OLYMPICS
China names swim squad
China would send 11 swimmers implicated in a major doping scandal to next month’s Paris Olympics, after the country on Tuesday named its squad for the Games. Twenty-three Chinese swimmers tested positive for the prescription heart drug trimetazidine — which can enhance performance — ahead of the 2021 Tokyo Games, it emerged in April. They were not sanctioned after the World Anti-Doping Agency accepted the argument of Chinese authorities that the positive tests were caused by contaminated food. This month the New York Times reported that three among the 23 swimmers, including two going to Paris, had also tested positive for a different banned substance, clenbuterol, in separate cases in 2016 and 2017. US swimmer Lilly King on Friday last week called the most recent revelations “disappointing and frustrating.” “You know, when we put everything on the line ... everything that we do to compete with a level playing field, it’s extremely frustrating to not have faith that others are doing the same thing,” she said.
GOLF
PGA gives Woods exemption
Tiger Woods would be able to gain entry to all PGA Tour signature events after the circuit’s policy board on Tuesday voted to grant him a special exemption due to “exceptional lifetime achievement.” The move would give Woods access to the Tour’s eight signature tournaments, all of which award large prize money and extra points in the FedEx Cup standings despite possessing smaller fields than standard events.
ATHLETICS
Johnson starts new league
US athletics great Michael Johnson on Tuesday announced the launch of a new track league that would include the “best of the best” competing in four elite meetings every year from 2025. Johnson, a four-time Olympic gold medalist turned commentator for the BBC, said Grand Slam Track would debut in April 2025 with two three-day meetings in the US and two international stops, with prize money of about US$3 million on offer at each meeting. One US venue would be Los Angeles, host city of the 2028 Olympics, Johnson said. “People love racing. People want to see the best of the best, and at the core of Grand Slam Track is the best of the best athletes, only the fastest, competing head to head against one another four times a year,” he said. The meets would feature track races only, no field events, divided into categories of short sprints, long sprints, high hurdles, low hurdles, middle distance and long distance, with men’s and women’s races in each category.
SOCCER
Asian league offers US$12m
The winners of the new Asian Champions League Elite would pocket a minimum of US$12 million, the Asian Football Confederation said yesterday in a major boost to club soccer in the region. The competition, which starts with a preliminary round in August, is at the heart of a major revamp of club soccer across the continent and involves 27 clubs from 12 nations including Japan, South Korea, Australia and Saudi Arabia. The first prize is a threefold increase from the sum won by Al-Ain of the United Arab Emirates last month in the final edition of the Asian Champions League under its previous format.
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
A debate over the soul of soccer is raging in FIFA World Cup holders Argentina, pitting defenders of the social role of the beautiful game against the government of libertarian Argentine President Javier Milei, who wants to turn clubs into for-profit companies. Argentina, which gave the world Diego Maradona and Lionel Messi, is home to some of the world’s most devoted soccer fans — a fact attributed by supporters like Gabriel Nicosia to the clubs’ community outreach. Nicosia is a lifelong supporter of San Lorenzo, a more than 100-year-old first division club based in the working-class Buenos Aires neighborhood of Boedo where
RSS