Brothers in arms
BROTHERS Hockey Club looks set to surprise in the 2017 Cairns Hockey season after completing an undefeated pre-season in men’s and women’s Presidents Cup matches. Armed with several new overseas signings, both Brothers sides beat reigning premiers Souths in the final matches of the round-robin tournament. Brothers play Trinity Stingers while Souths take on Saints in Round 1 action, starting March 4.
Pearson’s big tick
SALLY Pearson says her “tentative’’ winning Queensland titles run yesterday is no indication of how advanced she is in her world championships bid. Pearson won the 100m hurdles final at the Queensland Sports and Athletics Centre in Brisbane in a time of 13.57sec into a 0.9m/ sec headwind. Pearson, like all of Australia’s London world titles hopefuls, has until July to post a qualifying time, 12.98 for the 100m hurdles, but is confident she will do it “in the next few races’’.
Frosty warms to task
FORD star Mark Winterbottom has described the pain of losing his Supercars’ crown as like a “dagger in you”, but has vowed to fight back against Triple Eight this year. After winning his maiden title in 2015, Winterbottom limped to sixth behind Red Bull rival Shane van Gisbergen last year. Winterbottom said it had been an “average” finish to his title defence, but he and the Prodrive Racing team were motivated to win it back. “I worked so hard for so many years to get it (the title) and we just weren’t good enough last year,” he said.
Poole wins it all
IT was a win 10 years in the making and one which Matt Poole described as his “Super Bowl, Wimbledon and grand final” all wrapped into one. But the surf ironman champion isn’t sure if he will be back to defend the NutriGrain title he dedicated a decade of his life to winning. Success in other ocean sports — including stand-up paddling and the Molokai distance race — along with uncertainty as to whether the Nutri-Grain series will return to its old format of four or five separate rounds have left Poole undecided about his future on the sand. “It’s a lot of work for a three-day event,” Poole said. The series began on Friday and finished yesterday at Cronulla, unlike previous series which were run over multiple weekends.