■Soccer
Rangers want Khizanishvili
Georgian defender Zura Khizanishvili is expected to sign with Rangers on Thursday, the Scottish club said. Khizanishvili, who played with Dundee last season, was named the Scottish Premier League's young player of the year. "[He] will be at Ibrox on Thursday for talks to firm up his contract details and for a medical,'' a Rangers spokesman said Wednesday. Khizanishvili, 21, will probably replace Lorenzo Amoruso. Amoruso is close to signing with Blackburn of England's Premier League. Rangers won the Scottish treble last season.
■ Baseball
Fans hit with errant bat
A 15-year-old girl and a 4-year-old boy were hurt when a bat swung by Texas outfielder Carl Everett slipped out of his hands and flew into the stands near the Rangers dugout Wednesday. The game between the Rangers and Oakland was delayed for about 10 minutes while medical personnel attended to the injured spectators. Both were conscious, but were bleeding from cuts. The young woman was transported from the field on a medical cart, an ice pack pressed against her forehead. Rangers spokesman John Blake said the girl was taken to Baylor Medical Center for observation. The little boy was treated at the stadium.
■ Basketball
Roy Tarpley eyes the NBA
Former Dallas Mavericks forward Roy Tarpley, who was banned from the NBA in 1995 for violating the league's substance-abuse policy, has applied for reinstatement to the league. Tarpley, 37, told Houston television station KRIV that he hopes to revive his NBA career soon. "I feel like I have unfinished business there," Tarpley said.
Agencies
Taiwanese world No. 1 women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei on Saturday overcame a first-set loss to win her opening match at the Madrid Open. Top seeds Hsieh and partner Elise Mertens of Belgium, with whom she last month won her fourth Indian Wells women’s doubles title, bounced back from a rocky first set to beat Asia Muhammad of the US and Aldila Sutjiadi of Indonesia 2-6, 6-4, 10-2. Hsieh and Mertens were next to face Heather Watson of the UK and Xu Yifan of China in the round of 16. Thirty-eight-year-old Hsieh last month reclaimed her world No. 1 spot after her Indian
EYES ON THE PRIZE: Armed with three solid men’s singles shuttlers and doubles Olympic champions, Taiwan aim to make their first Thomas Cup semi-final, Chou Tien-chen said Taiwanese badminton star Tai Tzu-ying yesterday quickly dispatched Malaysia’s Goh Jin Wei in straight sets, while her male counterpart Chou Tien-chen beat Germany’s Kai Schaefer, as Taiwan’s women’s and men’s teams won their Group B opening rounds of the TotalEnergies BWF Thomas and Uber Cup Finals in Chengdu, China. World No. 5 Tai beat Goh 21-19, 22-20 in a speedy 33 minutes, her fourth straight victory over the world No. 24 shuttler since they first faced each other in the quarter-finals of the 2018 Malaysia Open, where Tai went on to win the women’s singles title. Malaysia followed up Tai’s opening victory
Chen Yi-tung (陳奕通) secured a historic Olympic berth on Sunday by winning the senior men’s foil event at the 2024 Asia Oceania Zonal Olympic Fencing Qualifiers in United Arab Emirates. Chen defeated Samuel Elijah of Singapore 15-4 in the final in Dubai to secure the only wild card in the event, making him the first male Olympian fencer from Taiwan in 36 years and only the sixth Taiwanese fencer to ever qualify for the quadrennial event. The last appearance by a Taiwanese male fencer at the Olympics was in 1988, when Wang San-tsai (王三財) and Cheng Ming-hsiang (鄭明祥) competed in Seoul. The
Rafael Nadal on Tuesday lost in straight sets to 31st-ranked Jiri Lehecka in the fourth round at the Madrid Open, while Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei advanced to the semi-finals in the women’s doubles. Nadal said that he was feeling good about his progress following his latest injury layoff. Nadal called it a “positive week” in every way and said his body held up well. “I was able to play four matches, a couple of tough matches,” Nadal said. “So very positive, winning three matches, playing four matches at the high level of tennis. I enjoyed a lot playing at home. I leave here with