ICE HOCKEY
Rangers’ Boogaard dies
New York Rangers player Derek Boogaard died in Minneapolis, Minnesota, from an accidental overdose after mixing a potent painkiller with alcohol, officials announced on Friday. The Minnesota medical examiner said Boogaard, who was found dead at his Minneapolis apartment, died after taking a combination of oxycodone and alcohol. No other details were released. The body of 28-year-old Boogaard, who also played for the Minnesota Wild, was discovered on Friday. He had not played with his National Hockey League team in five months after he suffered a season-ending concussion against the Ottawa Senators. Oxycodone is a powerful painkiller that doctors warn can cause addiction. It has also been identified in some overdose deaths. In July last year, Boogaard signed a four-year US$6.5 million contract with the Rangers. He had one goal and an assist in 22 games this past season and has had 70 career fights.
RUGBY UNION
Harlequins beat Stade
Argentine winger Gonzalo Camacho scored a try three minutes from time to give the Harlequins a dramatic 19-18 win over Stade Francais in the European Challenge Cup final in Cardiff, Wales, on Friday. It was the Harlequins’ third triumph in the tournament to add to their 2001 and 2004 wins. However, the UK side left it late to secure victory. With the clock ticking down and with the French side deservedly 18-12 ahead, the Harlequins’ scrum-half Danny Care chipped ahead to leave the Paris club back-tracking and Camacho picked up to score the only try of the evening. That made the score 18-17 to Stade, who had dominated the second half, having trailed 9-6 at the break. Former All Blacks flyhalf Nick Evans then stepped up to knock over a nerveless conversion from a difficult angle to add to his four penalties.
FOOTBALL
Leagues side with players
The unions for hockey, baseball and basketball are siding with the players in the NFL lockout court battle, saying the league’s lockout should be lifted. The players associations for MLB, the NHL and the NBA filed a brief on Friday in a federal appeals court, saying the case presents “vitally important issues” for the unions and their members. The unions say professional athletes’ careers are short and the loss of even part of a season causes personal and professional injuries that can’t be compensated. That reiterates the NFL players’ argument that the lockout is causing them irreparable harm. A federal judge in Minnesota agreed with and lifted it last month, but the league appealed.
SOCCER
Player challenges Twitter
A British soccer player is taking legal action to force Twitter to give the details of users who broke a gagging order granting him anonymity over an alleged affair, his lawyers said on Friday. The married player had earlier obtained an order from a judge banning publication of his identity over an alleged sexual relationship with a female contestant on the reality television show Big Brother. The player is not identified in the court documents. A spokesman for US-based Twitter said: “We’re not able to comment.” Earlier this month, a Twitter user published the names of several British celebrities who have allegedly obtained anonymized injunctions or so-called super-injunctions, which prevent even the mention of the order itself.
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
LOCAL SUCCESS: In the doubles, Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei and Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia defeated Italians Sara Errani and Jasmine Paolini in straight sets Elena Rybakina on Monday punched her ticket to the WTA Finals last four with an impressive 3-6, 6-1, 6-0 victory over second seed Iga Swiatek in round-robin play in Riyadh. After cruising past Amanda Anisimova in her opener on Saturday, Rybakina claimed her second win of the week to guarantee herself top spot in the Serena Williams Group. Anisimova on Monday rallied back from a set and a break down to triumph 4-6, 6-3, 6-2 in her all-American battle with seventh seed Madison Keys, who has been eliminated from the competition. “Madi was playing so well, it was quite a battle out there,”
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.
An amateur soccer league organized by farmers, students and factory workers in rural China has unexpectedly drawn millions of fans and inspired big cities to form their own, raising hopes China can grow talent from the ground up and finally become a global force. The nation of 1.4 billion people has about 200 million soccer fans, more than any other country, but it has failed to build world-class teams, partly due to a top-down approach where clubs pick players from a very small pool of prescreened candidates. The professional game is marred by a history of fixed matches, corruption, and dismal performances,
RSS