Serena Williams withdrew before the start of her BNP Paribas Open semi-final on Friday due to a knee problem, cutting short her return to the event following a 14-year boycott.
Williams, who has been absent from Indian Wells since winning the event in 2001 when she says she suffered racist abuse from fans, said she would not be able to give her all for the remainder of the tournament and decided to pull out.
The decision put her opponent, Simona Halep, into the final against Jelena Jankovic, who beat Sabine Lisicki in three sets.
“I was on the practice court yesterday and everything was going well, but literally the last two minutes I went for a serve and felt a super sharp pain in my knee,” Williams said in a news conference. “I even did an injection. I’ve never done an injection before. If this were any other event I probably wouldn’t have considered it. But I wanted to give 200 percent. It just wasn’t meant to be this year.”
In the other semi-final, Lisicki, who endured a three-set quarter-final nailbiter on Thursday, took the first set 6-3 before Jankovic stormed back, the Serb taking the remaining sets 6-3 6-1.
Bayer 04 Leverkusen go into today’s match at TSG 1899 Hoffenheim stung from their first league defeat in 16 months. Leverkusen were beaten 3-2 at home by RB Leipzig before the international break, the first loss since May last year for the reigning league and cup champions. While any defeat, particularly against a likely title rival, would have disappointed coach Xabi Alonso, the way in which it happened would be most concerning. Just as they did in the Supercup against VfB Stuttgart and in the league opener to Borussia Moenchengladbach, Leverkusen scored first, but were pegged back. However, while Leverkusen rallied late to
Taiwanese badminton superstar Lee Yang broke down in tears after publicly retiring from the sport on Sunday. The two-time Olympic gold medalist held a retirement ceremony at the Taipei Arena after the final matches of the Taipei Open. Accompanied by friends, family and former badminton partners, Lee burst into tears while watching a video celebrating key moments in his professional sporting career that also featured messages from international players such as Malaysia’s Teo Ee Yi, Hong Kong’s Tang Chun-man, and Indonesia’s Mohammad Ahsan and Hendra Setiawan. “I hope that in the future when the world thinks about me, they will
If all goes well when the biggest marathon field ever gathered in Australia races 42km through the streets of Sydney on Sunday, World Marathon Majors (WMM) will soon add a seventh race to the elite series. The Sydney Marathon is to become the first race since Tokyo in 2013 to join long-established majors in New York, London, Boston, Berlin and Chicago if it passes the WMM assessment criteria for the second straight year. “We’re really excited for Sunday to arrive,” race director Wayne Larden told a news conference in Sydney yesterday. “We’re prepared, we’re ready. All of our plans look good on
When details from a scientific experiment that could have helped clear Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva landed at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the leader of the organization’s reaction was unequivocal: “We have to stop that urgently,” he wrote. No mention of the test ever became public and Valieva’s defense at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) went on without it. What effect the information could have had on Valieva’s case is unclear, but without it, the skater, then 15 years old, was eventually disqualified from the 2022 Winter Olympics after testing positive for a banned heart medication that would later