• China’s Eileen Gu second, Italy’s Flora Tabanelli third

• Briton, fourth again, says: ‘I really did have to go for it’

This time, Kirsty Muir must surely have believed that a Winter Olympic medal was in her grasp. But as a thrilling big air competition reached its denouement, an Italian with no anterior cruciate ligament in her right knee came down a 180‑feet ramp and drove a stake through the Briton’s heart.

It all looked so promising when the 21-year-old from Aberdeen landed a stunning left double 1620, with four and a half rotations, to move into the medal positions after two of the three rounds. However, with just four jumps of the competition remaining, Flora Tabanelli, who tore her ACL in November, did the same trick as Muir but only better to score 94.25 points to steal the bronze medal.

“We are top of the league,” sang the Coventry City supporters on loop after returning to the summit of the Championship with a victory that quelled the nagging noise surrounding Frank Lampard and his promotion-chasing side. Coventry, pace-setters for the majority of the season, had won just four league games since the end of November. But Haji Wright hit a timely hat-trick as Coventry again traded places with Middlesbrough, whose six-game winning run came to an abrupt halt, to renew belief in these parts.

Riley McGree pulled a goal back midway through the second half but from the restart Boro conceded a penalty that allowed Wright to claim the match ball. Coventry’s lead may be a single point but this felt a significant victory, psychologically as much as anything, their having taken just 16 from the previous available 39. “There have been quite a few questions asked and I think the lads should get a lot of credit,” Lampard said. “It was a big game, a really good game, which probably showed why we are one and two in the league. We have to take this as a bit of a template of what has to go into a game.”

The standing ovation from the Macclesfield fans at full time was deserved. Their side may have lost 1-0 on the night, their dream FA Cup run coming to an end just when a lucrative trip to West Ham’s London Stadium in the fifth round had veered into sight, but pride was the overriding emotion.

Ultimately it had taken an unfortunate own goal from Sam Heathcote, a PE teacher when not playing as a part-timer in the National League North, to nudge Brentford of the Premier League into the fifth round.

• Northampton coaches eased post-Lions burden

• England back played 34 games last season

England’s Tommy Freeman has revealed the extent of his mental struggles after the victorious British & Irish Lions tour of Australia at the end of a season when he exceeded the player welfare limits for the number of appearances.

Freeman played in 34 games last season – 19 for Northampton, nine for England and six for the Lions – and has spoken of a “built-up anxiety” as a result of the workload. The mandated limit is 30, but players were given dispensation for the Lions tour on the proviso they were allowed five weeks off on returning from Australia and missed the first two rounds of the 2025-26 season.

The former Ireland hooker on his rugby family, why Andy Farrell’s side need to rebuild and the physical toll of touring with the Lions

I have known Keith Wood for nearly 30 years and so it’s easy to talk about life and death long before we move on to rugby. But the game always provides context and, last Friday afternoon, the 54-year-old former Lions hooker and Irish captain drove to Cork to watch his youngest son, Tom, play for Ireland against Italy in the Under‑20 Six Nations.

The previous weekend Tom made his first-team debut for Munster to match his dad and the grandfather he never met. Gordon Wood played for Munster, as well as Ireland and the Lions, before he died, aged 50, in 1982. Keith was only 10 when that first tragedy occurred but he went on to play for the same three teams as his dad.

• Britain win mixed snowboard cross then mixed skeleton

• Eve Muirhead lauds ‘just incredible’ performance

Team GB chiefs have hailed Britain’s greatest day at a Winter Olympics after celebrating two gold medals, in the mixed snowboard cross and mixed team skeleton in Milano Cortina.

Super Sunday started with Charlotte Bankes and Huw Nightingale storming to a surprise victory in Livigno, with Bankes dramatically overtaking the French team with four turns remaining to take mixed snowboard cross gold.

• Group A: India, 175-7, bt Pakistan, 114, by 61 runs

• Opener’s 77 proves decisive on tricky pitch

A day of no handshakes, and for Pakistan many head shakes. India coasted to victory in what became global cricket’s most lucrative mismatch after a superlative innings from the opener Ishan Kishan skewed it definitively in their favour.

In its second half a game that was dramatically off and then on again became one where a parade of Pakistan batters were dramatically in and then out again. Chasing a target of 176 they were seven down before they even got halfway, and were eventually skittled for 114 to lose by 61 runs.

• Azu adds 200m gold to 60m title in Birmingham

• Issy Boffey wins 800m after Hodgkinson withdrawal

Amid a raft of high-profile absentees from Birmingham this weekend it was quite the surprise to see Jeremiah Azu’s name on the 200m start list for the UK Athletics Indoor Championships on Sunday.

The 200m is not contested internationally during the indoor season so elite athletes almost never race it, and Azu had already won the 60m title a day earlier. In an era where world-class athletes tend to wrap themselves in cotton wool for fear of injury it was unusual to see one so accomplished run an additional three times in three hours when there was no particular need.

• Wing to learn fate after red card in Scotland

• Immanuel Feyi-Waboso also out with injury

Steve Borthwick is set for a major selection headache as England seek to get their Six Nations campaign back on track against Ireland on Saturday with Henry Arundell facing a suspension after his red card against Scotland.

England have promised an “honest and emotional” review into their dismal Calcutta Cup defeat before Borthwick contemplates team changes to face Ireland and he is likely to be without Arundell after tournament organisers confirmed he will face a disciplinary hearing on Tuesday. Arundell’s first yellow was shown for not releasing after a covering tackle on Rory Darge, the second for taking out Kyle Steyn in the air.

• Wales 12-54 France

• Wales slump to 13th consecutive Six Nations defeat

We are running out of ways to describe this. Another match in what used to be rugby’s most passionate cauldron, another dismantling, another humiliation.

France are good, really good, but we might as well have been in Paris, so loud was the travelling support, so gaping the rows of empty seats. The official attendance was just shy of 60,000. Maybe, but it looked and felt a good deal less than that.