The Calgary Stampeders won their seventh Grey Cup championship on Sunday by surviving a furious second-half Hamilton Tiger-Cats rally for a nail-biting 20-16 victory.
The Stampeders talked all week about fulfilling their Canadian Football League destiny and they backed it up in front of a crowd of 52,056 at BC Place stadium in Vancouver by winning the 102nd Grey Cup.
“We had a very good week of preparation,” Calgary coach John Hufnagel said after the Stampeders claimed their first championship since 2008. “Hamilton had a lot of moxie [character] to get back into the game.”
Photo: Reuters
Indeed, in a dramatic finish to Canada’s national gridiron championship, Hamilton appeared to have successfully capped one of the wildest fourth-quarter rallies in Grey Cup history.
However, Brandon Banks’ 80-yard punt return into the end zone with less than a minute to go in regulation ended up being called back because of a clipping penalty. Had the touchdown counted it would have given the Tiger-Cats a two-point lead with just 35 seconds to go.
It marked the second straight Grey Cup loss for the Ticats, who were beaten by the Saskatchewan Roughriders in last season’s final.
Photo: Reuters
“We got a good young football team,” Hamilton coach Kent Austin said. “It is not always going to go our way. That’s how it is sometimes.”
Drew Tate had a pair of rushing touchdowns and quarterback Bo Levi Mitchell was named the game’s most outstanding player as he completed 25-of-34 passes for 334 yards for the Stampeders.
Eric Rogers had 108 yards receiving in the win, but the league’s rushing leader Joe Cornish managed just 25 yards on the ground.
The Tiger-Cats trailed 17-0 in the second quarter and by 13 heading into the fourth before quarterback Zach Collaros led a furious late rally.
Kicker Justin Medlock booted two field goals in the fourth to get Hamilton to within 20-13 with 5:35 left. Medlock added another field goal to cut the Stamps’ lead to just four.
The Tiger-Cats then forced a punt and Banks scooped up a rolling ball and took off down the sideline for a touchdown, but it was nullified because of the penalty.
“We had other opportunities to win,” Austin said. “Until I see the play, I am not going to comment further.”
Taiwanese world No. 1 women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei on Saturday overcame a first-set loss to win her opening match at the Madrid Open. Top seeds Hsieh and partner Elise Mertens of Belgium, with whom she last month won her fourth Indian Wells women’s doubles title, bounced back from a rocky first set to beat Asia Muhammad of the US and Aldila Sutjiadi of Indonesia 2-6, 6-4, 10-2. Hsieh and Mertens were next to face Heather Watson of the UK and Xu Yifan of China in the round of 16. Thirty-eight-year-old Hsieh last month reclaimed her world No. 1 spot after her Indian
EYES ON THE PRIZE: Armed with three solid men’s singles shuttlers and doubles Olympic champions, Taiwan aim to make their first Thomas Cup semi-final, Chou Tien-chen said Taiwanese badminton star Tai Tzu-ying yesterday quickly dispatched Malaysia’s Goh Jin Wei in straight sets, while her male counterpart Chou Tien-chen beat Germany’s Kai Schaefer, as Taiwan’s women’s and men’s teams won their Group B opening rounds of the TotalEnergies BWF Thomas and Uber Cup Finals in Chengdu, China. World No. 5 Tai beat Goh 21-19, 22-20 in a speedy 33 minutes, her fourth straight victory over the world No. 24 shuttler since they first faced each other in the quarter-finals of the 2018 Malaysia Open, where Tai went on to win the women’s singles title. Malaysia followed up Tai’s opening victory
Chen Yi-tung (陳奕通) secured a historic Olympic berth on Sunday by winning the senior men’s foil event at the 2024 Asia Oceania Zonal Olympic Fencing Qualifiers in United Arab Emirates. Chen defeated Samuel Elijah of Singapore 15-4 in the final in Dubai to secure the only wild card in the event, making him the first male Olympian fencer from Taiwan in 36 years and only the sixth Taiwanese fencer to ever qualify for the quadrennial event. The last appearance by a Taiwanese male fencer at the Olympics was in 1988, when Wang San-tsai (王三財) and Cheng Ming-hsiang (鄭明祥) competed in Seoul. The
A soccer jersey carrying a national map including disputed Western Sahara has become a hot commodity in Morocco after a diplomatic dispute with Algeria. Retailers said RS Berkane jerseys have been flying off the shelves after a Confederation of African Football (CAF) Cup match against Algerian club USM Alger was canceled last month over the jerseys. “We are overwhelmed by the influx of messages and requests,” said Brahim Rabii, representative of the official RS Berkane jersey distributor. Algeria broke off diplomatic relations with Morocco in 2021, partly over the issue of Western Sahara. The former Spanish colony is largely controlled by Morocco, but claimed