British long jump hero Greg Rutherford said he's facing his "biggest challenge" since taking London Olympics gold Thursday when he goes up against his two predecessors at Shanghai's Diamond League meet. Rutherford, one of seven current Olympic champions in Shanghai, will face Beijing 2008 winner Irving Saladino and America's Dwight Phillips, the Athens 2004 gold-medallist who has been sidelined with injury for the last two years.

By Gennady Fyodorov MOSCOW (Reuters) - Metal detectors for spectators will be installed along the entire marathon course at the world athletics championships in August as part of increased security following last week's Boston bombings, Russian organisers said. "It definitely has given us an extra headache," long-serving Russian athletics chief Valentin Balakhnichyov said in reference to the blasts that killed three people and injured 176 at the Boston Marathon.

Liverpool's friendly against Melbourne Victory in Australia this July sold out on the first day of going on sale, with 90,000 fans expected, the club said Thursday. Victory officials said all public tickets had been snapped up for the match featuring the English premier league team at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on July 24. Of these, 33,000 went in the first 33 minutes of going on sale. "The interest in this game has been phenomenal and just goes to show how big a club like Liverpool FC is globally," Richard Wilson, managing director of the A-League side said.

English Premier League football club West Ham United are to become the main tenants of London's Olympic Stadium, it was announced on Friday. The 80,000 capacity stadium in east London, which hosted the athletics and the ceremonies at last year's Olympics and Paralympics, will be converted to a 54,000-seater venue in time for the 2016-2017 football season. The long-term future of the £429 million ($648-million, 503-million-euro) venue in Stratford was supposed to have been decided before the Games but a series of legal challenges delayed the process.