On Friday, he lost his door. Yesterday, as Petter Solberg ruefully put it, Sebastien Loeb drove as if he'd lost his mind.

The leader after day one of the New Zealand round of the World Rally Championship, Solberg couldn't have said anything more meaningful at the end of Friday's press conference.

He warned that Loeb "would leave his brain in the service area and it will be a maximum attack ... expect incredible times from him."

Solberg was right. For the second day in a row, the flying Frenchman made all the headlines.

On Friday, he lost control of the rear end of his Citroen and smacked into a bridge railing, destroying the left-hand door. Loeb lost 1m 21s and dropped to eighth, about 1m 40s behind the leaders.

He started yesterday seventh on the road but, by service, had taken a chunk of time from the leaders.

After three morning stages, he'd reduced the deficit to just 1.8s behind fifth-placed Mikko Hirvonen and 38.5s behind the leader.

By the end of the day, he was just 5.1s off the lead behind fellow Frenchman Sebastien Ogier, having made up over a minute and a half over a day and a half and 1m 14s yesterday.

From losing a door one day, to opening the door to success the next - this was the stuff of rally legend.

Loeb's effort in making up that amount of ground during a single day's racing is rarely seen in today's hi-tech rallying where increments are gained minutely; painstakingly.

Even Loeb saw his day's work as something special.

"I think it was my greatest rally day, it was incredible," said a happy Loeb. "We drove flat out everywhere in every stage. It's incredible when you can make up time like that. It really was my best day of rallying.

"I always try and go as fast as possible. I was taking more risks first on the road Friday [when he was acting as a kind of gravel-sweeper for following cars] than I was today. It was motivating today to see the difference reduce during the day.

"I went flat out trying to make up the gap. It was really good, difficult to stay concentrating and knowing you can't make a mistake because you're going flat out. But I am very happy."

During the first pass in the morning, through Te Akau Coast, Loeb was on the ragged edge with no room for error.

Said team-mate Dani Sordo: "It's what we have come to expect from Sebastien, it's just what he does."

Meanwhile, early leader Solberg is now in fourth place.

"I was looking forward to it but, when I saw the stage, there was too much gravel, not like yesterday. And in stage 12 there was even more gravel and if I backed off so did everyone else. Loeb was just going fast back in seventh and making up time," said Solberg.

In the afternoon, Loeb continued to cut a swathe through the field, almost taking time at will during each stage; heading to the final run through Hampton Downs before the trip back to Auckland.

The other drivers will be scratching their collective heads to come up with a cunning plan to halt Loeb's march towards another win. He will start second on today's final assault on Kiwi roads behind Ogier.

In third will be a frustrated Jari-Matti Latvala. "I am disappointed. I drove as well as I can. Third is all right but we need to do something, we are losing too much time."

Ogier will have one eye in the mirror to see how fast and how soon Loeb will attack.

"I pushed as hard as I could during the day. I think it will hard for me to be faster than today," said Ogier.

Tucked in behind Latvala are Sordo, Solberg and Mikko Hirvonen.

Hayden Paddon remained on course, continuing to lead the PWRC class with fellow New Zealanders Chris West and Dean Summer just behind.

Paddon, West and Summer are on top of the PWRC table and in 15th, 16th and 17th respectively overall with Emma Gilmour poised 7s back in 18th. The leading Kiwi to that stage, Mark Tapper came unstuck during stage 15 when he put his car on his roof and had to retire.

"It's been a good couple of days and we've kept our noses clean," said Paddon.

"We haven't been pushing too hard as the conditions haven't allowed that. I've been driving within myself and will do so during the final day as I'm over four minutes ahead of the international competitors. To get maximum points will be great for our championship hopes."

The most common terms typed into search engine Google this year show Kiwis are a diverse bunch interested in murder, boxing, tragedy, science fiction and naked women.

Kiwi spammer Lance Atkinson has been fined US$15.1 million (NZ$21m) by a United States judge for his part in a spamming operation.

Atkinson, who now lives in Queensland, had admitted his involvement in a spam operation that sent millions of email messages marketing "male-enhancement" drugs and weight loss pills to computer users around the world. He was fined $100,000 in the High Court at Christchurch last December.

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) took its own action against Atkinson, whom it identified as the operation's ringleader.

It said that Atkinson and US resident Jody Smith recruited spammers from around the world and sent billions of e-mail messages directing consumers to websites operated by an affiliate program called Affking.

"The defendants' spam messages deceptively marketed (the drugs) in violation of federal law.

Thieves have hacked into payment machines at the Downtown carpark in central Auckland and stolen the credit-card details of thousands of people.

