Just as King Canute proved to fawning courtiers that he could not control the tide, so King Juan Carlos demonstrated yesterday that a royal presence on the race course cannot whistle up an un-cooperative wind.

Harry Redknapp was playing golf with his son Jamie when the draw for the FA Cup sixth round was announced in February. Alone on the fairway they stood together, turned the loudspeaker on Jamie's mobile phone on and listened to the teams being drawn. When Portsmouth came out as the team away to Manchester United, Jamie says that Harry picked up his clubs and threw them – with the anger of a man who has just seen his best chance of a big trophy go up in smoke.

It is not easy to imagine Kevin Keegan as a rugby man: he would not have been a fat lot of use in the line-out, and even at scrum-half, a position specifically designed for the vertically challenged, his temperament would have worked against him. Remember the anti-Manchester United diatribe a few years back? Had he lost his rag like that against the All Blacks – or even against those amateur teams who draw their players from the less salubrious areas of Gloucester – he would have been left to contemplate life as a public laughing stock from his hospital bed.

The veteran cricket commentator Christopher Martin-Jenkins "corpsed" live on air yesterday after he referred to a batsman's "rod" on Radio 4's Test Match Special (TMS).

A double amputee is preparing to make Olympic history after he was given the green light to compete for a place in races against able-bodied athletes at this summer's Beijing games.

It is the pub quiz final – which team was the only one outside England to win the FA Cup? (Cardiff City in 1927); which team won the Cup then held it for seven years? (Portsmouth in 1939 – there were no further finals until 1946). Neither club has won since, so today's final has a distinctly old-fashioned feel to it.

Eamon Dunphy, Millwall midfielder turned acerbic controversialist, is always good value – and so it proved on last Sunday's South Bank Show (ITV 1). In one of his occasional sporting forays Lord Bragg of the Big Quiff, Carlisle United fan turned Arsenal season-ticket holder, was exploring David Peace's dark, gritty novel about Brian Clough's 44 days in charge at Leeds, The Damned United.

Holder and top seed Roger Federer scored a comfortable 6-3 6-3 win over unseeded Spaniard Fernando Verdasco at the Hamburg Masters yesterday to ease into the semi-finals.

Let us hope that he has not been relying too heavily on something so precarious. But the anguish in Henry Cecil was so obvious at York on Thursday that you have to fear otherwise.

That tough Welsh mare Lady Myfanwy (2.30) looks set for her 10th win from 11 starts this season in the ladies' open at Bredwardine, Herefordshire, today. The seven-year-old's sole defeat came in a Leicester hunter chase won by Minouchka and the winner and third (Rydal Park) have won five races between them since.

It is a confusing time of year. Steve Borthwick, the new England captain, played his final game for Bath at the Recreation Ground without realising it, while Lawrence Dallaglio, one of the half-dozen most celebrated players of the professional era, does not know for sure whether he will kiss goodbye to the game he loves at High Wycombe tomorrow or at Twickenham next weekend. Leicester, meanwhile, have flummoxed themselves by qualifying for a Premiership semi-final they publicly declared to be beyond them. Contrary to expectation, not least their own, they may yet retain their title.

England's Lee James, close to giving up golf and applying for a job as a postman last year, now finds himself with a chance to win the Irish Open at Adare Manor this weekend.

Scotland have failed in their bid to add Hull KR's Clint Newton to their World Cup squad, but have higher hopes of one of his team-mates. Newton, the son of the golfer, Jack Newton, was born in America and brought up in Australia. He was hoping a Scottish strand in his ancestry would qualify him for the tournament, but the link turned out to be a great-grandparent, rather than the required grandparent.

Everything seemed to be stacking up against Hampshire yesterday when their first innings ended abruptly, still 51 runs shy of Surrey's first innings total. Their England fast bowler Chris Tremlett was afflicted by back spasms which prevented him from batting but, more significantly, meant he could not bowl.

Much as Nottinghamshire had cause to feel pleased with themselves after seeing off Lancashire in under seven sessions, it would have been difficult even for them not to have some sympathy for the plight of their opponents.

Dwain Chambers yesterday signalled his intention to challenge the Olympic ban imposed on him by the British Olympic Association by seeking to contest the trials for the Beijing Games.

The Loren Show – the name the 21-year-old Spaniard Jorge Lorenzo gives to his on-track celebrations – continued in the French MotoGP at Le Mans yesterday with a stretcher, a wheelchair, a pair of crutches and a scooter as the supporting props for Fiat Yamaha.

There was a distinct absence of dancing in the streets when Andrew Strauss and Alastair Cook were reinstated as England's opening batsmen. Good players, sound individual Test records but as a first-wicket partnership they had been notably inauspicious. On the list of English double acts they were mixing with Cannon and Ball not Morecambe and Wise.

Andrew Flintoff now looks almost certain to play no part in England's Test series against New Zealand but Lancashire believe prompt action by their medical staff may have saved his summer by stopping his side strain turning into a more serious injury.

There are occasions when Test cricket appears to do little to promote itself and yesterday was one of them. Hardly a drop of rain fell on the famous old ground but only 55.4 of the scheduled 98.5 overs were completed as bad light ruined the second day of the first Test. Impenetrable cloud cover forced the players from the field on five occasions, much to the frustration of a sizeable and patient crowd.

Tottenham Hotspur's hopes of signing Samuel Eto'o appear doomed to failure as the Barcelona striker is earning £128,000 a week – after tax. Spurs chairman Daniel Levy is prepared to fly out to Spain to try to broker the deal and although the Premier League club believe they can cope with the transfer fee, and hope to negotiate Barça down from the £27m they are currently demanding, Eto's wages are prohibitive.

The Serie A title race, which once looked a stroll for Internazionale, reaches a gripping climax this afternoon with Roma hoping to seal an astonishing triumph. Luciano Spalletti's side have all but closed an 11-point deficit on Inter and victory at Catania today will give them the title if the defending champions fail to win at Parma.

Walter Smith, the Rangers manager, is hoping a hectic fixture schedule will actually work in his side's favour as they attempt to wrest the Scottish Premier League title from Celtic's grasp over the next week.

Jermaine Pennant was officially told by Rafael Benitez yesterday that he can leave Liverpool this summer as the club try to organise their resources to muster a serious bid for the Blackburn Rovers winger David Bentley. Pennant is a long-term target of Newcastle and Benitez is looking, at the very least, to recoup the £6.7m he spent on the player in 2006.

While the rest of the country tune into Wembley for this afternoon's 127th FA Cup final, four sides meet either side of the showpiece match, vying for the opportunity to follow Portsmouth and Cardiff to the famous stadium and earn a place in League One next season.