■ Baseball
White Sox ptcher suspended
Chicago White Sox right-hander Bartolo Colon was suspended for five games Wednesday for hitting Baltimore's Jerry Hairston with a pitch earlier this month. Chicago manager Jerry Manuel was suspended one game by Bob Watson, baseball's vice president in charge of discipline. Colon hit Hairston with his second pitch in the top of the ninth inning on May 15, right after both benches had been warned. Colon was responding to Baltimore reliever Jorge Julio, who plunked Magglio Ordonez with a pitch in the eighth. Both Colon and Manuel were ejected from the game.
■ Cricket
Mendis to be kept on
The Sri Lankan cricket board said yesterday it has retained the services of interim coach Duleep Mendis for a tour of the West Indies next month. Mendis, a former captain of the Sri Lankan national team, took over as coach from Dav Whatmore last month after the Board of Control for Cricket in Sri Lanka decided not to renew Whatmore's contract. Mendis was appointed as interim coach pending the cricket board elections on June 6, after which a decision will be made on whom to appoint permanently to the post.
■ Football
Playoff scheme unchanged
The NFL isn't adding any teams to this season's playoffs, and it is determined to get a franchise in the Los Angeles area. Those were the main developments from the two-day owners meetings that concluded Wednesday with no vote on a proposal to increase the postseason field from 12 to 14. Kansas City withdrew the proposal because it lacked enough support after the league's competition committee unanimously rejected the plan to add two more wild-card teams. The other main subject of discussion was placing a team in Los Angeles, which has been without an NFL franchise since after the 1994 season.
■ Cricket
Damien Fleming retires
Former test bowler Damien Fleming retired from cricket on Thursday after being named a senior coach at the Australian Cricket Academy. Fleming has agreed to a two-year contract to work at the Adelaide-based academy with head coach Bennett King and two other senior coaches. Fleming replaces Wayne Phillips who has been appointed South Australian state coach. Fleming said he agonized over his decision to retire after 15 years of playing first-class and international cricket. "It definitely wasn't a black-and-white decision," he said.
Agencies
Bayer 04 Leverkusen go into today’s match at TSG 1899 Hoffenheim stung from their first league defeat in 16 months. Leverkusen were beaten 3-2 at home by RB Leipzig before the international break, the first loss since May last year for the reigning league and cup champions. While any defeat, particularly against a likely title rival, would have disappointed coach Xabi Alonso, the way in which it happened would be most concerning. Just as they did in the Supercup against VfB Stuttgart and in the league opener to Borussia Moenchengladbach, Leverkusen scored first, but were pegged back. However, while Leverkusen rallied late to
If all goes well when the biggest marathon field ever gathered in Australia races 42km through the streets of Sydney on Sunday, World Marathon Majors (WMM) will soon add a seventh race to the elite series. The Sydney Marathon is to become the first race since Tokyo in 2013 to join long-established majors in New York, London, Boston, Berlin and Chicago if it passes the WMM assessment criteria for the second straight year. “We’re really excited for Sunday to arrive,” race director Wayne Larden told a news conference in Sydney yesterday. “We’re prepared, we’re ready. All of our plans look good on
The lights dimmed and the crowd hushed as Karoline Kristensen entered for her performance. However, this was no ordinary Dutch theater: The temperature was 80°C and the audience naked apart from a towel. Dressed in a swimsuit and to the tune of emotional music, the 21-year-old Kristensen started her routine, performed inside a large sauna, with a bed of hot rocks in the middle. For a week this month, a group of wellness practitioners, called “sauna masters,” are gathering at a picturesque health resort in the Netherlands to compete in this year’s Aufguss world sauna championships. The practice takes its name from a
When details from a scientific experiment that could have helped clear Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva landed at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the leader of the organization’s reaction was unequivocal: “We have to stop that urgently,” he wrote. No mention of the test ever became public and Valieva’s defense at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) went on without it. What effect the information could have had on Valieva’s case is unclear, but without it, the skater, then 15 years old, was eventually disqualified from the 2022 Winter Olympics after testing positive for a banned heart medication that would later