ICE HOCKEY
Sabres fire coach Nolan
The Buffalo Sabres have fired coach Ted Nolan a day after their season ended with a second consecutive last-place finish. General manager Tim Murray announced the decision in a statement issued by the team on Sunday. Nolan had two years left on a contract he signed a little more than a year ago. The Sabres hired Nolan in November 2013 on an interim basis after Ron Rolston was fired. It was Nolan’s second stint in Buffalo after he spent two seasons with the Sabres and was the NHL’s coach of the year in 1997. This time, he took over a rebuilding team that went 23-51-8 this season.
TENNIS
Svitolina wins at Claro Open
Top-seeded Elina Svitolina of Ukraine won her opening match at the Claro Open Colsanitas on Monday, beating Louisa Chirico of the US 6-2, 6-1 in less than an hour. Svitolina said she prepared for the high altitude in Bogota by spending two weeks training there before the clay-court tournament began. In other matches, two-time champion Lourdes Dominguez Lino of Spain defeated sixth-seeded Shelby Rogers of the US 6-3, 6-2. Dinah Pfizenmaier of Germany beat 44-year-old Kimiko Date-Krumm of Japan, 6-2, 7-5. The No. 152-ranked Date-Krumm has not won a main-draw WTA match since September last year.
OLYMPICS
Dead fish hit Rio lake
Dead fish continued to wash up on Monday on the banks of a Rio de Janeiro lake that is slated to hold Olympic rowing competitions during next year’s Games. Fish die-offs are a frequent occurrence in Rio’s waterways, which are choked with raw sewage and garbage. The latest incident, affecting thousands of small silvery fish called twaite shad, began several days ago at the Rodrigo de Freitas lake, where the Olympic canoeing and rowing events are to be held. With neighbors complaining about the stench, employees of the city’s waste management company worked on Monday to clear away the dead fish. In a statement, the city’s environmental secretariat said the latest incident was the result of recent rains and high sea levels, which caused the lake’s water temperature to plummet. The statement said that twaite shad are sensitive to variations in temperature, adding that oxygen levels in the lake were normal. Previous fish die-offs in the lake have been blamed on drops in oxygen levels due to pollution. Rio’s water quality has become a contentious topic ahead of next year’s Olympics.
SOCCER
Hooligans attack officials
A group of hooligans, believed to be HNK Hajduk Split fans, on Monday attacked Croatian Football Federation (HNS) officials, including coach Niko Kovac. No one was injured, but the police later said they had detained 12 people over the incident, which took place at a rest-stop on the motorway between Split and Zagreb. A statement, which revealed a federation vehicle had been damaged during the fracas, praised the officials for their calm reaction to the trouble-makers. The seven-member delegation was traveling to Split to discuss organization of June’s Euro qualifier there against Italy. Monday’s incident comes amid a backdrop of tense relations between the HNS and Hajduk. The club’s officials have accused the national league of treating them unfairly and called for the resignation of the HNS leadership, including president Davor Suker. In November last year, Hajduk refused to turn out for a match against champions GNK Dinamo Zagreb, after some of their “ultras” fans were refused entry into the stadium in the Croatian capital.
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