Top players reject offer to have greater say in running of major tennis championships

The tennis pay row has escalated further with the world’s top 10 male and female players rejecting an offer from the grand slams to set up a player council that would give them a greater say in the running of the major championships.In correspondence sent to Wimbledon, the French Open and US Open last week, the players turned down the offer of a meeting with representatives of the three grand slams at the Indian Wells Masters in March and accused the tournament organisers of ignoring their concerns about pay and player welfare.“Before committing to another meeting, it would be more productive for the grand slams to provide substantive responses, individually or collectively, to the specific proposals the players have put forward regarding prize money at a fair share of grand slam revenues, and player health, welfare, and benefits contributions,” the letter states.The players have been lobbying for a greater share of the money made by those organising the grand slam championships since last year’s French Open when a delegation, including Carlos Alcaraz, Jannik Sinner, Aryna Sabalenka and Coco Gauff, urged executives from all four tournaments to increase their prize funds to 22% of revenue by 2030, which would be in line with ATP and WTA Tour events.Alcaraz will receive AUS$2

Leopardstown success shows Dublin Racing Festival is galloping past Cheltenham on value

Michael O’Leary, the chief executive of Ryanair, had two reasons to be cheerful after the Irish Champion Hurdle at the Dublin Racing Festival (DRF) at Leopardstown on Sunday. His seven-year-old mare, Brighterdaysahead, had just won the feature race and she was cheered back to the winner’s enclosure by a sellout crowd that included several thousand visiting racegoers from Britain. “The Dublin Racing Festival has been a great success and certainly it’s the first time you’ve seen a lot of English people coming over for the racing,” O’Leary said. “It’s a great festival in its own right and they’re all very welcome. I hope they flew Ryanair

Wolff urges Mercedes rivals to ‘focus on themselves’ amid 2026 engine row

Toto Wolff has dismissed claims from rivals over the legality of his team’s new engine, insisting it is within the regulations. The Mercedes team principal said that the onus lay with the other manufacturers who had missed an opportunity and that they should get their “shit together”.The row over whether Mercedes and Red Bull have stolen a march on the opposition in their engine design has dominated the buildup to the new season and Wolff notably did not rule out other teams protesting against the legality of their engines after they are used competitively for the first time at the Australian Grand Prix on 8 March.The disagreement centres on Mercedes and Red Bull having taken advantage of the regulations in increasing the compression ratio of their engines, set at 16:1 but measured when the car is at rest. It is believed both teams have made use of the thermal expansion of certain components to increase the compression ratio to as much as 18:1 when the car is running – equating to potentially as much as a 0

Winter Olympics 2026: what you need to know if following from Australia

The 2026 Winter Olympics officially open in the early hours of Friday 7 February, Australian time, with the opening ceremony at Milan’s San Siro stadium. The Games run for two weeks, culminating in the closing ceremony on 23 February in Verona at the same time of 6am AEDT.Several sports with packed schedules, including curling and ice hockey, begin a couple of days before the opening ceremony. Australia’s mixed curling team just missed out on qualifying, despite being ranked No 1 in December last year, while Australia won’t be represented in ice hockey in Italy. The ice hockey will be the final event of the Games with the men’s gold-medal game at 12

Team GB slider Matt Weston: ‘I don’t ever stand at the top aiming for anything less than gold’

The 28-year-old has rebuilt from crushing disappointment in the skeleton four years ago to become Britain’s best hope for Winter Olympic gold at Milano Cortina“Excitement is definitely the word I’d use,” Matt Weston says as the world No 1 and the reigning world champion in the skeleton looks ahead to the start of the Winter Olympics this week. Weston has just won the skeleton World Cup, winning five out of seven races and finishing second to his teammate, Marcus Wyatt, in the two others.The 28-year-old is clearly Team GB’s strongest hope for a gold medal at Milano Cortina and enthusiasm and belief pour out of him. “I’m just so excited,” he says. “The pressure is higher, it’s a bigger event, and there are a lot of eyes on me

Alcaraz makes strong case for being the best young male player tennis has seen | Tumaini Carayol

There were many things that could have rushed into Carlos Alcaraz’s mind following his attainment of a goal he has chased his entire life, the career grand slam, achieved by defeating Novak Djokovic at the Australian Open.He could have thought about the immense hard work and discipline it took to achieve all of this, his comically large, tight-knit team and family that faithfully follows him around the world or even how close he came to losing his semi-final two days earlier.Instead, as Alcaraz navigated the long line of post-slam interviews for the seventh time, while tightly holding the Norman Brookes Challenge Cup, his thoughts cast back to … his haters. “I’m thinking about the people who said I wouldn’t make it, who thought I’d come here to Australia and not even make it past the quarter-finals,” he told Eurosport Spain.“That I’d come here to Australia and not play good tennis