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.

Welsh acrobat Dylan Howells wants to use the “incredible experience” of competing at his first World Championships as a springboard for future success. The 20-year-old, who hails from Risca, was part of the Great Britain squad who returned to the competition floor over the weekend – after the best part of 18 months out – at the 2021 Acrobatic Gymnastics World Championships in Geneva, Switzerland.

Osian Pryce says that a day’s testing on Thursday and the recce on Friday will provide the perfect uninterrupted confidence-building preparation ahead of Saturday’s Nicky Grist Stages, as he gets in full rally mode for round two of the British Rally Championship (BRC). The 28-year old Machynlleth born driver is relishing the opportunity to drive his Melvyn Evans Motorsport-prepared Volkswagen Polo GTI R5 on the loose for the first time, and getting up to speed with his new-for-2021 Michelin gravel tyres.

Luke Rowe’s Tour de France is over after he finished outside the time cut on stage 11 which features a double climb of Mont Ventoux, the so-called ‘Beast of Provence’. The Ineos Grenadiers rider crossed the line around six minutes outside the time limit which is set by the stage winner.

By Owen Morgan Patrick Swan produced a huge shot put personal best to help launch Swansea Harriers to top spot in their National Athletics League Premier West Fixture at the weekend. The British Athletics Championships silver medallist threw 17.43m to extend his personal best by 38cms – moving him up to fifth in the United Kingdom rankings for 2021. Swan was ably backed up by his Harriers team mates as Swansea topped the table with 359.1 points at the meeting held at Yate and District AC, fellow Welsh club Cardiff Athletics finishing third out of the five competing teams with 320.7 points.

Many of the best young golfers in Wales have now reached the halfway stage of the PING Welsh Junior Tour, with only three events left to see who will reach the final at Mold in September. The third event this year was held in Builth Wells with Iosi Russell of Pyle and Kenfig coming out on top in the U14 category to cement his place at the top of the Order of Merit with three events left to go.