■ Sled dog racing
Racers rescued from blizzard
Military aircraft rescued two people on Monday and planned to airlift two other competitors who had been trapped in a mountain blizzard during the Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race. Teams competing in the 1,600km Yukon Quest from Fairbanks, Alaska, to Whitehorse, Yukon, were attempting to cross Eagle Summit northeast of Fairbanks when a blizzard struck late on Sunday. "Once you were up there, there was no going back it was like being a sandstorm. The snow was pelting me and the dogs so hard you couldn't even look in to it," said Regina Wycoff, a racer who made it through the storm. A helicopter flew two mushers and their dog teams to a race checkpoint in good condition and was expected to try to airlift the remaining two teams, according to race officials. The trapped racers included a Canadian, two Alaskans and a Japanese national living in Alaska.
■ Hockey
Gretzky sidesteps questions
Wayne Gretzky sidestepped questions about the gambling investigation that has engulfed him and his wife, and insisted Monday he won't distract the Canadian Olympic team despite a scandal that has shaken the National Hockey League. Gretzky spoke for just more than four minutes in a news conference ended by a Canadian hockey federation official when the NHL great repeatedly was asked about the integrity of the game. "That's not for me to talk about," Gretzky said. Gretzky's shoulders sagged at one point, and he reacted with a nervous laugh a couple of times. Canadian federation official Andre Brin interrupted five times to say Gretzky would take only game-related questions. "There's no story about me, that's what I keep trying to tell you. I'm not involved," Gretzky said.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier