■ATHLETICS
Bolt rockets out 200m
Triple Olympic and world champion Usain Bolt ran the fourth-fastest 200m of all-time with a blistering 19.56 second sprint in front of his home fans at the Jamaica International Invitational in Kingston on Saturday. Only Bolt (twice) and former world record holder Michael Johnson have ever clocked faster times. The Jamaican’s world record stands at 19.19 seconds, which he set at last year’s world championships in Berlin, and his latest effort was all the more impressive as it was run into a headwind of 0.8m per second. American world bronze medalist Wallace Spearmon also dipped under 20 seconds, running 19.98 seconds to finish a distant second.
■KENTUCKY DERBY
Super Saver wins in mud
Calvin Borel guided Super Saver through the mud to victory in the 136th Kentucky Derby in Louisville, Kentucky, on Saturday to give trainer Todd Pletcher his first Derby win after 24 fruitless attempts. For Borel, it was a third triumph in four years in the venerable race, the first jewel in US flat racing’s Triple Crown. Borel piloted 50-1 longshot Mine That Bird to a stunning triumph last year, and won in 2007 aboard Street Sense. On the treacherous mud at Churchill Downs, Borel delivered another superb ride on the rail, stalking the leaders before making his move into the stretch to cruise to the victory. Super Saver went off as the second-choice behind favorite Lookin At Lucky in the 2km race. Lookin At Lucky, trained by Bob Baffert, was hindered by his unfavorable post on the rail and finished sixth.
■BOXING
Marquez to face Diaz
Five-times world champion Juan Manuel Marquez will defend his WBA and WBO lightweight titles against Juan Diaz in Las Vegas on July 31 in a rematch of their furious slugfest last year. Mexican Marquez stopped Diaz in the ninth round in Houston in February last year to claim the vacant WBA and WBO belts. Diaz dominated the early rounds before Marquez turned the tide, swarming after his opponent in the eighth and ninth until the referee halted the contest. “Our fight was the fight of the year in 2009 and it may be the fight of the year again in 2010,” Marquez (50-5-1, 37 knockouts) told a news conference at the MGM Grand Hotel & Casino on Saturday. Diaz (35-3, 17 KOs) viewed his sequel with Marquez as a chance for redemption. Marquez, widely regarded as the world’s top lightweight, has not been in the ring since he lost a non-title welterweight bout to Floyd Mayweather Jr in September last year after moving up two weight classes. Diaz, who held the world lightweight title from 2004 to 2007, has lost three of his last five fights.
■ICE HOCKEY
Staal taken out by surgery
Pittsburgh center Jordan Staal has undergone surgery to repair a cut tendon in his right foot and is not expected to play today when the Penguins meet the Montreal Canadiens in Game Two of their Eastern Conference semi-final series. “He is not ruled out for the remainder of the playoffs,” coach Dan Bylsma told the NHL’s official Web site, adding that the injury status was day-to-day. Staal was hurt in a collision with Montreal’s PK Subban in the second period of the Penguins’ victory in Friday’s series opener. The Canadiens’ best all-round defenseman Andrei Markov will miss today’s game after suffering what the team described as a “lower body injury” during Game One’s first period. Markov, a key to the Canadiens’ penalty kill unit, returned to Montreal after the game and was seen by team doctors on Saturday.
■MOTORCROSS
World No. 2 Mcfarlane dies
Australia’s former world motocross No. 2 Andrew McFarlane died in a crash at the country’s national championship in Melbourne yesterday, organizers said. McFarlane suffered severe head injuries in a practice lap crash and despite paramedics’ efforts to revive him, he died at the track at the State Motorcycle Sports Complex in Broadford, north of Melbourne, organizers said. “Ladies and gentlemen, it is with great regret that we announce the passing of Andrew McFarlane,” event manager Kevin Williams said on the event’s live Web feed. McFarlane, 33, returned to Australia last year after nine years competing on the world motocross circuit in Europe and the US and finished second on the world championship circuit in 2005. Ahead of yesterday’s event, the event’s Web site said McFarlane was expected to retire from racing after this season. Motorcycling Australia and Victoria Police have both launched investigations into the accident. McFarlane is survived by his wife Natalie and their young daughter.
