Twice Olympic 10,000 metres champion Haile Gebrselassie set a course record in the Amsterdam marathon yesterday but failed to better the two-year-old world record. The 32-year-old Ethiopian, who retired from the track after last year's Athens Olympics, clocked two hours six minutes 20 seconds in his second race and first win over 42.195 kms. Kutre Dulecha completed an Ethiopian double by winning the women's race in 2:30:06. Kenyan Paul Tergat, second to Gebrselassie over 10,000 metres at two Olympic Games and two world championships, set the men's world mark of 2:04:55 in Berlin on Sept. 28, 2003.

Cricket

The ICC World XI were 25 for two in their second innings, chasing a daunting 355 for victory, at the close on the third day of the super test at the Sydney Cricket Ground yesterday. The World XI lost Graeme Smith and Virender Sehwag cheaply after they had fought their way back into the match following one of the worst batting collapses in Australian cricket history. The home team lost their last nine wickets for just 47 runs to be all out for 199, their worst collapse on home soil since they lost 9-40 against England in 1888 and their worst anywhere in the world since they lost 9-36 at Old Trafford in 1956.

Rugby

French club rugby set a national crowd record for a regular-season match in any sport as Stade Francais inflicted the first defeat of the season on European champions Stade Toulousain at the Stade de France yesterday. The stadium was packed with 79,454 people, comfortably beating the previous national club record held by Olympique Marseille of 57,603 supporters for a soccer match against Paris Saint-Germain at the Stade Velodrome in 1998. The Paris team won 29-15, scoring two tries through hooker Dimitri Szarzewski and prop Pieter de Villiers with centre Juan Martin Hernandez adding five penalties and two conversions.

Horse racing

Melbourne Cup hopeful Mummify has been destroyed after the gelding shattered a limb following a third-place finish in Saturday's Caulfield Cup, the Australian Broadcasting Corp (ABC) reported. Mummify, who won the race in 2003 and was made favourite for the Melbourne Cup the same year before being scratched on the day of the race, broke down 300 metres after the post on Saturday and a veterinary check revealed the six-year-old had broken a sesamoid bone in his near foreleg.

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