SNOOKER
Ding docked over pants
Chinese snooker player Ding Junhui on Monday had to forfeit the opening frame for wearing the wrong pants in his 4-3 victory over compatriot Ma Hailong at the English Open. The 36-year-old donned his usual brown snooker suit with bow tie and waistcoat, having forgotten about the all-black dress code for the event in Brentwood. “I totally forgot that I needed a black shirt and trousers for this tournament,” the World Snooker Tour Web site quoted Ding as saying. “My memory is not good. I didn’t think about it. Once I was playing, I tried to just concentrate on the match.” Despite a friend’s quick run to a store to purchase the correct uniform, Ding was late for the start of the match by the time he was ready to play and was docked the opening frame. After falling behind 3-1, the 14-time ranking event winner made a strong comeback by winning the last three frames.
SWIMMING
No entries in ‘open category’
There are no entries in the races for the new “open category” at the World Cup in Berlin this weekend, World Aquatics said yesterday. The event was meant to mark the pilot open category established for swimmers after World Aquatics voted last year to restrict participation of transgender athletes in elite women’s competitions. Following the creation of a task force to look into the matter, the organization established the new category, as a pilot project, in July. The open category was to feature 50m and 100m races across all strokes.
MOTORSPORTS
Andretti closer to F1 team
Michael Andretti on Monday cleared a major hurdle in his bid to launch a US Formula One team after the International Automobile Federation (FIA) said that Andretti Global meets all required criteria to expand the world’s top motorsports series to 11 teams. The decision does not guarantee Andretti would get the two-car team he wants and just how far he has to go was made clear in a brusque response issued by F1 after the announcement. “We note the FIA’s conclusions in relation to the first and second phases of their process and will now conduct our own assessment of the merits of the remaining application,” F1 said in a statement. Liberty Media holds the F1 commercial rights and it is to the corporate giant that Andretti Global and partner Cadillac must next prove their commercial value.
BASEBALL
Clock hastened games
The average time of a nine-inning major league game dropped to 2 hours, 40 minutes in the first year of the pitch clock, a 24-minute decrease in a season of change that resulted in a spike in batting average and the most stolen bases in nearly 40 years. Left-handed hitters benefitted from the new restrictions on defensive shifts, runners took advantage of the slightly decreased distance between bases, and average fastball velocity set another record. The average game time dropped to its 1985 level after passing 3 hours for the first time in 2016. It reached a record 3:10 in 2021 before the introduction of the PitchCom electronic pitch-calling device helped bring it down to 3:04 last year. “It took some getting used to, but once you get used to it the game’s a lot faster,” Minnesota shortstop Carlos Correa said. “There’s not wasted time. The pace was great, so I think it’s here to stay.”
The qualifying round of the World Baseball Classic (WBC) is to be held at the Taipei Dome between Feb. 21 and 25, Major League Baseball (MLB) announced today. Taiwan’s group also includes Spain, Nicaragua and South Africa, with two of the four teams advancing onto the 2026 WBC. Taiwan, currently ranked second in the world in the World Baseball Softball Confederation rankings, are favorites to come out of the group, the MLB said in an article announcing the matchups. Last year, Taiwan finished in a five-way tie in their group with two wins and two losses, but finished last on tiebreakers after giving
North Korea’s FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup-winning team on Saturday received a heroes’ welcome back in the capital, Pyongyang, with hundreds of people on the streets to celebrate their success. They had defeated Spain on penalties after a 1-1 draw in the U17 World Cup final in the Dominican Republic on Nov. 3. It was the second global title in two months for secretive North Korea — largely closed off to the outside world; they also lifted the FIFA U20 Women’s World Cup in September. Officials and players’ families gathered at Pyongyang International Airport to wave flowers and North Korea flags as the
For King Faisal, a 20-year-old winger from Ghana, the invitation to move to Brazil to play soccer “was a dream.” “I believed when I came here, it would help me change the life of my family and many other people,” he said in Sao Paulo. For the past year and a half, he has been playing on the under-20s squad for Sao Paulo FC, one of South America’s most prominent clubs. He and a small number of other Africans are tearing across pitches in a country known as the biggest producer and exporter of soccer stars in the world, from Pele to Neymar. For
Coco Gauff of the US on Friday defeated top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka 7-6 (7/4), 6-3 to set up a showdown with Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen in the final of the WTA Finals, while in the doubles, Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching was eliminated. Gauff generated six break points to Belarusian Sabalenka’s four and built on early momentum in the opening set’s tiebreak that she carried through to the second set. She is the youngest player at 20 to make the final at the WTA Finals since Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki in 2010. Zheng earlier defeated Wimbledon champion Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic 6-3, 7-5 to book
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