■ATHLETICS
Zurich named host city
Zurich was named host city for the 2014 European athletics championships on Saturday. “Athletics is a hugely popular sport in Switzerland and we have been assured today that we can look forward to a fantastic event,” European Athletics president Hansjoerg Wirz said in a statement. This year’s championships will take place in Barcelona from July 26 to Aug. 1. The 2012 event takes place in Helsinki.
■BOXING
Huck defends against Minto
Germany’s WBO cruiserweight world champion Marco Huck defended his title for the third time after challenger Brian Minto was forced to retire at the start of the tenth round in Oldenburg, Germany, on Saturday. Huck, 25, was in control from the first round and put his opponent from Butler, Pennsylvannia, on the canvas twice in the third. Although Minto battled on bravely, by the start of the tenth, referee Robert Byrd had seen enough and stopped the fight. The win leaves Huck with a record of 29 wins, with 22 knock-outs and just one defeat. This was 35-year-old Minto’s fourth defeat of his career.
■CYCLING
Wegmann boosts team
Fabian Wegmann handed his struggling Milram cycling team a boost in their quest for a new sponsor by sprinting to victory in the Frankfurt Grand Prix semi-classic in Frankfurt, Germany, on Saturday. Milram is the last remaining German-backed team in the professional peloton and, with their sponsor — a dairy company — ending its deal at the end of the year, the team is currently battling to find a replacement. Wegmann’s second successive victory, after 201.7km of racing, the German winning ahead of Belgians Geert Verheyen and Bert Scheirlinckx, will provide a timely boost for team bosses as they continue to court potential sponsors. Gerry van Gerwen, the manager of Team Milram, said: “This repeat win in Frankfurt is unbelievably important for our team, especially as it looked at one point as if we could not possibly win.” His win also comes in the wake of a five-week layoff because of a fractured collarbone. However, Wegmann was quick to pay tribute to the hard work of teammates Niki Terpstra and Christian Knees. “Winning here last year was a dream, so repeating my success is simply unbelievable,” Wegmann said.
Former world No. 2 Paula Badosa has withdrawn from this week’s Wuhan Open, organizers said on Tuesday, amid a racism row over an online photograph. Tournament organizers said the Spaniard had pulled out of the WTA 1000 tournament, citing a gastrointestinal illness, hours before her first-round match against Australian Ajla Tomljanovic. News outlets including Britain’s the Telegraph earlier reported that Badosa had posted a photo on Instagram in which she appeared to imitate a Chinese face by placing chopsticks on the corners of her eyes. The photo was taken last week in a restaurant in Beijing, where she reached the semi-finals of the
Shin Oebori coaches the Fukagawa Hawks youth baseball team in Tokyo, and he is very aware how Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani touches his players. “With Ohtani, the kids think everything is possible,” Oebori said, wrapping up practice yesterday on an all-dirt field set alongside a local Buddhist temple, below an elevated highway, and in the shadow of tall apartment blocks in central Tokyo. “Nothing is impossible with him. A dream is not a dream,” Oebori said, stepping out of the fenced practice field that keeps balls from landing on the temple grounds. None of the players hitting sponge-soft baseball has reached
CRICKET Azhar’s 59 leads Stallions Aashir Azhar’s blazing half-century guided the Taipei Stallions to victory over Taipei Super 11 in the Taiwan Premier League’s Group A at the Yingfeng Cricket Ground in Taipei yesterday. The Stallions were 102-3 and into the 12th over of 20 when Azhar came to the crease. He hit seven sixes and two fours in the 25 deliveries he faced to push his side to 171-5. Gokul Kumar was the star with the ball for Super 11, taking 3-17. In the reply, Deepak Vishnu outscored Azhar with 77 from 50 balls, but nobody else got past 20 as
‘GLOBAL PRESSURE’: LA’s Dave Roberts said that it was difficult to appreciate the ‘pressure on a global scale’ his starter was under ‘pitching for his country’ The Los Angeles Dodgers shelled out US$1 billion for Japanese talent in the off-season and it is paying off in the MLB playoffs. Yoshinobu Yamamoto on Friday outdueled Yu Darvish in a historic post-season matchup of Japanese-born starters, while the Dodgers got home runs from Kike Hernandez and Teoscar Hernandez to beat the San Diego Padres 2-0 and advance to the National League Championship Series. “It’s pretty sweet,” a smiling Freddie Freeman said. Yamamoto allowed two hits over five innings for the win, getting pulled after 63 pitches in a decisive Game 5 between heated NL West rivals who were meeting in a
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