By Rob Cole  Matt Richards has already proven himself to be the fastest of the record ‘Super Six’ Welsh swimmers in Tokyo, but few knew that the speed he hopes will carry him onto the podium was honed in a paddling pool in his back garden last year.   When lockdown hit last year the rising star of the Swim Wales National Squad had to leave his training centre at Bath University and returned to the family home in the west Midlands.  

By Carl Field Driven. Determined. Resilient. Three words that perfectly sum up talented gymnast Olivia Gauregui who, it is fair to say, has already overcome so much – in order to achieve so much – in her life so far. Gauregui, from Newport, who turned 16 at the end of May, spent much of her childhood in and out of hospital as she battled to overcome both cancer and a life-threatening soya allergy. Last year she received the honour of becoming the first Welsh gymnast to be selected for Great Britain for the TeamGym European Championships.

Elfyn Evans finished a frustrated fifth on Rally Estonia – but at least with Sébastien Ogier only finishing one place ahead of him, the result has not cost him much in the battle for the FIA World Rally Championship title. Evans started the event lying second in the drivers’ standings, 34 points behind series leader Ogier – and he remains second, 37 points behind. Neither of them could match the pace of their Toyota team-mate Kalle Rovanperä, who became – at 20 years and 290 days old – the youngest driver to win a round of the WRC.

Osian Perrin finished fifth in the 5,000m final at the European Under-20 Athletics Championships in Estonia. With the race run in high temperatures in Tallinn, the Menai Track and Field athlete produced a valiant effort to get amongst the medals. The only Welsh athlete in the Great Britain squad for the championships crossed the line in 14:39.18.

By Paul Evans Elfyn Evans’ 100th start in the FIA World Rally Championship start isn’t going as well as he’d hoped. The Toyota driver is fifth after the first full day’s action on the super-fast Rally Estonia, just over a minute off the lead. Overshooting two junctions on one stage was costly, but at least […]

By Paul Jones Ironman Wales has been postponed by event organisers, due to the pandemic, for the second successive year. The high profile event – one of triathlon’s biggest weekend’s in Wales – was scheduled for September at its traditional Tenby venue. But the Pembrokeshire race has been put back to 2022 due to escalating […]

By Carl Field  “I remember stepping foot on to the track and pinching myself and telling myself I did it, I was an Olympian.” Those are the words of former Welsh gymnast Sonia Lawrence (now Sonia McFall) as she looks back, now almost exactly 25 years on from her experience of walking out at Atlanta’s Georgia Dome as a 16-year-old to compete for Great Britain at the 1996 Olympic Games. To this day, she remains the last women’s artistic gymnast from Wales to go to an Olympics.

By Paul Evans  Elfyn Evans hopes that his 100th start in the FIA World Rally Championship will be one to celebrate – and he certainly needs a good result on this weekend’s Rally Estonia to keep his title aspirations on track. Having won one rally (Portugal) and finished second three times (Monte Carlo, Arctic and Sardinia) on the opening five events, Evans is, as he did last year, right up there challenging for the world title.

Wales’ 4x100m men’s relay team ran the fastest time by a Welsh quartet outside of a Commonwealth Games at the Wanda Diamond League meeting in Gateshead on Tuesday night. Meanwhile the Welsh women’s team clocked one of their fastest 4x100m times ever at the same event.

By Alex Bywater  Glamorgan’s batsmen had a field day against Northamptonshire in Day three of  their LV= Insurance County Championship clash with Kiran Carlson and Chris Cooke both notching unbeaten centuries. Carlson’s sublime 170 not out was the jewel in the crown of Glamorgan’s 462 for four as he and captain Cooke (133 not out) shared an unbeaten club record fifth-wicket stand of 307. Carlson said: “Me and Chris put on a great partnership. It was nice for me to score some runs and bat for a long time. Marnus Labuschagne and Billy Root batted beautifully earlier in the day and set the platform for us. Me and Chris knew there would be runs there for us if we batted patiently.

Jake Heyward warmed up for the Tokyo Olympics by running the fastest ever mile by a Welsh athlete at the Wanda Diamond League meeting in Gateshead on Tuesday night. The Cardiff athlete took almost two seconds off Neil Horsfield’s 35-year-old record of 3:54.39, set in Ireland back in 1986.

Tokyo Olympics-bound Jake Heyward and Joe Brier, along with new European Under-23 champion Jeremiah Azu will be part of a large Welsh contingent at Tuesday’s Wanda Diamond League Meeting in Gateshead. Cardiff athlete Heyward will round off his racing preparations for the 1500m in Japan by taking part in the Emsley Carr Mile alongside fellow Welsh athlete Piers Copeland.

Matt Edwards and Darren Garrod took their Yuasa Rally Team Volkswagen Polo GTI R5 to a hard fought victory on the Nicky Grist Stages at the weekend, and in doing so take the lead of the British Rally Championship.

London Pulse assistant coach and Head of Academy, Danielle Titmuss, is the new Head Coach for Celtic Dragons. The highly-experienced coach takes up the appointment immediately to begin preparations for the 2022 Vitality Netball Superleague season.

The school summer holidays are beckoning, the Euros are over, so what better time for cricket to stride out into the middle and take centre stage? At the elite end, Welsh Fire are about to ignite The Hundred, while down at grass roots level opportunities to start playing the game have never looked more appealing, as Graham Thomas reports. Former England captain Alastair Cook believes this will be the summer of love when it comes to children and cricket. All across the UK, activities are opening up for youngsters to play the game and develop their skills in a sport forced to mostly slumber through 2020 in the early months of lockdown.

The Welshman heading the Team GB golf challenge at the Olympic Games is still hopeful the ban on fans in Tokyo might be eased to allow some spectators to watch the men’s and women’s events at the Kasumigaseki Country Club. Nigel Edwards – England Golf performance director – heads to Japan on 21 July to prepare the ground for Tommy Fleetwood, Paul Casey, Jodi Ewart Shadoff and Mel Reid, who will be hoping to build on the golden success of Justin Rose in winning the men’s tile in Rio five years ago when golf returned to the Games for the first time in 112 years. “Japan is a golf mad country and they were predicting 25,000 fans for each day of the two events. That obviously won’t happen now, but we are still hoping there might be a chance to get some fans in despite the ban on events in Tokyo,” said Edwards.

Jeremiah Azu cruised to European Under-23 Athletics Championships 100m gold with an imperious display of sprinting in Estonia. The Cardiff athlete left the rest of the field in his wake – even allowing himself a celebration 10 metres from the finishing line on Friday evening in Tallinn.

By Owen Morgan Last Saturday Joe Brier travelled to the South West of England to watch his girlfriend compete in a National Athletics League fixture at Yate and District Athletics Club. The Swansea Harrier wasn’t competing because he was due to travel to Estonia three days later to compete in the European Under-23 Championships where he was one of the favourites for a medal in the 400m. But a trackside phone call from former Wales and Great Britain sprinter Tim Benjamin turned Brier’s immediate plans on their head. Instead of travelling to Tallinn, the 22-year-old would be heading to Tokyo next Thursday with the GB Olympic team as a travelling reserve.

After a 518 day enforced break caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, rallying will return to the Welsh forests this Saturday with the Nicky Grist Stages – although the event will be held behind closed doors and without spectators.

Jeremiah Azu ran a sensational 10.19 secs at the European U23 Champs in Tallinn to move second on the Welsh all-time list. The Cardiff Sprint ace sliced 0.8 secs off his lifetime best set in 2019 to qualify for the final on Friday in the Estonian capital.