■ Tennis
Serena Williams injured
Venus Williams defeated injured sister Serena 6-4, 7-5 in an exhibition match in Auburn Hills, Michigan on Thursday. Serena was clearly limited by the abdominal-muscle injury sustained earlier in the week in the WTA Championship final with Wimbledon champ Maria Sharapova. Her serve was noticeably weakened, and she grimaced after several shots, but still was competitive. "It's strange, because when the serves are that slow, it throws off your pace and makes it difficult," Venus said. "She was throwing all kind of tricky serves at me because she couldn't hit it hard." Venus also struggled with her serve early -- double faulting twice while losing the match's first game -- but rallied to win the first set. Serena almost forced a tiebreaker in the second set, but finally double faulted on match point to give her sister the win.
■ Auto Racing
Molson Indy cancelled
The Molson Indy Vancouver race was cancelled on Thursday after 15 years. "The bottom line is the business model couldn't work," said Jo-Ann McArthur, president of sponsoring Molson Sports and Entertainment. "We talked to a number of business partners over the last few months to try to make it happen." The race was not listed on the Champ Car schedule for next year, but the decision by Molson means there is no chance it will be added. Part of the downtown city street course used for the race will be developed for the athletes' village for the 2010 Winter Olympics.
■ Golf
Knoxville course planned
Greg Norman helped break ground on Thursday on a US$500 million golfing community in Loudon County near Knoxville, Tennessee. The 580-hectare Tennessee National is being developed with John "Thunder" Thornton of Chattanooga. Thornton, a University of Tennessee trustee and one of the school's biggest donors, has envisioned a course that could be home to UT's golf teams. The project will feature 1,700 home sites, a recreation center, tennis courts, parks, walking trails, a marina and the area's first Norman-designed golf course. "This is a wonderful piece of property," Norman said. "The topography of the site allows us to situate the golf course in the natural valley of the community." Thornton, who has a successful real estate development in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, acquired the property in 2000 from Eastman Chemical reportedly for US$10 million.
■ Soccer
Club president gets fined
The president of a football club in Moldova was fined Thursday for developing road rage on the pitch when he jumped into his jeep and tried to run over a referee who awarded a penalty against his team. Mikhail Makayev, president of the first division side Roso, was fined the equivalent of US$2,000 for the incident in a match against the capital city's Poitekhnik. Makayev drove his car after the astonished referee for several minutes until the latter climbed up into the stands. The match was abandoned in the first half and Poitekhnik awarded an automatic 3-0 win.
A sumo star was born in Japan on Sunday when 24-year-old Takerufuji became the first wrestler in 110 years to win a top-division tournament on his debut, triumphing at the 15-day Spring Grand Sumo Tournament in Osaka despite injuring his ankle on the penultimate day. Takerufuji, whose injury had left him in a wheelchair outside the ring, shoved out the higher-ranked Gonoyama at the Edion Arena Osaka to the delight of the crowd, giving him an unassailable record of 13 wins and two losses to claim the Emperor’s Cup. “I did it just through willpower. I didn’t really know what was going
The US’ Ilia Malinin on Saturday produced six scintillating quadruple jumps, including a quadruple Axel, in the men’s free skate to capture his first figure skating world title. The 19-year-old nicknamed the “Quad god,” who is the only skater to land a quadruple Axel in competition, dazzled with an array of breathtakingly executed jumps starting with his quad Axel and including a quadruple Lutz in combination with a triple flip and a quadruple toe loop in combination with a triple toe. He added an unexpected triple-triple combination at the end to earn a world-record 227.79 in the free program for a championship
Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter is being criminally investigated by the IRS, and the attorney for his alleged bookmaker said Thursday that the ex-Los Angeles Dodgers employee placed bets on international soccer — but not baseball. The IRS confirmed Thursday that interpreter Ippei Mizuhara and Mathew Bowyer, the alleged illegal bookmaker, are under criminal investigation through the agency’s Los Angeles Field Office. IRS Criminal Investigation spokesperson Scott Villiard said he could not provide additional details. Mizuhara, 39, was fired by the Dodgers on Wednesday following reports from the Los Angeles Times and ESPN about his alleged ties to an illegal bookmaker and debts well
MLB on Friday announced a formal investigation into the scandal swirling around Shohei Ohtani and his former interpreter amid charges that the Los Angeles Dodgers superstar was the victim of “massive theft.” The Dodgers on Wednesday fired Ippei Mizuhara, Ohtani’s long-time interpreter and close friend, after Ohtani’s representatives alleged that the Japanese two-way star had been the victim of theft, which was reported to involve millions of dollars and link Mizuhara to a suspected illegal bookmaker in California. “Major League Baseball has been gathering information since we learned about the allegations involving Shohei Ohtani and Ippei Mizuhara from the news media,” MLB