■Hockey
Patrick Roy to retire
Colorado's Patrick Roy is retiring, ending the 18-year career of one of the greatest goaltenders in NHL history. Roy was to make the announcement at a news conference yesterday, team spokesman Jean Martineau said. A four-time Stanley Cup champion, Roy leaves as the NHL's career leader in victories with 551 and games played with 1,029. He also is the all-time leader in playoff victories, games played and shutouts. Roy is still considered one of the best goalies in the game at age 37, but he has been bothered by arthritic hips the past few years. He also has made it clear he wants to follow the career of his oldest son, Jonathan, a goalie who will start playing in Quebec this fall.
■ Soccer
Ono `Player of the Year'
Japan midfielder Shinji Ono has been voted Asian Player of the Year for last year after helping Dutch club Feyenoord win the UEFA Cup, the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) said yesterday. The 23-year-old edged out Japan team mate Junichi Inamoto (Fulham), South Korea striker Ahn Jung-hwan (Shimizu S-Pulse) and China midfielder Li Tie (Everton) to become the third Japanese player to win the award since its introduction in 1994. Former Japan captain Masami Ihara won it in 1995 and Parma midfielder Hidetoshi Nakata received the award in 1997 and 1998. Ono will be presented with the AFC trophy on June 4 when Feyenoord play his former J-League club Urawa Reds in a friendly at Saitama Stadium. He becomes the first person to win both the AFC Player of the Year and Young Player of the Year awards, having won the latter in 1998.
■ Baseball
Coach attacker pleads guilty
A man who pleaded innocent in the father-son beating of a Kansas City Royals base coach changed his plea to guilty Tuesday and will be sentenced June 18. William Ligue Jr. was charged with two counts of aggravated battery last September after leading his teenage son onto the field and beating coach Tom Gamboa at a Chicago White Sox game in Comiskey Park. Ligue's son, released to his mother's custody, was sentenced to five years' probation and 30 hours of community service. Before his sentencing, Gamboa advocated probation rather than prison. The change of plea was unexpected and not part of a plea agreement, said Marcy Jensen, spokeswoman for the Cook County state's attorney's office. She said his sentence could range from probation to five years in prison.
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