his home nation of India. As the hosts prepare to take on Pakistan, this is how he’s coping with missing out on the party.

Osian Pryce is the new TER – Tour European Rally champion, after winning the Rally Terra Sarda in Sardinia. It’s the Machynlleth maestro’s second major international rally title in two years, having clinched the British Rally Championship last year.

Welsh sailor Micky Beckett has conquered overtraining and burnout to finally realise his Olympic dream. Beckett will make a long-awaited Olympic debut at Paris 2024, one of a group of 10 sailors who are the first athletes to be selected by Team GB for the Games.

Cardiff Dragons will have to bid for a place in the new revamped Netball Super league in two years’ time. The Dragons – who themselves have rebranded this year from their former identity of the Celtic Dragons – will have to go through a tender process along with all the other current nine teams in the league.

Gerwyn Price admitted he had lost out in the moments that matter after he was beaten by Luke Humphries in the final of the World Grand Prix in Leicester. Humphries claimed his maiden major title after stunning favourite Price 5-2 in a thrilling final to lift the on Sunday.