South Korea’s Kim Yuna shrugged off the weight of expectation from her homeland to win figure skating gold on Thursday but Canada’s Joannie Rochette won most hearts by overcoming heavy personal grief to claim a bronze medal. An extraordinary day of raw human emotion and unrelenting drama at the Vancouver Winter Olympics also saw Norwegian [...]

Torah Bright won Australia’s first gold of the Vancouver Games in women’s halfpipe Thursday, ending long-standing US domination of the sport. Bright’s winning score was 45.00 points, with 2006 champion Hannah Teter of America scoring 42.4 and her team-mate and 2002 gold medallist Kelly Clark on 42.2. “I was standing up there, and was like [...]

Britain’s Jenny Meadows has been promoted to the top tier of the lottery funding programme following her 800m bronze at the World Championships. Heptathlete Jessica Ennis, triple jumper Phillips Idowu and Paralympian David Weir also make the list of 67 on the programme for the 2009/2010 season. Meadows, 28, moves up from Development status with [...]