ICE HOCKEY
‘Slava’ faces felony trial
Los Angeles Kings defenseman Viatcheslav “Slava” Voynov, who allegedly punched, kicked and choked his wife, was on Monday ordered to stand trial on a felony domestic violence charge. The 24-year-old Russian is to be arraigned on Dec. 29 on one count of corporal injury to a spouse with great bodily injury. At a preliminary hearing before Superior Court Judge Hector M. Guzman, officer Gregory Wiist of the police force in Redondo Beach, Califronia, said he spoke to Voynov’s wife, Marta Varlamova, at a hospital in the early morning hours of Oct. 20. “She was crying, sobbing,” Wiist said. “She was an emotional wreck.” Wiist said Varlamova had a bleeding cut above her left eye and red marks on her neck, and told him she was involved in a physical altercation with her husband. According to Wiist’s testimony, Varlamova told him the couple argued on the night of Oct. 19 and Voynov punched her in the face. When they went home, the argument continued and Voynov threw her to the ground repeatedly, kicked her and choked her in an attack that continued until she was pushed into a television, suffering a cut on her head that needed eight stitches.
ICE HOCKEY
Struggling Oilers sack coach
The last-placed Edmonton Oilers have fired head coach Dallas Eakins in the midst of a four-game losing skid, the NHL team said on Monday. General manager Craig MacTavish will take over behind the bench, while Todd Nelson, coach of the Oilers’ American Hockey League affiliate, the Oklahoma City Barons, transitions into the role of interim coach. “I had no real good reason to do this outside of performance,” MacTavish told reporters. “That’s what we’re judged by, the performance of the hockey club and the record.” MacTavish did not put a timeline on how long he will coach the team, saying only that he will hand over the team when Nelson is comfortable. Eakins, 47, was in his second season with the Oilers and the team is tied for the worst record in the league after a 7-19-5 start to the 2014-2015 campaign. Nelson, 45, has never coached at the NHL level.
BASKETBALL
Losing Kings axe coach
The Sacramento Kings have fired head coach Mike Malone, the struggling NBA team said on Monday. Assistant coach Tyrone Corbin will take over on an interim basis for the Kings, who have lost their past three games. “This was an extremely difficult decision, but one we feel is in the best interest of the franchise moving forward,” Kings general manager Pete D’Alessandro said in a statement. Malone compiled an overall record of 39-67 after taking over as head coach in Sacramento before the 2013-2014 season. The Kings, who got off to a strong start this season with five wins in their first six games, are 11th in the 15-team Western Conference with an 11-13 record.
BASKETBALL
Bosch out indefinitely
All-Star center Chris Bosh will be sidelined indefinitely with a strained calf, Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said on Monday, dealing another injury blow to the NBA team. Bosh, who leads Miami in scoring and rebounding, felt tightness in his left calf after the Heat’s victory in Utah on Saturday, and was kept out of Sunday’s defeat at home against the Chicago Bulls. The team said Bosh would not travel to Brooklyn for their next game yesterday. In another injury woe, Josh McRoberts has a torn meniscus in his right knee that will require surgery and could see him miss the rest of the season.
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