■INDYCAR
Power steps up at Penske
Will Power is stepping in for Helio Castroneves at Team Penske while the two-time Indianapolis 500 champion fights tax evasion charges in court. Team Penske announced the deal on Tuesday, saying Power will handle testing for Penske’s No. 3 car, which has belonged to last year’s IndyCar Series runner-up Castroneves. Power’s contract with KV Racing Technology expired at the end of last season. The team said whether Power drove in any races depended on the outcome of Castroneves’ trial in Miami, scheduled to begin on March 2. The IndyCar season opens on April 5 in St Petersburg, Florida. Castroneves has pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy and tax evasion involving about US$5.5 million in income stashed in offshore accounts.
■BASEBALL
Braves, Kawakami ink deal
Japanese All-Star pitcher Kenshin Kawakami and the rebuilding Atlanta Braves on Tuesday agreed to a three-year contract. The 2004 Central League MVP has won 112 games in 11 seasons in Japan and was regarded as one of the top free-agent pitchers from Japan this offseason. He was 9-5 for the Chunichi Dragons last year, when he missed several weeks because of a back strain. The 1.78m right-hander passed a physical in Atlanta on Monday. He will be the first Japanese-born player in franchise history. The Braves have attempted to boost their presence in Japan in recent years, and manager Bobby Cox said scouts have closely followed the 33-year-old Kawakami. Cox said he was impressed by video of Kawakami. “He looked very good,” Cox said. “He was able to throw the ball right where he wanted to with three or four pitches.”
■BASEBALL
Phillies’ Park drops S Korea
Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Park Chan-ho will miss the upcoming World Baseball Classic (WBC) after quitting South Korea’s national team. Park, who finalized a US$2.5 million, one-year contract with the Phillies last week, said on Tuesday he needed to focus on trying to become a starter for the World Series champions. “I’m very sorry to my fans and the people who wanted me to play in the WBC,” said Park, who briefly left the podium after breaking into tears. “I won’t be playing for the national team anymore.” The 35-year-old right-hander said he was unsure about his status with the Phillies and needed to focus on securing a spot with the team. “As I’m going to the Phillies, I will do my best there to achieve my goal of becoming a starter,” Park said.
■BASEBALL
Uehara closes Orioles deal
Pitcher Koji Uehara finalized a US$10 million, two-year contract with the Baltimore Orioles on Tuesday, making him the first Japanese-born player in franchise history. The 33-year-old Uehara, who agreed to terms last week, completed the contract after passing a physical. He gets US$5 million a year and could make more in performance bonuses. If he makes 34 starts and pitches 200 innings in each season, he would earn US$16 million. Uehara comes to the Orioles after a 10-year run with the Yomiuri Giants of the Japanese Central League. He went 112-62 with a 3.01 ERA, with 56 complete games in 207 career starts. He had 1,376 strikeouts and issued only 206 walks in 276 career games for the Giants. His career average of eight strikeouts per nine innings would rank seventh among qualifying active Major League Baseball pitchers. Uehara was the rookie of the year in 1999, and was Japan pitcher of the year in 1999 and 2002.
INJURY TURMOIL: Despite stunning French Open champions Paolini and Errani to advance, Chan was forced to pull out after her partner’s tearful women’s singles defeat Last year’s mixed doubles champions Hsieh Su-wei of Taiwan and Poland’s Jan Zielinski on Monday crashed out of the quarter-finals at Wimbledon, leaving the Taiwanese star focused on pursuing a fifth women’s doubles title in London, while a partner injury forced compatriot Chan Hao-ching to give up on her doubles campaign. Hsieh and Zielinksi, who last year also won the Australia Open title, narrowly lost their opening set 7-6 (9/7), before Britain’s Joe Salisbury and Brazil’s Luisa Stefani stunned the former champions 6-3 at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. The Taiwanese-Polish duo had been dominant in the first two
The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has overturned French Olympic fencer Ysaora Thibus’ four-year suspension for doping, ruling that her positive test for a banned substance was caused by kissing her then-boyfriend, American fencer Race Imboden. Thibus, a silver medalist in team foil at the Tokyo Games, had tested positive for ostarine, a prohibited muscle-building substance, during a competition in Paris in January last year. However, CAS concluded there was no intentional wrongdoing, finding it scientifically plausible that repeated kissing over several days with Olympic medalist Imboden — who was taking ostarine at the time — led to accidental contamination. The court
‘SU-PENKO’: Hsieh and Ostapenko face a rematch against their Australian Open final opponents, the same duo Hsieh played in last year’s Wimbledon semi-finals Taiwanese women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei and Latvian partner Jelena Ostapenko on Wednesday survived a near upset to the unseeded duo of Sorana Cirstea of Romania and Russia’s Anna Kalinskaya, setting up a semi-final showdown against last year’s winners. Despite losing a hard-fought opening set 7-6 (7/4) on a tiebreak, the fourth seeds turned up the heat, losing just five games in the final two sets to handily put down Cirstea and Kalinskaya 6-3, 6-2. Nicknamed “Su-Penko,” the pair are next to face top seeds Katerina Siniakova of the Czech Republic and Taylor Townsend of the US in a reversal of last
Switzerland’s Riola Xhemaili on Thursday scored a last-gasp goal to salvage a dramatic 1-1 draw with Finland that sent the joyous hosts through to the quarter-finals at Euro 2025, and heartbroken Finland home. Switzerland, who needed only a draw to advance based on goal-difference, finished second in Group A behind Norway to go through to the knockout round for the first time and are to face the winners of Group B, which would be world champions Spain as things stand. “I think we set ourselves a goal on the pitch, to write history, to go into the knockout stages, which we’ve never
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