■ Tennis
WTA planning rule changes
On-court coaching and instant replay will be used at more WTA Tour events this season in a bid to make tennis more fan friendly. The tour announced those moves on Sunday, as well as its intention to begin experimenting with no-ad scoring in doubles matches. In-match coaching has been barred from ATP, WTA Tour and Grand Slam tournaments, but the women's tour did try it at two events this summer. Now tournaments in Stuttgart, Germany; Zurich, Switzerland and Linz, Austria will allow coaching between sets and during medical timeouts or bathroom breaks.
■ Running
Rono wins marathon
A 41-year-old male runner died on Sunday during the Toronto Marathon, which was won by Kenya's Daniel Rono who blitzed the field by running Canada's second-fastest marathon time ever. Toronto race officials declined to release the name of the man who died. Rono clocked a 2:10:14 to finish 26 seconds ahead of runner-up Abderrahime Bouramdane of Morocco. The only faster Canadian marathon was during the 1976 Montreal Olympics, where Waldemar Cierpinski took the gold medal by clocking 2:09.55. Malgorzata Sobanska of Poland won the women's division on Sunday in a course record of 2:34.31.
■ Tennis
Britons face off in Bangkok
Britons Andy Murray and Tim Henman will face each other for the third time in seven weeks in the first round of this week's US$550,000 ATP Thailand Open, while Australia's Lleyton Hewitt has withdrawn due to injury. Henman will be hoping to make it third time lucky in Bangkok today when he takes on the fourth-seeded Scotsman, who knocked him out of both the Cincinnati and Toronto Masters events early last month. Henman said he was relishing the early test against the in-form teenager, but conceded he would have to improve his game to progress to the next round.
■ Football
NFL to play in Beijing
The New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks will face each other in a National Football League pre-season exhibition game next August in Beijing, exactly one year before the start of the Olympic Games in China. "We had a tremendous amount of interest from our teams" in participating in the first NFL game in China, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said on Sunday before the Patriots' game against the Denver Broncos. The Patriots and Seahawks were chosen, he said, because of their success and "because we think they represent the best of the United States and the best of the NFL, both on the field and off the field." The Patriots have won three of the last five Super Bowls.
■ Tennis
Agassi starts new career
Andre Agassi has picked up a tennis racket only once since he played his final competitive match at the US Open earlier this month. "I hit for 30 minutes with my wife," he said, "because she wanted some exercise." The eight-time Grand Slam champion might be enjoying the chance to stay away from the courts, but it sure didn't take him long to find something else to do with his new spare time. Three weeks after closing his 21-year professional tennis career, Agassi is entering a partnership with Steve Case's luxury vacation club, Exclusive Resorts. "In tennis ... you work, you train and all that so that you can maybe add something to somebody's life for those couple of hours," Agassi said in an interview.
■ Soccer
Dario Silva's leg amputated
Doctors amputated the shattered right leg of Uruguay forward Dario Silva after he was thrown from his car in an automobile accident, hospital authorities said yesterday. Police said the 33-year-old Silva was driving along a Montevideo highway called the "Rambla" that fronts the River Plate Estuary early on Sunday when his vehicle struck a light post on a center divider. Authorities said the impact sent Silva hurtling through a side window and his right leg was caught and badly broken as the lightpost toppled over the car. A hospital spokesman for Mario Cancela at the Asociacion Espanola clinic said Silva remained under heavy sedation after the amputation. But the official, who declined to identify himself, said he had no further information. Authorities said Silva was accompanied by two former players. Dardo Pereira, 34, was not injured and Elbio Papa, 40, was slightly injured and had to be extricated from the car's twisted metal. Silva left Sevilla for Portsmouth last year, but was released and has been without a club. Silva has also played for Espanyol, Malaga, Cagliari and Penarol.
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