TENNIS
Nadal to return to Queen’s
Rafael Nadal will start his bid to win a third Wimbledon title by returning to the grass-court tournament at Queen’s Club later this year. Nadal, a 14-time Grand Slam champion, has reached the Wimbledon final in each of the five years he played at Queen’s, but UK tax laws forced the world No. 3 to turn his back on the west London event. The 28-year-old Spaniard had instead prepared for Wimbledon by playing in Germany at the Gerry Weber Open in Halle in recent years. Since his last visit to Queen’s in 2011, Nadal has failed to get past the fourth round at the All England Club and the former world No. 1, who last won Wimbledon in 2010, has decided to return after a three-year absence.
RUGBY UNION
Ugo Monye plans to retire
Harlequins’ former England and British and Irish Lions wing Ugo Monye plans to retire at the end of the season, he announced on the English Premiership club’s Web site on Monday. “It is a decision that I have been thinking about for a long time, and one that I haven’t taken lightly,” said Monye, who has spent his entire playing career at Quins, making 237 appearances. “I have had an unbelievable 13 years at Quins, and look back on my career with no regrets.” Monye, 31, won 14 England caps between 2008 and 2012, and played in two Tests on the Lions’ 2009 tour of South Africa, scoring one try in the third-Test victory in Johannesburg. He added: “I can honestly say that the one thing I am most proud of is that I have been a one-club man in a game that is ever-changing, and I am excited to be staying on at the club after my retirement in a different capacity.”
BASEBALL
Dodgers’ Ryu placed on DL
Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Ryu Hyun-jin, a South Korean left-hander, is scheduled to begin the upcoming Major League Baseball season on the disabled list, team manager Don Mattingly said. Ryu, who turns 28 today, went 14-7 with a 3.38 earned-run average last season. However, he has a nagging left shoulder injury that prompted the Dodgers to send him home from pre-season training in Arizona to be examined by a doctor. Mattingly said a cortisone injection, treatment that helped ease shoulder stiffness last season, was delivered last week, but Ryu was barely able to lob a ball on Sunday.
SOCCER
Lucarelli banned over insult
Crisis-hit Parma have yet another problem. Captain Alessandro Lucarelli has been banned for three matches for insulting the referee. The incident occurred when Lucarelli was sent off in Sunday’s 2-0 loss at home to Torino. Parma were declared bankrupt by an Italian court last week with debts of more than 200 million euros (US$219.7 million), and the club’s new owner and president, Giampietro Manenti, was arrested on charges of money laundering and embezzlement. Players have not been paid all season and Parma sit last in Serie A.
RUGBY UNION
Manu to move to Edinburgh
Highlanders cocaptain Nasi Manu is to leave the Super 15 competition at the end of the season to join Edinburgh, the New Zealand club said yesterday. The Highlanders said Manu had signed a two-year contract with the Scottish club, but remained focused on this year’s Super 15 campaign. Manu should find conditions familiar in Scotland — the Highlanders home city Dunedin has a similar climate and is known as “the Edinburgh of the south.”
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
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
The lights dimmed and the crowd hushed as Karoline Kristensen entered for her performance. However, this was no ordinary Dutch theater: The temperature was 80°C and the audience naked apart from a towel. Dressed in a swimsuit and to the tune of emotional music, the 21-year-old Kristensen started her routine, performed inside a large sauna, with a bed of hot rocks in the middle. For a week this month, a group of wellness practitioners, called “sauna masters,” are gathering at a picturesque health resort in the Netherlands to compete in this year’s Aufguss world sauna championships. The practice takes its name from a
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
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