■ICE HOCKEY
Canucks president quits
Vancouver Canucks president and CEO Chris Zimmerman is stepping down for family reasons, the team said on Tuesday. “I have made the very difficult decision to resign my position with Canucks Sports & Entertainment and relocate my family back to the eastern United States,” Zimmerman, who has been in Vancouver for three years, said in a statement on the team Web site. General manager Mike Gillis will replace him as the team president.
■ICE HOCKEY
Roenick expected to retire
Jeremy Roenick, an American center for the San Jose Sharks who has spent the past 20 years in the National Hockey League, is expected to announce his retirement today. The Sharks have scheduled a news conference and multiple reports say Roenick, 39, will hang up his skates after the worst season of his career. Roenick, a two-time Olympian, scored only four goals in 42 games during the 2008-2009 NHL season and missed more than two months of the campaign following shoulder surgery in December.
■BASKETBALL
Opener to feature Cavs
NBA fans curious to see how Shaquille O’Neal fares with LeBron James as a teammate will get an early look when the Cleveland Cavaliers host the Boston Celtics to open the league’s 2009-2010 season on Oct. 27. The Cavaliers acquired the 37-year-old O’Neal during the off-season hoping the 15 times All-Star center and future Hall of Famer will help capture their first title. The finale of a four-game opening day schedule sees the Los Angeles Lakers start the defense of their title by hosting the LA Clippers, who selected dynamic power forward Blake Griffin with the top pick in the 2009 Draft. On Christmas Day, Los Angeles will host Cleveland, a highly anticipated match-up featuring 2007-2008 league MVP Kobe Bryant of the Lakers and reigning MVP James. The Lakers will face the Eastern Conference champion Orlando Magic twice, the NBA said on Tuesday when it released the schedule.
■ATHLETICS
Brazilians fail doping tests
Five Brazilian athletes training in Germany for this month’s world championships have failed out-of-competition doping tests and will return home, the Brazilian Athletics Confederation (CBAt) said. A CBAt statement said that heptathlete Lucimara Silvestre and sprinters Bruno Lins Tenorio, Jorge Celio Sena, Josiane Tito and Luciana Franca and had tested positive for the banned substance Recombinant EPO. The CBAt said the five had asked for the B sample to be tested and would return home to await the outcome.
■FORMULA ONE
Massa recovering well
Felipe Massa was allowed to leave a local hospital on Tuesday after making “a remarkable recovery” from life-threatening head injuries sustained in a crash during qualifying for the Hungarian Formula One Grand Prix on July 25. The Ferrari driver Massa went home after extensive examinations at the Albert Einstein clinic in Sao Paulo where he arrived on Monday from Hungary. Massa, 28, underwent surgery on a multiple skull fractures in a Budapest clinic. He sustained the injuries when he was hit on the helmet by a spring from Rubens Barrichello’s Brawn GP car and crashed
into a tire wall. He spent nine days in the AEK military hospital in the Hungarian capital. “Felipe has had a remarkable recovery,” his personal doctor Dino Altmann said in a statement on Massa’s Web site.
■SOCCER
Pensions anger veterans
Members of India’s 1956 Olympics soccer squad have accused the national federation of treating them like “beggars” and have decided to return checks received from the governing body, Indian media reported on Wednesday. Nine surviving members of the team that reached the semi-finals in Melbourne had suggested the federation started a pension scheme for former internationals. However, the All India Football Federation (AIFF) last month sent them checks for 25,000 rupees (US$525). “We are not beggars that the national federation would be doling out a pitiful grant 53 years after our achievement,” an angry Samar Banerjee, captain of the team, told reporters.
■SOCCER
Argentine kickoff on hold
The kickoff to the Argentine soccer season was put on hold indefinitely on Tuesday while the game’s national governing body sought a solution to clubs’ massive debts. “The executive committee of the AFA [Argentina Football Association] resolved unanimously tonight [Tuesday] that the championships in all categories should not start on the scheduled dates,” said a statement posted on the AFA Web site, www.afa.org.ar. It said the AFA needed to search for a proper and well-founded solution to the problem of clubs’ debts.