The matter came to light after banking systems pinpointed the council-owned carpark as a common point of purchase on fraudulent card transactions.

It is unclear whether the thieves attached a skimming device to the payment machines or accessed the devices' credit-card database internally, in which case those responsible could be overseas.

One of the questions surrounding legendary New Zealand racehorse Phar Lap's last race may have been answered by an Auckland physicist.

Dr Graeme Putt, of Auckland University, applied physics to footage of Phar Lap races to give new insight into the chestnut gelding's feats.

Kiwi pop star Ladyhawke has scored big at the New Zealand Music Awards, taking home six Tuis - including Album and Single of the Year.

Kiwi internet users have a love affair with illegal downloading and any changes to copyright law will fail to deter many, a survey has revealed.

A study of more than 1000 New Zealand internet users aged between 18 and 70 found every respondent had downloaded copyrighted material at least once in the past year.

Of those, 82 per cent copied music, while half downloaded software and 35 per cent movies.

Nearly one in five respondents said nothing could deter them from illegal downloading. One said attempts to legislate against illegal downloading were like "trying to stop an avalanche with a stick".

By BARRY LICHTER - Sunday Star Times
02/08/2009

TAB cost cutting is about to hit racing's Trackside television channel with scores of redundancies, the axing of most shows, and reduced raceday coverage.

And the impending cuts have industry leaders worried the channel, racing's shop window, will become a turnoff for viewers with little more than wall-to-wall racing from obscure overseas venues.

THE 1981 anti-tour movement leader John Minto has had a "friendly" meeting in South Africa with the Springbok captain whose games he was trying to disrupt.

Minto, on his first trip to South Africa, said captain Wynand Claassen told him the anti-tour protests had had "a very positive effect" on South Africa by helping to end apartheid.

Claassen's view was that the protests in New Zealand made white South Africa "realise for the first time that the system could not go on", Minto said.

The meeting at Claassen's Pretoria home was amicable. "He is an intelligent person," said Minto, who was accompanied on his two-week trip last month by a film crew from TV3's 60 Minutes programme, to screen tomorrow.

Claassen and the other members of the 1981 Springbok team were planning to have a reunion in New Zealand in 2011 during the Rugby World Cup. "I invited him to come and have a cup of tea with me," said Minto, who lives near Auckland's Eden Park, scene of violent protests during the tour.

Minto, now in his late 50s, also had a meeting with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, one of the leading campaigners in South Africa against apartheid.

However, Minto said that the end of apartheid had not brought economic justice to the people of South Africa. "Things are really quite desperate worse than I'd imagined," he said. The unemployment rate was 40% and poverty was rampant.

The African National Congress, the leading anti-apartheid movement and the governing party for the past 15 years, had gone quickly from liberator to oppressor, he said. Its neo-liberal economic policy offered no hope for the majority. Although self-help social movements were developing in the shanty towns, the government's economic policy would not change under new president Jacob Zuma.

On Friday May 1st Sunline lost her battle with the crippling hoof disease laminitis.

Stephen McKee, who trained Sunline in partnership with his father Trevor, said the mare had fought intense pain in her final days.

"She had her moments. Some weeks she'd look good, other weeks she'd slip back. Her last couple of weeks she'd really gone downhill and she'd spent a lot of time laying down," McKee said.

"Experts said she wouldn't have any quality of life in the paddock and her foot would have rotted, so there was no other option."

United States veterinarian Ric Redden, who is considered the world's premier expert on laminitis, was in Cambridge for a three-day seminar last week and agreed to inspect Sunline in Auckland on Monday.

McKee said an X-ray Redden took showed blood flow was being cut off to her hooves and bone in her feet was dying.

It's an awful end for such a great mare.

I saw her win her first race and like everyone else started to marvel at her toughness and courage as the wins kept rolling in. My personal favorite race was her second Doncaster win in 2002. She was the top weight with 58 kilos on her back and she shouldn't have won that race. In fact she looked beaten with the finish line approaching. Then she got up. I was sitting on the couch with my grand daughter and we were both screaming the house down as Sunline came home and won it. It was the most incredible race I ever saw her win.

After she had won 2 Cox Plate's I followed her to Melbourne in 2001 for her tilt at a third Cox Plate and then again for the 2002 Cox Plate for what was to be her final race.

I was so awestruck by her that when she raced in New Zealand I couldn't do the photofinish duties and handed those meetings over to by business partner.

I'd go and watch her and try to get that one great photo of her that summed her up. It wasn't easy. But finally as she went past the finish line in Melbourne on the first lap of her last race I got that one photo that I was after.

Here is that photo: