DARTS
Teen’s fairy-tale continues
Sixteen-year-old Luke Littler on Tuesday reached the final of the PDC World Darts Championship, extending one of the most unlikely stories in the history of the sport. Littler, an unseeded player from Runcorn in northwest England who started throwing darts as a toddler, beat 2018 champion Rob Cross 6-2 to get into today’s title match against Luke Humphries. “I was happy winning one game, but I could go all the way,” said Littler, a tournament debutant. “My target was to still be here after Christmas and now here I am in the final.” Littler said he plans to stick to his daily routine before the match. “In the morning I’ll go for my ham and cheese omelet, then later a pizza and then practice on the board,” the teenager said. Littler’s new-found celebrity status has led to him and his family receiving complimentary tickets to watch English Premier League matches at Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur. Against Cross, he lost the first set for the first time this tournament, but finished with an average of more than 106. Humphries, the No. 3 seed, beat Scott Williams 6-0 in the second semi-final. “I’m probably going to have to play the game of my life ... to stand a chance tomorrow,” Humphries said of his match against Littler.
ICE HOCKEY
McDavid scores 900th point
Captain Connor McDavid had four assists and a goal, scoring his 900th career regular-season point in his 602nd game, as the Edmonton Oilers extended their win streak to six games with a 5-2 victory over the Philadelphia Flyers on Tuesday night. McDavid is the fifth-fastest player in NHL history to record his 900th point, behind only Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, Mike Bossy and Peter Stastny. “It’s another nice milestone, a chance to reflect on some of the work you’ve done,” McDavid said. McDavid is “a generational talent,” teammate Zach Hyman said. “It’s pretty special in the era he plays in to be in categories with the guys he is,” he said. “I don’t think anybody is even close in recent memory. It is pretty unbelievable, and it is pretty special having the opportunity to play with him.”
SOCCER
Birmingham sack Rooney
England great Wayne Rooney was on Tuesday fired as the manager of second-tier club Birmingham City after 15 games. Rooney earned only two wins since his controversial appointment in October last year. Birmingham were sixth in the EFL Championship when he started, and have fallen to 20th. The club was taken over last summer by a company owned by US businessman Tom Wagner, and they got rid of popular coach John Eustace, who had been in charge for 15 months and steered the club away from relegation. “Birmingham City has today parted company with manager Wayne Rooney and first-team coach Carl Robinson,” the club said in a statement. “Despite their best efforts, results have not met the expectations that were made clear at the outset.” NFL great Tom Brady became a minority owner of the club in August. Rooney thanked Wagner, Brady and club CEO Garry Cook for the opportunity, but said he was not given enough time. “Football is a results business — and I recognize they have not been at the level I wanted them to be,” Rooney’s statement read. “However, time is the most precious commodity a manager requires and I do not believe 13 weeks was sufficient to oversee the changes that were needed.”
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
Taiwan’s top table tennis player Lin Yun-ju made his debut in the US professional table tennis scene by taking on a new role as a team’s co-owner. On Wednesday, Major League Table Tennis (MLTT), founded in September last year, announced on its official Web site that Lin had become part of the ownership group of the Princeton Revolution, one of the league’s eight teams. MLTT chief executive officer Flint Lane described Lin’s investment as “another great milestone for table tennis in America,” saying that the league’s “commitment to growth and innovation is drawing attention from the best in the sport, and we’re
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
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
RSS