“Imagine Tiger Woods or Michael Schumacher starting their seasons not knowing where of if they’ll be playing this season It’s ridiculous. Snooker needs direction, and soon.”Others, not least O’Sullivan, see things differently. He accused Doyle this week of wanting snooker to suffer a crisis so that 110 Sport could profit. “He wants to see the game fall flat on its face so he can have the lot,” O’Sullivan said. “It’s just greed.”Doyle responded by pointing out that 110 Sport is running this week’s event, profitably and independently of the WPBSA, and has therefore been paying him “I love Ronnie,” he added “But he just lives in his own world. I only want the game to get the respect it deserves.”It may yet transpire that O’Sullivan quits that game, to help run a lingerie shop – catering for women and gay men – that he owns in Soho. “It’s called Viva La Diva and is due to open at the end of the year,” he said That’s snooker for you.Results, Digest, page 13.

Colin Edwards moved another step closer to claiming a second World Superbike championship title with a record-breaking performance at Imola yesterday. “But we’ve got tomorrow’s action to go and I’d like to think we could try a qualifying tyre and get a chunk of time off my best lap today.”We had a couple of tyres to try and a few new suspension settings and in general we’re happy with the progress today. At the very end of the session I tried a brand new superpole tyre but ran out of time and didn’t really get the final lap I was looking for.”I am pretty relaxed, no need to be anything else. I’m feeling more tension from watching the Ryder Cup golf on TV today.”. According to legend, German racer Heinz-Harald Frentzen learned the smooth driving that has become his trademark when pedalling a hearse for his father, an undertaker in Moenchengladbach Without it, the coffins tended to slide about. He just smiles when you mention it, but he also once lost a drive in the German F3 when team owner Bertram Schafer saw him opposite, locking a hearse to a halt in the snow outside his factory.

Last year he was sacked by Eddie Jordan, for reasons that have yet to become fully clear and probably won’t until their legal action finally hits the courts next year He then bounced back with the now-defunct Prost team. This year he got a ride with the struggling Arrows outfit, helping to move it forward until financial problems forced its withdrawal. Now he is back, ostensibly for this race only, in the Sauber Petronas team for whom he will drive full-time in 2003.For Frentzen, the return to the Swiss team is a motorsport tale of the prodigal son, for he drove for Peter Sauber’s sports car team in the Eighties and early Nineties before an unsuccessful attempt to strike out on his own in the Japanese F3000 series threatened to torpedo his career. Sauber picked him up when he entered F1, running him from 1994 to 1996 when Frentzen moved on for his unsuccessful stint with Williams as Damon Hill’s replacement. He remains the highest-scoring driver Sauber has ever employed, and races this weekend as the team’s quiet protest against a ludicrous penalty levied on regular driver Felipe Massa.