Sport in brief
CURLING Murrayfield’s Gina Aitken and Bruce Mouat will both face testing Russian opposition in their opening fixtures at the Winter Universiade in Almaty, Kazakhstan today,
Aitken takes on European champion Victoria Moiseeva, and the Scot admitted: “It’s a tough game to start us off!”
Mouat will play Alexey Timofeev, and both are full of confidence after reaching the latter stages of last week’s German Masters. Mouat stunned former world champion Thomas Ulsrud before losing to the eventual winner Steffen Walstad, while Timofeev was beaten in the semis by Perth’s Kyle Smith. CYCLING Glasgow’s Katie Archibald completed a hat-trick of British titles after narrowly winning yesterday’s Points Race at the National Track Championships in Manchester,
The Olympic team pursuit champion had already won Friday’s 3000m individual pursuit and Saturday’s Scratch Race, although she had to battle to match Dan Bigham as a triple gold medallist.
Neah Evans led yesterday’s Points Race after five of the eight sprints, but Archibald pulled out all the stops to take gold on 42 points, with Emily Nelson second on 37 and Evans fading to third on 34. The flying Scot also took silver behind Sophie Capewell in Saturday night’s Keirin final. SQUASH Scottish No.1 Alan Clyne withstood a spirited challenge from Welshman Joel Makin to retain his Edinburgh Sports Club Open title last night, Clyne had survived an epic fivegame, 73-minute semi-final with second seed Adrian Waller on Saturday night but still had enough energy to overturn an early deficit after Makin took the opening game yesterday. The 30-year-old Inverness player rallied to win 6-11, 11-8, 11-7, 11-7 as Makin narrowly failed to capitalise on his semi-final upset of top seed and five-time champion Daryl Selby.
Gloucester’s Julianne Courtice claimed the ladies trophy with an 11-3, 11-8, 9-11, 11-5 victory over Egypt’s Mena Hamed. German top seed Sina Wall exited in the quarter-finals to former Scottish No.1 Lisa Aitken, who was playing her first tournament since 2014 following injury.