Larry Fitzgerald caught a pair of touchdown passes to lead the National Conference to a 30-21 victory over the American Conference in the National Football League’s Pro Bowl exhibition on Sunday.
Fitzgerald, who was the unstoppable force in the Arizona Cardinals’ stunning run to the Super Bowl championship game, capped off his spectacular postseason with five receptions for 81 yards, including scoring passes of 46 and 2 yards.
The fifth-year wideout had seven catches for 127 yards and two touchdowns in Arizona’s 27-23 loss to Pittsburgh in Super Bowl 43.
Fitzgerald was named MVP of the all-star style Pro Bowl.
It was a fitting finale after a stellar playoff performance from Fitzgerald.
In his last five games, Fitzgerald torched opposing defenses for 37 receptions and nine touchdown catches.
With the NFC at the 2-yard line and just under four-and-a-half minutes to play, Fitzgerald was sent back into the game — and everyone knew where the ball was going.
NFC quarterback Eli Manning of the New York Giants lobbed a pass into the left corner of the end zone to Fitzgerald, who easily outjumped Tennessee Titans cornerback Cortland Finnegan for the touchdown and a 24-21 lead with 4:03 to play.
Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson added a 10-yard scoring run and 44-year-old John Carney of the Giants, the oldest player to ever appear in a Pro Bowl, kicked three field goals for the NFC.
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