SONIA O'SULLIVAN was beaten into second place by Hotesa Shura of Ethopia in the 1,500 metres at a race meeting in Nuremberg last night.

Olympic champion and 100 metres world record holder Donovan Bailey beat Britain's former champion Linford Christie with a time of 9.94 seconds, a 10th of a second off his record, set in Atlanta.

Christie, Olympic champion in Barcelona in 1992, recorded a time of 10.05 seconds at the "Live `97" meeting in the southern German city.

. British 400-metre runner Phylis Smith could yet revive her career, despite her revelations earlier this week that she was determined to retire, following a dispute over the size of her National Lottery grant.

Smith pulled out of Britain's 4x400m squad for next week's Europa Cup in Munich and threatened to retire, after being handed a grant of just £2,000.

But, if there is an appeal process available to increase the size of her grant, then she could carry on racing.

She has not trained for the last week, but the 31-year-old admitted: "Obviously there is room for changing my mind. It is just a shame that it had to come to this.

"It wasn't a knee jerk reaction. To say that I was worth just £2,000 was a slap in the face," added Smith, who set a new British indoor record this winter.

Smith had a grant of £4,500 from the Sports Aid Foundation last year and was hoping that the Lottery grant would be around the same amount.