BASEBALL
‘Classic’ games scheduled
Taiwan are to play World Baseball Classic games in South Korea after the Tokyo Dome was named to host first and second-round games at next year’s competition and Seoul was also listed as a first-round site. Games in Group A of the first round and Group E of the second round are to be played at the Tokyo Dome from March 7 to March 16, Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association said on Tuesday. Group A includes Australia, China, Cuba and Japan. Seoul is to host Group B from March 7 to March 11, which includes Taiwan, the Netherlands, South Korea and the winner of a qualifying group that includes Brazil, Britain, Israel and Pakistan, who play in New York at the Brooklyn Cyclones’ ballpark from Sept. 22 to Sept. 25.
FORMULA ONE
Chris Amon dies
Former Ferrari driver Chris Amon, often described as one of the best in Formula One never to have won a race, has died at the age of 73 after a battle with cancer, the family of the New Zealand motorsport great said yesterday. Amon was part of a well-known trio of New Zealand drivers competing in Formula One in the 1960s and early 1970s alongside Bruce McLaren and Denny Hulme, who both enjoyed more successful careers in the sport’s premier series. Bad luck was often cited as the key reason for Amon’s lack of Formula One success, with former world champion Mario Andretti once famously saying: “If he became an undertaker, people would stop dying.” Like McLaren, with whom he won the Le Mans 24-hour endurance race in a Ford GT40 50 years ago, he founded his own team, but Chris Amon Racing failed to achieve much success. Amon finished on the podium 11 times, also driving for March and Matra among 13 teams in a career that spanned 14 seasons.
RUGBY LEAGUE
Hayne signs with Titans
Jarryd Hayne has returned to Australia to play rugby league for the Gold Coast Titans, almost two years after he left Sydney for an unprecedented career swap to football. Hayne left a lucrative National Rugby League (NRL) contract with the Parramatta Eels to pursue a new career in the NFL in 2014, but experienced only fleeting success during a tough first season with the San Francisco 49ers. The 28-year-old ditched the Californian National Football League club in May to train with the Fiji sevens squad in the hope of playing in the Olympics, but failed to make the cut for Rio de Janeiro. In a two-year deal tipped to be one of the richest in NRL history, Hayne is set to take home at least A$1.2 million (US$910,000) per season with the Titans, the Sydney Morning Herald reported yesterday. “It wasn’t the easiest decision for me to make, it’s been very emotional to make this decision,” Hayne, who could line up for the Titans as soon as Sunday, told reporters in the Gold Coast. “I never though I’d join another club and not in my wildest dreams did I think I would end up on the Gold Coast.” Titans coach Neil Henry described the deal as a great day for the 10-year-old club and said the other players in the squad were excited about Hayne’s arrival. “We all know what a talent he is,” he said. Haynes played 176 games for Parramatta in the NRL, scoring 103 tries. He also played 20 State of Origin matches for New South Wales and won 12 caps with the Kangaroos.
Bayer 04 Leverkusen go into today’s match at TSG 1899 Hoffenheim stung from their first league defeat in 16 months. Leverkusen were beaten 3-2 at home by RB Leipzig before the international break, the first loss since May last year for the reigning league and cup champions. While any defeat, particularly against a likely title rival, would have disappointed coach Xabi Alonso, the way in which it happened would be most concerning. Just as they did in the Supercup against VfB Stuttgart and in the league opener to Borussia Moenchengladbach, Leverkusen scored first, but were pegged back. However, while Leverkusen rallied late to
If all goes well when the biggest marathon field ever gathered in Australia races 42km through the streets of Sydney on Sunday, World Marathon Majors (WMM) will soon add a seventh race to the elite series. The Sydney Marathon is to become the first race since Tokyo in 2013 to join long-established majors in New York, London, Boston, Berlin and Chicago if it passes the WMM assessment criteria for the second straight year. “We’re really excited for Sunday to arrive,” race director Wayne Larden told a news conference in Sydney yesterday. “We’re prepared, we’re ready. All of our plans look good on
The lights dimmed and the crowd hushed as Karoline Kristensen entered for her performance. However, this was no ordinary Dutch theater: The temperature was 80°C and the audience naked apart from a towel. Dressed in a swimsuit and to the tune of emotional music, the 21-year-old Kristensen started her routine, performed inside a large sauna, with a bed of hot rocks in the middle. For a week this month, a group of wellness practitioners, called “sauna masters,” are gathering at a picturesque health resort in the Netherlands to compete in this year’s Aufguss world sauna championships. The practice takes its name from a
When details from a scientific experiment that could have helped clear Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva landed at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the leader of the organization’s reaction was unequivocal: “We have to stop that urgently,” he wrote. No mention of the test ever became public and Valieva’s defense at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) went on without it. What effect the information could have had on Valieva’s case is unclear, but without it, the skater, then 15 years old, was eventually disqualified from the 2022 Winter Olympics after testing positive for a banned heart medication that would later