■ CRICKET
Marcus Trescothick retires
Marcus Trescothick retired from international cricket on Saturday, the England batsman's county Somerset announced. His decision followed a recent withdrawal from the county's pre-season tour of the United Arab Emirates after he suffered a recurrence of the stress-related illness which cut short his England career. "I have tried on numerous occasions to make it back to the international stage and it has proved a lot more difficult than I expected," Trescothick, a veteran of 76 Tests and 123 one-day internationals, said in a statement issued by Somerset.
■ SWIMMING
Rice, Edington set records
The first two nights at the Australian swimming championships and Olympic trials produced two world records. Stephanie Rice broke the world mark in the 400m individual medley on Saturday, finishing in a time of 4 minutes, 31.46 seconds. That took 1.43 seconds off American Katie Hoff's mark of 4 minutes, 32.89 seconds set on April 1 last year at the world championships in Melbourne. Yesterday Sophie Edington broke a day-old world record in the women's 50m backstroke. Edington finished in 27.67 seconds to break the mark of 27.95 seconds set by her Australian teammate Emily Seebohn in the semi-finals on Saturday.
■ BOXING
Casamayor stops Katsidis
Cuba's Joel Casamayor stopped previously unbeaten Australian Michael Katsidis 30 seconds into the 10th round in California on Saturday to win an interim world lightweight title. Southpaw Casamayor knocked down the Aussie twice in the first round and flattened him again early in the 10th round. Seconds later, referee Jon Schorle halted the fight. Casamayor, who owns the World Boxing Council and World Boxing Organization interim lightweight titles, improved to 36-3 with one drawn after his 22nd stoppage inside the distance. Katsidis fell to 23-1.
■ SWIMMING
Bernard sets record again
Alain Bernard broke the 100m freestyle world record for the second time in two days on Saturday, setting a new mark of 47.50 seconds in the final at the European swimming championships. The 24-year-old Frenchman took one-tenth of a second off his record of 47.60 seconds recorded in Friday's semi-finals, which shattered Pieter Van den Hoogenband's mark set at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. "It's unbelievable," Bernard said. "I wanted to be faster today." Bernard was relatively unknown before these championships. He finished ninth in the 100m freestyle at last year's world championships and seventh in the 2006 Europeans. Now, he has emerged as one of the favorites at the Beijing Olympics in August.
■ BOXING
Kotelnik takes Rees' title
Hard-hitting Ukrainian Andreas Kotelnik dethroned Gavin Rees as the World Boxing Association light-welterweight world champion with a last round stoppage of the Welshman in Cardiff on Saturday. Rees produced one of the boxing upsets of last year when he took the title from Soulyemane M'Baye. But from the third round on, when his nose started to bleed, Rees started to be picked off by Kotelnik. And the challenger finished the bout 30 seconds from the end of the last round when he dropped Rees with a powerful right hand.
ANFIELD BLUES: Kylian Mbappe arrived at Anfield on a run of 21 goals in 17 games, but he managed just three attempts in the match, none of them hitting the target Kylian Mbappe has been nearly unstoppable this season, but he hit a roadblock in their UEFA Champions League match at Anfield on Tuesday. For the second year running, the Real Madrid forward had a night to forget at Merseyside as Liverpool won 1-0. Mbappe looked a shadow of the player who has been tearing defenses apart all season. “We were lacking that threat in the final third,” said Madrid coach Xabi Alonso, without naming Mbappe individually. The FIFA World Cup winner for France rarely looked capable of finding a breakthrough against a Liverpool team who have been so defensively fragile for much of the
For almost 30 minutes, Vitomir Maricic did not take a breath. Face down in a pool, surrounded by anxious onlookers, the Croatian freediver fought spasming pain to redefine what doctors thought was possible. When he finally surfaced, he had smashed the previous Guinness World Record for the longest breath-hold underwater by nearly five minutes. However, even with the help of pure oxygen before the attempt, it had pushed him to the limit. “Everything was difficult, just overwhelming,” Maricic, 40, told reporters, reflecting on the record-breaking day on June 14. “When I dive, I completely disconnect from everything, as if I’m not even there.
TIGHT GAME: The Detroit Pistons, the NBA’s second-best team, barely outlasted the Washington Wizards, who fell to an NBA-worst 1-10 with their ninth consecutive loss Cade Cunningham’s triple double, Daniss Jenkins’ three-pointer at the buzzer and Javonte Green’s overtime dunk lifted Detroit past Washington 137-135 on Monday, stretching the Pistons’ win streak to seven games. In an unexpected thriller, the NBA’s second-best team barely outlasted a Wizards club that fell to an NBA-worst 1-10 with their ninth consecutive loss. “We knew how big this game was for us,” Jenkins said. “We wasn’t going to let nothing stop us from getting this W.” Cunningham made 14-of-45 shots and 16-of-18 free throws for a career-high 46 points, and added 12 rebounds, 11 assists, five steals and two
With a hat-trick on Wednesday, Victor Osimhen moved atop the UEFA Champions League scoring table, with the Nigeria striker netting all three goals in Galatasaray’s 3-0 victory over Ajax in Amsterdam. Osimhen moved to six goals this season in Europe’s elite club competition, one more than Harry Kane, Kylian Mbappe and Erling Haaland. The Istanbul club signed Osimhen to a permanent deal from SSC Napoli in the summer for a record transfer fee in the Turkish League reportedly worth US$86 million. The 26-year-old striker needed less than 20 minutes to complete his first hat-trick in the competition. He headed in the opener in the
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