• Olympic silver medallist and Jemma Reekie leave South Africa
• Coach Andy Young denies major bust-up at altitude camp

The Olympic medallist Laura Muir and her GB teammate Jemma Reekie have flown home from South Africa after a shock falling out with their long-term coach Andy Young.

Young, who has helped guide Muir to 11 major medals – including a 1500m silver at Tokyo 2020 – in their 12 years together, denied reports of a major bust-up when asked by the Guardian. But he did hint that there had been disagreements over his behaviour at a recent warm-weather training camp in Potchefstroom.

• Bol’s lawyers want Sporting Integrity Australia to drop probe
• SIA and Australian Sports Drug Testing Laboratory silent

Sport Integrity Australia (SIA) and the government laboratory accused of botching Peter Bol’s anti-doping sample are staying silent as pressure builds and experts underscore the “potentially massive” global ramifications of the Olympian’s case.

Tokyo 2020 star and Commonwealth Games silver medallist Bol tested positive for synthetic erythropoietin (EPO), a performance-enhancing drug, in January. But last month his B-sample returned an atypical finding, allowing Bol to return to competition as SIA’s investigation continues.

• Legal team sent runner’s sample to two independent labs
• Letter to SIA demands ‘wrong’ investigation be dropped

Lawyers for the Australian Olympic star Peter Bol have blasted anti-doping body Sport Integrity Australia (SIA) as “completely wrong”, in a letter alleging that Bol’s sample which tested positive for synthetic erythropoietin (EPO) never actually contained the performance-enhancing drug.

The letter declares that Bol “is innocent and always has been”. It calls on SIA to publicly end the ongoing anti-doping investigation and admit its mistake.

Sebastian Coe, the president of the World Athletics Council, confirmed at a press conference on Thursday that the organisation has voted to exclude transgender women from female events. The ruling, which will be enforced from 31 March, applies to elite competition transgender athletes who have transitioned from male to female after going through puberty. The council also voted to cut the maximum amount of plasma testosterone for athletes

• World Athletics Council excludes transgender women from female events

• Ruling applies to athletes who have transitioned after puberty
• Levels of permitted plasma testosterone also reduced by half

World Athletics has confirmed that its council has voted to exclude transgender women from female events.

The ruling, which will be enforced from 31 March this year, applies to elite competition transgender athletes who have transitioned from male to female after going through puberty. The council also voted to cut the maximum amount of plasma testosterone for athletes with differences in sex development (DSD) in half, to 2.5 nanomoles per litre from five.

• Zane Robertson’s claims of mistaken injection rejected
• New Zealand runner announced retirement in February

The New Zealand distance runner Zane Robertson has been given an eight-year ban for doping after his claim that he was mistakenly injected with EPO after seeing doctors for a Covid jab was exposed.

Robertson, who won a bronze medal at the 2014 Commonwealth Games and has competed in the last two Olympics, initially tested positive for EPO at the Great Manchester Run in May last year – which left him facing a four-year punishment.

It is easily arguable that the most significant technique change in athletics was high jumping’s “Fosbury flop”. Dick Fosbury, who has died aged 76, invented the eponymous unconventional way of getting over the bar. In the words of the American coach John Tansley, “he literally turned his event upside down”, but besides the sport, the flop’s impact as a paradigm change was even more remarkable.

For millennia, humans had proceeded over obstacles in their paths one foot at a time. Even as the sport of athletics was refined, high jumpers basically followed the techniques of hurdlers and steeplechasers without considering that they, unlike those runners, did not have to continue to propel themselves forward after their jumps. The early “scissors” technique was essentially a hurdle of the bar; the later techniques, the “straddle” and various rolls, looked the way their names implied. High jumpers preceding Fosbury were tall but strong, like sprinters, in the upper body.

The American Olympic champion Dick Fosbury, who revolutionised the high jump with a technique that became known as the Fosbury Flop, has died aged 76. Fosbury shot to fame in 1968, when he won high-jump gold in Mexico City after a final that lasted more than four hours. He set what was at the time a new Olympic record of 2.24 metres, a feat that ensured his technique would become the standard. His technique involved jumping backwards and arching his back over the bar, thereby reversing and ripping up decades of high jump orthodoxy.

• Dick Fosbury, Olympic champion who changed high jump forever, dies aged 76

Oregon athlete who invented the Fosbury Flop won gold in Mexico City in 1968

The American Olympic champion Dick Fosbury, who revolutionised the high jump with a technique that became known as the Fosbury Flop, has died. He was 76.

His former agent, Ray Schulte, announced the news on Instagram.

