Outside Edge

The next Olympics will be held in London in 2011. The Job Skills Olympics, that is. Britain scooped three golds at this year's event in Calgary, Canada: Ritz chef Adam Smith, for cooking; Richard Sagar, for electrical installations; and Mark Nevin, for painting and decorating. They should be able to ensure the real Olympics start on time. Engineers at the University of Warwick have devised a car that runs on chocolate fat and wine dregs. It will compete at Brands Hatch next month in a Formula Three race, and can reach 60mph in 2.5sec with a top speed of 135mph. It features a steering wheel made of carrots. But no, it doesn't have an arty choke, and we're hoping it doesn't spring any leaks.

6.13

Seconds it took Sarah the cheetah to run the 100 metres in Cincinnati, making her the fastest land-based mammal on Earth at over 60mph. The previous record was 6.19sec, set by South African cheetah Nyana in 2001. Beat that, Usain.

Damp champs of the week

Like policemen, our British sports stars seem to be getting younger. First Mike Perham became the youngest person to sail solo around the world at 17. Now Jack Moule has won the British Amateur Jetski Championships at the age of 15, and will take part in the world event in Arizona next month. The youngest competitor on Willen Lake in Milton Keynes, he took the sport up only two years ago but beat competitors three times his age. Meanwhile, Australia's Jessica Watson, 16, didn't have the best of starts in her bid to beat Perham's record. She took her 32-foot sloop Ella's Pink Lady for a trial off the Queensland coast but collided with a 63,000-tonne bulk carrier. Now that's Down Under.

Good week for

Steve Peat, won the downhill gold medal at the Mountain Bike World Championships in Canberra after four previous silvers in the event... Kilkenny, won a fourth successive All-Ireland hurling final to equal Cork's record in 1940s... and Nick Dempsey, the first Briton in 18 years to win the World Windsurfing Championship in Weymouth.

Bad week for

Frank Evans, Britain's oldest matador at 67, has had his book tour cancelled by Waterstones due to concerns about animal rights protesters... British basketball team, lost all three group games in their first appearance at the European Championships... and Abingdon United, who want to change their new, yellow away kit after striker Anaclet Odhiambo was chased and stung by a wasp.

Nutty pursuits of the week

You would expect greater maturity. Seventeen members of the University of Tennessee Campus Crusade for Christ were arrested in Knoxville for playing a "glorified game of tag" after their last bible study meeting. And at Harvard, students have been applying mathematical principles to squirrel-fishing: tying a peanut to a piece of string and hoisting the critter into the air as it hangs on to the bait. Smart squirrels learn to chew through the string first. But in Britain there are far more grown-up pursuits on offer.

At the World Black Pudding Throwing Championships in Ramsbottom, Lancashire this weekend, you have to knock Yorkshire puddings off lampposts in a War of the Roasties.

a.tong@independent.co.uk