■ICE HOCKEY
Windy City celebrates win
The Windy City celebrated its first Stanley Cup triumph in half a century yesterday. honoring the Chicago Blackhawks with a downtown parade. A crowd numbering in the hundreds of thousands was expected for a street party through the Chicago Loop and up Michigan Avenue to a rally by the Chicago River. The NHL title was the fourth overall for the Blackhawks, one of the league’s six original franchises, but their first since 1961. “I think the party in Chicago is going to be all-world,” Blackhawks coach Joel Quenneville told reporters after Wednesday’s 4-3 overtime victory that completed the team’s 4-2 triumph in the best-of-seven series. After soaking in the moment with family and friends following the game at Philadelphia’s Wachovia Center, the team’s plane touched down in Chicago at O’Hare Airport at about 4am, met with a water cannon salute by airport firetrucks.
■ICE HOCKEY
Lightning hire Boucher
Guy Boucher was hired as the new coach of the Tampa Bay Lightning on Thursday, taking over a team that hasn’t made it beyond the opening round of the NHL playoffs since winning its only Stanley Cup six years ago. The former coach of the American Hockey League’s Hamilton Bulldogs agreed to a contract after turning down a chance to coach the Columbus Blue Jackets this week. He replaces Rick Tocchet, who was fired on April 12 after a 34-12-36 record left the Lightning out of the playoffs for the third straight time. At 38, Boucher becomes the youngest coach in the NHL. He led Hamilton to the second-best record in the AHL this year, his first as a professional coach. “Gee is an extremely intelligent, educated and knowledgeable hockey person who has been a part of successful programs at every level he’s coached at, both as a head coach and an assistant,” Lightning general manager Steve Yzerman said.
■FOOTBALL
USC hit with two-year ban
Collegiate gridiron powerhouse the University of Southern California (USC) was slammed with a two-year ban from bowl games, probation and other sanctions on Thursday for allowing improper benefits to current NFL star Reggie Bush when he played there. Along with being banned from the season-ending showcase bowl games, USC will be on probation for four years, will lose 30 football scholarships over three years and forfeit an entire year’s games. The penalties were handed down by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) for improper benefits given to Bush dating to the USC Trojans’ 2004 national collegiate championship. The NCAA has been investigating the matter for four years and meted out the penalties for “lack of institutional control.” The NCAA says Bush, now with Super Bowl champions the New Orleans Saints, received gifts from two would-be sports marketers hoping to sign him when he turned pro, a breach of the rules.
■BASEBALL
Morales out for season
Los Angeles Angels slugger Kendry Morales will miss the rest of the season after undergoing surgery on a broken leg he suffered when celebrating a game-winning homer late last month, the team said on Thursday. The 26-year-old Cuban first baseman, who damaged his left leg on May 29, had surgery on Thursday and there was no timetable set for his return, the team said on its Web site. Following the team’s 6-1 loss in Oakland on Thursday, manager Mike Scioscia declared Morales out for the season, but said prospects for a long-term recovery looked good.
■ENGLAND
Officials study swearing
The Brazilian referee and his assistants who will take charge of the England-US match have been studying English-language obscenities the players might use. Carlos Simon will referee today’s match, assisted by Roberto Braatz and Altemir Hausmann, and wants to ensure players can’t get away with abuse. “We have to learn what kind of words the players say,” Hausmann told Brazilian broadcaster Globo Sport. Braatz says they aren’t learning them in “11 different languages but at least we have to know the swear words in English.” FIFA denied reports that match officials have been given lists of swear words to listen out for.
■AUSTRALIA
Witch doctor helps Kewell
If Australia perform well at the World Cup, they may want to thank a witch doctor and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who have combined to exorcise the “curse” affecting injury-prone star Harry Kewell. Rudd chipped in with a goodwill greeting yesterday at the insistence of South African healer Bishop Isaac Nonyane, who said the prime minister’s best wishes would oust the “malicious spirits” plaguing the striker. An injury to Kewell’s groin has dominated Australia’s build-up to the World Cup. “No one has bewitched him,” Nonyane told the Daily Telegraph. “But it is because of malicious spirits, and the main intention of those malicious spirits is to hurt him ... A get-well message from the prime minister will do. From the prime minister’s mouth. Let the guy know that the whole Australian community rallies behind him to get well, and that they do believe in him, to get well.” Rudd duly obliged. “I think Harry’s fantastic, and I wish him the absolute best — and I’ll be out there watching on Monday for the first game,” he said, though he drew the line at massaging Kewell’s groin. “It’s a family program,” he said on Channel Seven’s Sunrise show.
■GREECE
Greek team robbed
Thieves stole large amounts of cash from the Greek team’s hotel base in South Africa, police and a team spokesman said on Thursday. Although the team has declined to press charges the team spokesman confirmed that about 1,500 euros (US$1,800) in cash had been taken from players’ rooms at the hotel north of Durban. News of the theft comes two weeks after the Colombian team, which was not one of the World Cup qualifiers, had a similar amount of cash stolen while staying in a hotel in Johannesburg. South Africa has hired tens of thousands of extra police for the tournament in a bid to counter its reputation as one of the world’s most crime-ridden countries but they have been unable to prevent a series of robberies against World Cup visitors, with journalists from China, Portugal and Spain all falling victim.
■IVORY COAST
Drogba could start: Eriksson
Ivory Coast captain Didier Drogba could start their opening World Cup game against Portugal next week, coach Sven-Goran Eriksson said on Thursday. Drogba, 32, broke his arm during a friendly against Japan on June 4. “If the game had been today or tomorrow, he wouldn’t play, but there are still some days. He might play against Portugal,” Eriksson said on Thursday. Ivory Coast take on Portugal on Tuesday.
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