Ten teasers on the Six Nations, Women’s Super League and skating

The famous Mexican ultramarathon festival known as Caballo Blanco (White Horse) pits outsiders against Indigenous runners in Urique, Chihuahua state. In its 20th year, the weekend attracts 1,200 people of all ages to compete in the races, the longest of which is a 50-mile ultramarathon. Many of the local Raramuris, or light-footed ones, test their renowned endurance against athletes while wearing simple sandals, known as huaraches and often made of discarded car tyres

Scottish Refugee Council chief executive says under government’s plans thousands of refugees would have been denied sanctuary

The head of the Scottish Refugee Council, Sabir Zazai, who himself arrived in the UK in the back of a lorry 23 years ago, has said Rishi Sunak’s illegal migration bill would have denied sanctuary to thousands of refugees such as him and Sir Mo Farah.

The home secretary, Suella Braverman, struggled to clarify on Wednesday whether the Olympic gold medallist Farah would have been deported as soon as he turned 18 years old under the latest immigration proposals.

• Fayaaz Caan receives backdated three-year ban until June 2024
• Caan guided Robbie Grabarz to silver medal at 2012 Olympics

A top British Olympic high jump coach has been banned for three years for misconduct after accepting that he mocked a para-athlete as “Limp-foot Christie”, described a team doctor as a “fuckwit” and repeatedly used industrial language towards his athletes.

Fayaaz “Fuzz” Caan, who guided Robbie Grabarz to a silver medal at the London 2012 Games, also accepted a charge that he told his athletes “a story about a former high jumper who was caught having sex in a lift when the door opened”. However he denied that it was inappropriate.

The former US 5000m champion believes that elite sports are guilty of erasing women’s bodies, leading to unnecessary problems for competitors

“If males got boobs during puberty there would be a free sports bra in every locker and we wouldn’t even be having this conversation,” says Lauren Fleshman, laughing but not joking. “When teams issue uniforms a sports bra should be part of that uniform.”

Fleshman, a former professional runner and elite college athlete with multiple national titles during her time at Stanford University, is now running a race to highlight how the sports industry fail women.

• Bol says he can challenge at world championships and Olympics
• Ban on Australian 800m record-holder was lifted after ‘atypical’ finding

Peter Bol says he has suffered permanent damage to his reputation after testing positive to EPO, but has vowed to push on and chase 800m gold at the Paris Olympics “to prove a lot of people wrong”.

The national record holder steadfastly maintains his innocence, despite being informed by Sport Integrity Australia (SIA) on 10 January that he had tested positive to performance-enhancing synthetic EPO.

• Hodgkinson dedicates win to former coach Joe Galvin
• Britain’s Jazmin Sawyers wins gold with 7m long jump

Keely Hodgkinson entered the European Indoor Championships fully aware of her status as the undisputed favourite, so far ahead of the rest of the field that probably only a mistake could have toppled her. The pressure that comes with excellence did not faze her at all. On Sunday she comfortably defended her European indoor title and further underlined her dominance over the continent.

Having marked her arrival at the top of the sport two years ago by winning her first European Indoor gold medal at 19, Hodgkinson is only the second woman to defend an 800m European indoor title.

• 21-year-old benchmark broken with time of 30min 00.86sec
• McColgan holds 5,000m, 10,000m and half-marathon records

Eilish McColgan broke Paula Radcliffe’s 21-year-old British women’s 10,000m record at the Sound Running Ten in California.

McColgan clocked 30min 00.86sec to win the event, shattering Radcliffe’s mark of 30:01.09 that she set when winning the European title in Munich in 2002.

• Muir is GB’s most decorated athlete at event after 1500m victory
• 800m champion Keely Hodgkinson sails into final

The greatest challenge of sustained sporting excellence is thriving even when things are not going entirely to plan, when the body is not feeling great or when the rest of the competition throws up a surprise. Throughout her storied career, Laura Muir has exemplified those qualities to the fullest, constantly finding a way to perform at a high level regardless of the challenges before her.

She did so again on Saturday, producing a typically gutsy performance to win a fifth European Indoor gold medal over 1500m and further demonstrate the supreme consistency that has marked her as one of Great Britain’s best athletes in recent times.

• Team GB’s Gourley second to Jakob Ingebrigtsen in 1,500m
• Belgium’s Nafi Thiam breaks world record in pentathlon

Neil Gourley struck silver as Great Britain opened their medal account on the second day of the European indoor athletics championships in Istanbul.

Gourley finished a close second to Norway’s Jakob Ingebrigtsen in the 1500m, while sprinter Daryll Neita (60m) and middle-distance runner Melissa Courtney-Bryant (3,000m) both collected bronzes.

• Sprinter also breaks British 60m record in heats before final win
• Keely Hodgkinson and Neil Gourley set national records

For British track and field fans there are few sights more thrilling than Dina Asher-Smith going supersonic. It’s not just her speed that rips the breath away, it’s the economy of movement and sense of imperious power as she glides clear of a world-class field.

No wonder a near sell-out crowd in Birmingham roared as Asher-Smith powered to a British 60m record of 7.03sec in her heat of the World Indoor Tour finals, before leaving world and European champions gasping behind her after winning the final in 7.05.