Trial of six-times champion jockey continues

kieren_fallon Six-times champion jockey Kieren Fallon won a race despite riding with "extreme coolness", the Old Bailey has heard.

The race on Beauvrai was one of two races where Fallon won but which top racing steward Ray Murrihy said he had "concerns" about.

He told the 2 million race-fixing trial that he felt Fallon had questions to answer about the way he rode the horse and another winner, Barking Mad.

The prosecution alleges Fallon was involved in a plot to allow horses to lose so a crooked betting syndicate could win money.

Mr Murrihy picked out 13 races ridden by Fallon and fellow jockeys Darren Williams and Fergal Lynch which he said he would have held a steward`s inquiry on.

Jockeys Kieren Fallon, 42, formerly of Newmarket, Cambridgeshire, but now of Tipperary, Ireland, Fergal Lynch, 29, of Boroughbridge, North Yorkshire, and Darren Williams, 29, of Leyburn, North Yorkshire, deny the conspiracy between December 2002 and August 2004.

Shaun Lynch, 38, of Belfast, Miles Rodgers, 38, of Silkstone, South Yorkshire, and Philip Sherkle, 42, of Tamworth, Staffordshire, also plead not guilty.

Rodgers also denies concealing the proceeds of crime.

All the defendants are on bail. adidas sport shoes



Motocross: Lite performance costs win

motocross Nobody could come close to New Zealand's Josh Coppins, except his team-mate Daryl Hurley, when the annual Trans-Tasman Oceania Motocross war was waged in Australia at the weekend.

And, as expected, nobody could touch Kiwi women's world champion Katherine Prumm in the women's battles.

However, despite the total dominance of Motueka's Coppins (Yamaha), Hawera's Hurley (Suzuki) and Auckland's Prumm (Kawasaki), the Australian team retained the Oceania Trophy, the Bledisloe Cup of motocross.

While Coppins and Hurley finished 1-2 in the prestigious MX1 class, also finishing in that order in the overall standings, it was in the junior and Pro Lites classes that Australia notched up a winning total of points.

It was the same as last season, when the Oceania Motocross was staged at Taupo, with New Zealand winning the prestige MX1 class but being beaten in the small bike classes.

"I really enjoyed myself this weekend," said Coppins. "I set the fastest time in practice and qualifying on Saturday and stayed out of trouble on Sunday and managed to win all races.

"The track was fast and technical which I liked and we had good weather with some wind in the morning making it a bit dusty.

"New Zealand did well in the Pro class and in the women's class, with a great ride from Katherine Prumm, but we really struggled in the Junior classes, which I guess is where we lost out to Australia. I love doing this event and am going to stay on a little longer in Oz for a bit of a holiday before heading back home to Motueka."

Many of the New Zealand riders were critical of the track at Barrabool, Victoria, a location that had not seen much moisture in the past few months, creating clouds of dust and a rock-hard riding surface.

"It was not a good day for the Kiwis," agreed Rotorua's Michael Phillips, who rode a Kawasaki in the Pro Lites division, finishing sixth and seventh in his first two outings and then 11th among the Pro Lites riders in the all-capacities feature race.

"The track was horrible," he said.

Hurley said the New Zealand team "was on the back foot before racing began" on Sunday, after the juniors were well beaten on Saturday, leaving the New Zealand team 39 points behind their Australian rivals.

NDS Charger | Piercing | Racquetball | Flashlights "Then when Damien King (Cambridge, Yamaha) and Luke Burkhart (Hawera, Suzuki) crashed in separate incidents [in their Pro Lites races], that really damaged our chances," said Hurley. "It was really windy, dry and dusty. I guess they haven't had much rain there. They were certainly very different conditions from what we've had at home lately."



Art goes to street in skateboard exhibit

skateboard Along the spectrum of high and low art, the "Deck" show unabashedly aims downward.

Literally. As in, all the way to the feet.

Instead of stuffy old canvas, the artwork in this second annual exhibit is created on skateboard decks (generally without the wheels). Organized by artists Mike Goodwin and Kenneth Richardson, a k a the Molten Brothers, the 2007 version features 200 local and national artists, some with roots in skater culture, but many without.

"There's a good chance I may never have done artwork on a skate deck," says Brent Bond, a Tempe printmaker and photographer. "But I think it holds its own challenges, and it's a fun approach for artists instead of always having to be so serious."

Bond, 41, used a 100-year-old image of Jesus on a board with a new commandment: "Thou shalt grind." But double helix design alludes to the actual title, Genetically Inclined to Grind.

"It's kind of this perverse marriage of science and religion," he says.

The variety of the work, which will be on display for the First Fridays art tour this weekend, is amazing. There is plenty of graffiti-style work, but also more unexpected, event sculptural imagery. One artist has mounted a flat-screen monitor on a deck showing live images from three security cameras. Another has cut his board into squares and reassembled it as a mesh, then twisted it into a curlicue.

Dave Quan, a 30-year-old Phoenix artist who started doing comic-book illustrations, created a tongue-in-cheek salute to skater chicks with the tagline, "Pose for me, poser!"

"My piece is basically a tribute to the girls who would get a skateboard and hang out with the boys," he says. "There's always a hot girl there, and it's not on her skating merits at all. . . . They were the posers."

Lest you think it's just a misogynistic dig, Quan says he was no better in his days as a skater.

"I was pretty much a poser, too," he says. "I wasn't a very good skater kid, but I tried to be. I was always hurting my ankles. I was kind of a wuss about it."