Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby has a soft-tissue neck injury, but no sign of a past or present neck fracture, the NHL team said Tuesday.
Doctors told the team that the injury could cause neurological symptoms similar to those of concussion, which could explain why the star is still battling to come back a year after he was first injured.
A statement from the Penguins on Tuesday came after reports at the weekend that the Canadian forward was seeing specialists to deal with a neck problem, with one saying he had two cracked vertebrae.
The team statement said doctors agreed that “Crosby is safe, the injury is treatable, and he will return to action when he is symptom-free.”
Crosby appeared at a press conference with Penguins general manager Ray Shero and voiced hope that the latest diagnosis and appropriate treatment would have him back on the ice.
“There’s a pretty big possibility that could be causing some of the issues,” he said. “I really hope that’s the case and with treatment that it’ll improve.”
Crosby returned to NHL action in November for the first time since suffering a concussion in January last year.
After his 10-month layoff, he played only eight games before he was sidelined again.
His prolonged absence has been a blow for the team and for the league.
Crosby has become the NHL’s signature player, leading the Penguins to the 2009 Stanley Cup, and became a Canadian hero after scoring the golden goal in overtime to win the Winter Olympic crown for Canada in 2010 at Vancouver.
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