ATHLETICS
Games opposition eases
A majority of Japanese remain opposed to holding the Olympics this summer amid the COVID-19 pandemic, but the ratio lowered significantly from other recent polls, a Yomiuri Shimbun survey showed yesterday. Twenty-eight percent of respondents said they want the Olympics to be canceled, while the same ratio of people think they should be held without spectators, the poll showed. The poll showed that a combined 61 percent want the Games to be postponed or canceled, about 20 percentage points lower than earlier opinion polls. The Tokyo Olympic Games were postponed last year due to the pandemic and rescheduled to start on July 23.
SKIING
Opening races postponed
No fans. Now, no race. The opening event of the International Ski Federation (FIS) Alpine World Ski Championships scheduled for yesterday was postponed due to heavy snowfall. Organizers called the women’s combined off with no immediate new date for the race announced, although the FIS said information about rescheduling would come later. Although the forecast calls for better weather later in the week, it is a rough start for an event that was already deprived of fans due to a nationwide ban on spectators at sports events in Italy amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Aware of the forecast, organizers had already swapped the two portions of the combined, putting the slalom first and running the super-G as the second leg. The winner of the event is determined by adding together the skiers’ times from the two runs. Mikaela Shiffrin, Petra Vlhova, Michelle Gisin and Federica Brignone are among the favorites in combined.
CYCLING
Wellens wins Etoile
Belgian Tim Wellens on Sunday won the Etoile de Besseges cycling race after Filippo Ganna took the closing time trial, ending a five-year French stranglehold on the event. Wellens, who rides for Team Lotto-Soudal, topped the closing overall standings by 53 seconds from Team Ineos’ Michal Kwiatkowski of Poland. Time-trial world champion Ganna, also with Ineos, took the 10.7km fifth-stage honors around the streets of Ales in the Gard region in a time of 15 minutes, 0.33 seconds. “It felt nice to start this closing time trial with a lead of more than 40 seconds,” Wellens said, adding: “But most of all, I was really motivated to give [Soudal founder and owner] Vic Swerts a nice gift for his 81st birthday.”
HOCKEY
Ralph Backstrom dies at 83
Ralph Backstrom, a six-time Stanley Cup winner with the Montreal Canadiens, college coach and founder of a minor-league team, died on Sunday. He was 83. The Colorado Eagles announced the death of Backstrom, who founded the minor-league franchise in northern Colorado, in 2002. He was the Eagles’ president from 2003 to 2007. No cause of death was given. Backstrom was a longtime forward and helped the Canadiens capture the Stanley Cup in back-to-back seasons on three different occasions. He played in 1,336 career games in the NHL and the World Hockey Association, with 378 goals and 514 assists. A native of Kirkland Lake, Ontario, Backstrom was also a coach at the University of Denver. He led the Pioneers to the NCAA Final Four in 1986.
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