■SKELETON
Trott breaks track record
World Cup champion Marion Trott of Germany broke the track record on her first run in the world championships at Mount Van Hoevenberg on Thursday. Trott was the first to slide and turned every head in the start house with a run of 55.45 seconds. That was more than half-a-second faster than the previous mark of 56.17 seconds set in October by Noelle Pikus-Pace of the US. On her initial trip down the tricky 20-turn layout, Trott bounced off a couple of walls rocketing through the chicane after turn 14 and was as surprised as anybody at her result. “I felt it on the track because the time wasn’t like in training,” Trott said. Trott leads teammate and defending world champion Anja Huber by 0.40 seconds, with Australian Emma Lincoln-Smith a surprising third, 0.51 seconds behind.
■NORDIC SKIING
Japan grab shock victory
Japan’s men were the shock winners of the Nordic combined team title at the world championships on Thursday. The Japanese claimed gold after finishing fifth in the ski jump and winning the cross-country skiing 4x5km relay by the smallest of margins. Germany finished second, with Norway third. In a tight race to the line in the relay, Japan’s team of Yusuke Minato, Taihei Kato, Akito Watabe and Norihoto Kobayashi pipped the Germans by just 0.1 seconds, while Norway finished 3.6 seconds off the pace to take bronze. Pre-competition favorites Finland suffered the late withdrawal of World Cup leader Anssi Koivuranta and finished eighth, while the US finished outside the top 10 after Bill Demong lost his bib number and was unable to take part in the ski jump.
■RUGBY UNION
Stevens gets two-year ban
England prop Matt Stevens’ career lay in ruins on Thursday after he was banned from rugby for two years for using cocaine. Stevens, who tested positive after his club Bath’s European Cup clash with Glasgow in December, received the ban from the tournament organizers after a hearing in Glasgow on Tuesday. He will not be allowed to play again until Jan. 18, 2011. Stevens, who has won 32 caps for England, confessed last month that he was struggling with substance abuse.
■CRICKET
Zimbabwe tour postponed
Zimbabwe’s one-day series tour of Sri Lanka next month has been postponed with revised dates yet to be agreed, Sri Lanka Cricket spokesman Vajira Wijewardene said yesterday. Zimbabwe were scheduled to play five one-day games in Colombo with the first set for March 13. “Both countries have mutually agreed to reschedule the series for a later date,” Wijewardene said. He did not say why the tour was put off. However, the Cricinfo.com Web site said the series broadcaster, Ten Sports, had requested a change of date, as it was showing the South Africa-Australia and West Indies-England series at the same time.
■SOCCER
Tigers blunt the Blades
Hull City beat Sheffield United 2-1 in a fifth-round replay to reach the FA Cup quarter-finals for the first time in 37 years on Thursday. A bizarre own-goal from Kyle Naughton gave Premier League Hull the lead after 23 minutes, although his wayward header off the crossbar did not appear to have crossed the line. Billy Sharp leveled soon afterward for the Blades, but Peter Halmosi struck 10 minutes after the break to send the Tigers through to face Arsenal or Burnley in the last eight.
■BASKETBALL
Bulls’ first coach dies
Johnny “Red” Kerr, who played 12 NBA seasons and served as the first coach of the Chicago Bulls, died on Thursday. He was 76. Kerr, slowed recently by prostate cancer, spent 35 seasons with the Bulls’ organization, more than three decades as the team broadcaster. Kerr was the NBA Coach of the Year in 1967 for guiding the Bulls into the playoffs in their first year of existence. He went 62-101 in two seasons coaching the Bulls before joining Phoenix for parts of two seasons. He set an NBA record by playing in 844 consecutive games and averaged 13.8 points, 11.2 rebounds and 2.2 assists in 905 NBA appearances.
■BASEBALL
A-Rod finds new driver
Alex Rodriguez has found a new chauffeur home from the ballpark after his controversial cousin who injected him with performance-enhancing drugs drove him home after a pre-season game. “It has been handled,” New York Yankees general manager Brian Cashman told reporters on Thursday, saying A-Rod being picked up by his cousin, Yuri Sucart, was no longer an issue. Rodriguez, the highest-paid player in Major League Baseball, was booed in a pre-season victory Wednesday over Toronto. After the game, he jumped into a vehicle being driven by Sucart.
■FOOTBALL
Michael Vick sent home
NFL quarterback Michael Vick will be allowed to finish his prison sentence on dogfighting charges at home because there is no room at a halfway house for him. The suspended Atlanta Falcons star is serving a 23-month sentence at the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas, after pleading guilty to bankrolling a dogfighting operation at a home he owned in Virginia. He also admitted to participating in the killing of several underperforming dogs. Vick’s lawyers have said they expected him to be moved any day into a halfway house in Newport News, Virginia. But because of a lack of space, Vick will be released instead to his Hampton home at some point on or after May 21, a government official said on Thursday. Vick will be on electronic monitoring, the official said. He is eligible for release in July.
■OLYMPICS
Australia claims old medals
Australia is claiming four new Olympic medals — 105 years after they were awarded to the US. The Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) said in a statement yesterday that Francis Gailey, who won four swimming medals at the 1904 Games in St Louis, Missouri, was Australian and not American at the time. Gailey finished second in the 220, 440 and 880 yard races and third in the 1 mile freestyle. The AOC’s official historian Harry Gordon says Gailey was Australian — a student at Brisbane Grammar School and was aged 22 when he swam in the St Louis Olympics. He came home to Australia after the Olympics but emigrated to the US in 1906. He later became a US citizen and settled in California, where he died in 1972.
■FIELD HOCKEY
Malaysian smokers in rehab
Tests have shown there are 10 smokers among the Malaysian national hockey team and they have been ordered into rehab as the country attempts to revive its fortunes, a report said yesterday. Team manager George Koshy told the Star they will have to attend sessions with doctors at the National Sports Institute to kick the habit. “Not all of them are hard-core smokers. Some claimed that they had stopped smoking while a few others said they were cutting down the habit,” Koshy said, without revealing who the culprits were.
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