■SOCCER
Muslims fret over anthem
Bundesliga club Schalke has asked a scholar of Islam to look into complaints sent to the club by Muslims angered by what they see as the lampooning of the Prophet Mohammed in a verse in the club’s decades-old anthem. The verse — which also caused short-lived protests in 1997 — refers to the Prophet Mohammed, who it says knew nothing about soccer but picked the colors blue and white, the Schalke colors. The club has received hundreds of e-mails and letters of complaint and has contacted police and state security, club spokesman Thomas Spiegel told German media.
■RUGBY UNION
Mealamu ruptures muscle
The All Blacks suffered a further setback yesterday when hooker Keven Mealamu was ruled out for the rest of the year with a ruptured chest muscle. The 71-Test veteran was injured after he came on as a replacement in the Tri-Nations Test against the Springboks in Durban last weekend. In a disappointing week for the All Blacks in South Africa they lost both Tests, failed to win even a bonus point, and were toppled from their world No. 1 ranking. They have now suffered three losses from six outings this year and are only halfway through the season. The loss of Mealamu will put further pressure on the already depleted front row ranks with the Chiefs rake Aled de Malmanche likely to deputise for first-string hooker Andrew Hore. All Blacks doctor Deb Robinson said Mealamu had undergone a chest scan after returning from South Africa and it confirmed he had ruptured his pectoralis major tendon on the left side of his chest.
■FORMULA ONE
Brawn accused of speeding
The head of Formula One’s Brawn GP team could be banned from driving after being accused of breaking the speed limit on a public road. Police accuse Ross Brawn of driving his Mercedes on May 30 at 161kph on a road in southwest England where the limit is 70mph (113kph). The 54-year-old Brawn was due to appear in court on Tuesday, but the case was rescheduled for Sept. 4 because he is overseas ahead of his team’s races in Spain and Belgium.
Bayer 04 Leverkusen go into today’s match at TSG 1899 Hoffenheim stung from their first league defeat in 16 months. Leverkusen were beaten 3-2 at home by RB Leipzig before the international break, the first loss since May last year for the reigning league and cup champions. While any defeat, particularly against a likely title rival, would have disappointed coach Xabi Alonso, the way in which it happened would be most concerning. Just as they did in the Supercup against VfB Stuttgart and in the league opener to Borussia Moenchengladbach, Leverkusen scored first, but were pegged back. However, while Leverkusen rallied late to
If all goes well when the biggest marathon field ever gathered in Australia races 42km through the streets of Sydney on Sunday, World Marathon Majors (WMM) will soon add a seventh race to the elite series. The Sydney Marathon is to become the first race since Tokyo in 2013 to join long-established majors in New York, London, Boston, Berlin and Chicago if it passes the WMM assessment criteria for the second straight year. “We’re really excited for Sunday to arrive,” race director Wayne Larden told a news conference in Sydney yesterday. “We’re prepared, we’re ready. All of our plans look good on
The lights dimmed and the crowd hushed as Karoline Kristensen entered for her performance. However, this was no ordinary Dutch theater: The temperature was 80°C and the audience naked apart from a towel. Dressed in a swimsuit and to the tune of emotional music, the 21-year-old Kristensen started her routine, performed inside a large sauna, with a bed of hot rocks in the middle. For a week this month, a group of wellness practitioners, called “sauna masters,” are gathering at a picturesque health resort in the Netherlands to compete in this year’s Aufguss world sauna championships. The practice takes its name from a
When details from a scientific experiment that could have helped clear Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva landed at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the leader of the organization’s reaction was unequivocal: “We have to stop that urgently,” he wrote. No mention of the test ever became public and Valieva’s defense at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) went on without it. What effect the information could have had on Valieva’s case is unclear, but without it, the skater, then 15 years old, was eventually disqualified from the 2022 Winter Olympics after testing positive for a banned heart medication that would later