SOCCER
Hooligans bust into hospital
A doctor said a dozen soccer hooligans invaded the delivery room of a Buenos Aires hospital, hoping to avenge the death of a gang member killed in a fight with a rival faction. Marcelo Struminger, president of the doctor’s association at Santojanni Hospital, said on Thursday gang members associated with the Argentine club Nueva Chicago raced through the delivery room and other parts of the hospital on Wednesday looking for the whereabouts of a rival hooligan known as “Aldo the Paraguayan.” He is believed to have been involved in the death on Wednesday of Agustin Rodriguez, who was killed in a fight between his faction — known as Los Perales, — and the rival faction Las Antenas. Soccer-related violence has plagued Argentina for years, with nonprofit group Let’s Save Football estimating that almost 260 people have died in such incidents since 1924.
RUGBY UNION
Shoddy plane delays team
Toulouse endured the worst possible start to their European Cup trip to England when the emergency exit door on their low-cost flight came loose, their players said. The French side were on their way to Gloucester at about midday on Thursday when players and staff became increasingly nervous about their Danube Wing Airlines craft. “Leaving for Gloucester on a Slovakian company’s plane, not very reassuring. Wish me luck,” backrow forward Yannick Nyanga wrote on Twitter. “The emergency door opens with just a single touch,” he added a few minutes later. “We are losing the door of the plane ... I think we’ll have to change the company,” winger Vincent Clerc wrote. The team eventually left France about four hours later on an Airbus supplied by their sponsor.
YOUTH OLYMPICS
WWII bomb ruins ceremony
Thursday’s medals ceremony for the Winter Youth Olympics had to be rescheduled after a World War II bomb was found nearby, organizers announced. “Due to the discovery of an aerial bomb from World War II during construction works at Bozner Platz, today’s victory ceremony at Medals Plaza has been rescheduled to tomorrow,” the organizers said in a statement. The winners of the men’s giant slalom and biathlon mixed relay events had been due to receive their medals at the specially setup Medals Plaza in the old city of Innsbruck. Bombs left over from World War II and gone unnoticed for almost 70 years are regularly discovered during construction work in Austria, but are usually defused without causing any damage or injuries.
LACROSSE
Players top drug-use list
Men’s lacrosse players were the biggest illicit drug users among athletes competing in the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) 23 sanctioned sports, according to a survey by the governing body. They led all other sports in the use of amphetamines, anabolic steroids, cocaine, marijuana and narcotics, according to the NCAA’s quadrennial survey, which included 20,474 responses from athletes for the 2009 school year. Since the last survey in 2005, college athletes have increased their use of drugs including alcohol (83.1 percent, up from 77.5 percent), cigarettes (15.5 percent from 14.6 percent), marijuana (22.6 percent from 21.2 percent) and spit tobacco (17.4 percent from 15.7 percent). Men’s lacrosse players led the way in drug use by a wide margin among specific teams. The survey found 48.5 percent of lacrosse players used marijuana, ahead of soccer players at 29.4 percent and wrestlers at 27.7 percent.
A sumo star was born in Japan on Sunday when 24-year-old Takerufuji became the first wrestler in 110 years to win a top-division tournament on his debut, triumphing at the 15-day Spring Grand Sumo Tournament in Osaka despite injuring his ankle on the penultimate day. Takerufuji, whose injury had left him in a wheelchair outside the ring, shoved out the higher-ranked Gonoyama at the Edion Arena Osaka to the delight of the crowd, giving him an unassailable record of 13 wins and two losses to claim the Emperor’s Cup. “I did it just through willpower. I didn’t really know what was going
The US’ Ilia Malinin on Saturday produced six scintillating quadruple jumps, including a quadruple Axel, in the men’s free skate to capture his first figure skating world title. The 19-year-old nicknamed the “Quad god,” who is the only skater to land a quadruple Axel in competition, dazzled with an array of breathtakingly executed jumps starting with his quad Axel and including a quadruple Lutz in combination with a triple flip and a quadruple toe loop in combination with a triple toe. He added an unexpected triple-triple combination at the end to earn a world-record 227.79 in the free program for a championship
Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter is being criminally investigated by the IRS, and the attorney for his alleged bookmaker said Thursday that the ex-Los Angeles Dodgers employee placed bets on international soccer — but not baseball. The IRS confirmed Thursday that interpreter Ippei Mizuhara and Mathew Bowyer, the alleged illegal bookmaker, are under criminal investigation through the agency’s Los Angeles Field Office. IRS Criminal Investigation spokesperson Scott Villiard said he could not provide additional details. Mizuhara, 39, was fired by the Dodgers on Wednesday following reports from the Los Angeles Times and ESPN about his alleged ties to an illegal bookmaker and debts well
MLB on Friday announced a formal investigation into the scandal swirling around Shohei Ohtani and his former interpreter amid charges that the Los Angeles Dodgers superstar was the victim of “massive theft.” The Dodgers on Wednesday fired Ippei Mizuhara, Ohtani’s long-time interpreter and close friend, after Ohtani’s representatives alleged that the Japanese two-way star had been the victim of theft, which was reported to involve millions of dollars and link Mizuhara to a suspected illegal bookmaker in California. “Major League Baseball has been gathering information since we learned about the allegations involving Shohei Ohtani and Ippei Mizuhara from the news media,” MLB