TENNIS
Brazil’s Bellucci banned
Brazilian tennis player Thomaz Bellucci said he has been given a five-month suspension for doping. The 30-year-old Bellucci, who reached a career high of 21 in the rankings in 2010, said in a statement on Thursday that a sample he provided in July last year at the Swedish Open at Bastad tested positive for the diuretic hydrochlorothiazide, which can mask other substances. Bellucci said the positive test was the result of a contaminated vitamin supplement. “I could never imagine that a multivitamin made by a pharmacy could suffer crossed contamination in minimal amounts. I always took care and respected the rules,” he said.
TENNIS
ASB set for Sunday finish
The Auckland ASB Classic is to be extended by one day with the final now scheduled to be played tomorrow after persistent rain washed out play for a second consecutive day yesterday. Heavy rain prevented an entire day’s play on Thursday, with similar weather conditions 24 hours later forcing all singles matches to be postponed once more. The quarter-finals and semi-finals are to be played today, with the final taking place tomorrow. Czech third seed Barbora Strycova is to play Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei in the first quarter-final.
FIGURE SKATING
Chen wins short program
Nathan Chen on Thursday night made it look easy on the ice and in the standings, running away with the short program at the US Figure Skating Championships. The defending champion and America’s best hope for an Olympic gold medal next month at the Pyeongchang Games in South Korea, the 18-year-old Chen spun his usual quad magic, hitting two of the four-rotation jumps, one in competition. His energy lit up the SAP Center in San Jose, California, and although his triple axel was funky, Chen earned 104.45 points. That is territory none of his countrymen can reach. Coming closest was veteran Adam Rippon, who had a career-best 96.52. Jason Brown, a 2014 team bronze medalist at the Sochi Olympics in Russia, was third heading to today’s free skate.
GOLF
Tiger to play in San Diego
Former world No. 1 Tiger Woods is to make his much-anticipated debut this year at this month’s Farmers Insurance Open in San Diego, his first official PGA Tour event since missing the cut at the same tournament last year. Woods, who returned to competition last month in an 18-man exhibition after a near 10-month layoff during which he had spinal fusion surgery, is also to play the Feb. 15 to Feb. 18 Genesis Open at Riviera, Los Angeles, which is run by the Tiger Woods Foundation. “I’m very excited to be back at Riviera,” Woods, 42, said in a statement on his Web site on Thursday. “I haven’t played at Riviera in a tournament in a very long time. To be able to play in an event that I used to come to as an amateur, as a junior and now as the tournament host, that is on one of the most historic sites in all of golf, it’s a dream come true.” The American 14-times major champion swung freely and with no sign of back pain at last month’s Hero World Challenge, where he began his latest comeback and finished tied for ninth in a field including eight of the world’s top 10 golfers.
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