TENNIS
Swaitek races to quarters
Second-ranked Iga Swiatek dropped only two games and advanced to the quarter-finals of the China Open by thrashing Magda Linette 6-1, 6-1 yesterday. She next faces either ninth-seeded Carolina Garcia or Anhelina Kalinina tomorrow. Swiatek raced into a 5-0 lead in the first set and snuffed out any hope of an unlikely comeback when she forced her fellow Pole to fire a forehand long. The four-time Grand Slam champion then presided over a second-set masterclass, blitzing an exhausted Linette with an unrelenting salvo of mighty groundstrokes to wrap up the match in just over an hour. World No. 4 Jessica Pegula crashed out with a 6-4, 6-2 defeat to Latvia’s Jelena Ostapenko, who faces Liudmila Samsonova in the last eight after the Russian defeated Ukraine’s Marta Kostyuk 6-4, 6-7 (4/7), 7-5 in a match that took nearly three hours. Kazakhstan’s Elena Rybakina defeated Russia’s Mirra Andreeva 2-6, 6-4, 6-1. The men’s singles final between Italy’s Jannik Sinner and Russia’s Daniil Medvedev was delayed and was not over as of press time last night.
TENNIS
Polmans hits umpire
Australian Marc Polmans yesterday said he had apologized to the chair umpire after accidentally hitting him in the face with a ball in a Shanghai Masters qualifying match on Tuesday. The world No. 140 was leading Italian Stefano Napolitano after winning the first set when he hit a volley into the net on his second match point. The Australian then hit the ball in anger as it bounced back from the net. His errant hit narrowly missed the ball person before hitting chair umpire Ben Anderson in the face. Anderson was apparently not seriously injured. Polmans was immediately disqualified. “An update from me — the umpire, Ben, has accepted my apology for my actions — he knows it was unintentional and I shanked the ball on the frame in frustration in the heat of the moment,” Polmans wrote on social media platform X yesterday. “We both move on. It was a high pressure situation and I should have reacted better.” Polmans would forfeit all prize money and ranking points picked up during the qualifying tournament. He could still face further punishment from the ATP for the incident.
OLYMPICS
Bedbug sightings spark furor
A rash of bedbug sightings across France is causing paranoia among travelers and becoming a sore spot for the government as Paris prepares to host the Olympics next year. Videos that appear to show the bloodsucking insects crawling over seats on the Paris Metro and a high-speed train have gone viral on social media in the past few weeks, and some Metro passengers posted videos on TikTok vowing to stay standing. Public transport operator RATP, which runs Paris’s subway, trams and buses said in a statement that it had investigated, but “no cases of bedbugs have been confirmed to date.” While it is unclear whether infestations are up significantly, it has become a political issue in France, which is hosting the Rugby World Cup. French Minister Delegate for Transport Clement Beaune was to hold an emergency meeting with public transportation operators yesterday to discuss how to tackle the issue.
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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