■ Tennis
Hungarians qualify
Hungary's Petra Mandula (pictured above) and Attila Savolt won the deciding mixed doubles match Saturday to beat Canada 2-1 in qualifying at the Hopman Cup tennis tournament. The win puts Hungary into the main draw of the eight-country mixed teams event and an opening match Sunday against Australia's Lleyton Hewitt and Alicia Molik. Mandula gave Hungary a 1-0 lead with a 6-3, 6-2 win over Maureen Drake before Canada's Frank Dancevic leveled the match at 1-1 with a 6-4, 6-3 victory over Savolt. The Canadian pair won the opening set 6-3 in the mixed doubles decider before the Hungarian team won the second 6-1 and the third 10-3 in a match tiebreaker.
■ Skiing
Moan wins combined
Norway's Magnus Moan won his first career Nordic combined World Cup event Friday, holding off three-time Olympic champion Samppa Lajunen down the stretch. Moan finished the sprint event in 20 minutes, 32.1 seconds, 1.8 seconds ahead of the Finn. American Todd Lodwick was third, 24.2 back. The 20-year-old Norwegian was just eighth after the jump on the K90 hill but seized the lead after the second lap of the 7.5km sprint race, then fought off Lajunen's challenge. Germany's Ronny Ackermann, who had dominated this year, finished eighth after a poor jump left him 19th and out of contention. But Ackermann retained a big lead in the overall standings, with 582 points from seven World Cups this season. Second is Finland's Hannu Manninen with 450, followed by Austrian Felix Gottwald at 352. "This just wasn't my day. After the weak jump, I also didn't have the fastest skis on," Ackermann said.
South Korean giants T1, led by “Faker,” won their fifth League of Legends (LoL) world championship crown in London on Saturday, beating China’s Bilibili Gaming (BLG) in a thrilling final. The teams were locked at 2-2 at a packed O2 arena, but T1 clinched game five to make it back-to-back titles after nearly four hours of tense action. China’s BLG started strongly, taking the first game before T1 struck back to level. The Chinese team pulled ahead again at 2-1 only for their opponents to hit back again and go on to take the decider. Faker, who won the Most
Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei and Belgian partner Elise Mertens on Monday notched up their first win in the doubles group stage of the WTA Finals in Riyadh to keep their semi-final hopes alive, while Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russian partner Veronika Kudermetova were aiming to record their first victory after press time last night. Third seeds Hsieh and Mertens came back from a disheartening opening-day loss to Australia’s Ellen Perez and Nicole Melichar-Martinez to defeat top seeds Ukraine’s Lyudmyla Kichenok and Latvia’s Jelena Ostapenko, the women’s doubles world No. 3 and 4 respectively. The 6-1, 6-3 victory at King Saud University Indoor Arena
Amber Glenn overcame a fall and her own doubts to win a maiden Grand Prix figure skating title on Saturday at the Grand Prix de France. The American skater had the lead from Friday’s short program. That and the support of the crowd got her through a tough free skate in which she fell on a triple flip and put a hand onto the ice to steady herself on two other jumps. “I didn’t feel that great out there today, but I really tried, and the audience really got me through that last half when I was doubting myself,” Glenn
The Major League Baseball World Series trophy is headed to Los Angeles, but the party is extending all the way to Japan. People milled around local train stations yesterday morning in Tokyo as newspaper extras were ready to roll off the presses, proclaiming Japanese stars Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto as world champions along with their Dodgers teammates after a stirring Game 5 victory over the New York Yankees. The 30-year-old is a national hero in Japan whose face adorns billboards and TV adverts all over the country. Ohtani this year became the first player in history to hit 50 home runs and