ICE HOCKEY
Koivu gives Wild win
Mikko Koivu scored the lone goal in the shootout for Minnesota as the Wild beat the Tampa Bay Lightning 2-1 on Friday night to avoid losing consecutive home games for the first time this season. Koivu used a masterful left-right move to flip the puck past Andrei Vasilevskiy, who denied Jason Pominville and Zach Parise before and after Koivu. Brayden Point, who scored for Tampa Bay in regulation, Jonathan Drouin and Nikita Kucherov all went wide right with their shootout attempts against Devan Dubnyk. Nino Niederreiter scored in regulation, while Dubnyk made 26 saves for the Wild. Vasilevskiy stopped 37 shots for the Lightning. In Winnipeg, Manitoba, Chicago linemates Patrick Kane, Artem Anisimov and Artemi Panarin each scored and combined for seven points to help the Blackhawks beat Winnipeg 5-2. Duncan Keith’s late goal was the winner and Marian Hossa also scored. Bryan Little and Adam Lowry scored for Winnipeg. The goaltenders were busy in the fifth and final meeting of the season between the Central Division rivals. Chicago’s Corey Crawford made 28 saves in his 22nd victory of the season, while Winnipeg’s Connor Hellebuyck stopped 31 of the 34 shots he faced.
US SPORTS
Red Wings owner dies
Billionaire businessman Mike Ilitch, who founded the Little Caesars pizza empire before buying the Detroit Red Wings and the Detroit Tigers, is being praised in the wake of his death. Ilitch’s family released a statement saying he died on Friday at a local hospital. He was 87. They called him a visionary who set the tone for his family and company. He kept the professional sports teams in the city as others relocated to new suburban stadiums. Ilitch and his wife, Marian, founded Little Caesars in suburban Detroit in 1959. They eventually grew the business into one of the world’s largest carry-out pizza chains. He broke into sports ownership in 1982, paying a reported US$8 million for NHL team the Red Wings. Then, in 1992, he bought the MLB’s Tigers for US$85 million.
OLYMPICS
Norway tipped to top table
Norway are expected to return to the top of the medals table for the first time in 16 years at the Winter Olympics next year, while hosts South Korea are set to tie their record gold-medal haul with six titles, sports data firm Gracenote said. California-based Gracenote Sports put Germany second in its Virtual Medal Table for the Games, scheduled for Feb. 9 to Feb. 25 next year in the South Korean alpine town of Pyeongchang, ahead of the US in third. The data analysis firm forecast Norway to win 15 golds and 40 medals in total, which would both be record tallies. Canada holds the record for most golds with 14 in 2010, while the US won a record 37 medals at the same Games. Host country South Korea have set a target of eight golds at the Games — which will be the first Asian Winter Olympics staged outside Japan — although six would equal its record haul from the 2006 and 2010 editions. All but one of South Korea’s 26 gold medals at prior Winter Games have come from short track and speed skating, and Gracenote expected that run to continue with three golds in each sport next year. Gracenote also predicted Russian teenager Evgenia Medvedeva would take the women’s figure skating gold medal and that Canada would win the men’s ice hockey tournament for a third straight Olympics.
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