Category Archives: Sport

Naomi Osaka wins Australian Open final to seal back-to-back grand slams

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This time the tears were of joy. Tennis already had a star in Naomi Osaka; now it has a superstar. After squandering three match points at 5-3 in the second set, the 21-year-old Japanese regrouped brilliantly to beat the Czech Petra Kvitova 7-6 (2) 5-7 6-4 to win a dramatic Australian Open final. Her second consecutive grand slam title ensures she will be the new world No 1 and on this evidence, she might stay there for some time.

Related: Naomi Osaka v Petra Kvitova: Australian Open women's final – live!

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Ireland’s calling: a journey to the heart of a rugby powerhouse | Donald McRae

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Ireland are favourites for the Six Nations and are serious contenders for the World Cup this year, with a spirit that transcends national boundaries. How have they done it?

“It just wouldn’t happen today,” Willie John McBride says on a rainy morning at home in Ballyclare as he explains the vast differences between the gleaming powerhouse of Irish rugby today and a ramshackle sport which he only began playing at the age of 17. Four years later, in 1962, as McBride remembers, “I was in the Lions Test team. Remarkably, I survived.”

McBride not only survived. At 78 he remains the godfather of Irish rugby and a lock forward who won 63 caps for Ireland and played a record 17 Lions Tests. He also provides a perfect starting point for a journey through Irish rugby as McBride’s story shows how much Ireland and the game have changed. Despite past sectarian conflicts and multiple identities, there is a new cohesion among the four rugby provinces and the national team.

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Emiliano Sala’s sister begs rescuers to restart search for missing footballer

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Romina Sala says she believes he is still alive after plane vanished over Channel Islands

The family of the footballer Emiliano Sala have pleaded for rescuers to continue searching for the player and a pilot after their light aircraft went missing over the Channel Islands.

Sala’s sister, Romina Sala, speaking after the search was called off, said she believed the Argentinian striker and the pilot Dave Ibbotson, from Lincolnshire, were still alive and in the Channel three days after their plane vanished.

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Petra Kvitova v Danielle Collins: Australian Open women’s semi-finals – live!

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  • Updates from Rod Laver Arena at Melbourne Park
  • Any thoughts? Email or tweet @rrjparkin

First set: Kvitova 6-6 Collins* (*denotes server): The game opens with a 17-hit rally, and it’s Kvitova who seems to expend the most energy during it. Collins races to 40-0 as Kvitova punches a wild forehand well wide. Another love hold, and we have a tie-break.

First set: Kvitova* 6-5 Collins (*denotes server): Why all this temperature chat matters is of course that with the roof closed, serving conditions are now a little more comfortable. In theory that aids Kvitova, but there are plenty of permutations such as racquet tension, ball speed etc that are affected, and require adjustment.

Kvitova doesn’t make light work of her second service game in the new conditions, being dragged to deuce with an unforced error. She holds on the first advantage point though, and pumps the fist.

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Emiliano Sala: search resumes for lost plane carrying Cardiff player

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Voicemail message revealed as police say chances of finding footballer alive are ‘slim’

The search for the plane carrying the Cardiff City footballer Emiliano Sala that went missing over the English Channel has resumed, amid only “slim” hopes he survived.

The aircraft, carrying Sala and the pilot, disappeared off Alderney in the Channel Islands on Monday night.

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Naomi Osaka sponsor apologises for ‘whitewashing’ tennis star in ad

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Noodle company Nissin says it will ‘pay more attention to diversity issues in the future’

One of Naomi Osaka’s sponsors has been forced to apologise after depicting the Japanese tennis star, who is half-Haitian, with pale skin in an advertisement.

Nissin featured Osaka in an ad for its Cup Noodle range of instant ramen. It depicts Osaka, who holds dual Japanese and American citizenship, with pale skin, wavy brown hair and Caucasian facial features.

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Worst job in showbiz: why will no one touch the world’s glitziest gigs?

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The Oscars have no host, Rihanna turned down the Super Bowl, and the White House dinner will be MC’d by a historian. What’s behind the sudden demise of entertainment’s biggest jobs?

The loss of the Oscars’ latest host is, on the one hand, just another mishap to add to the list. From 2016’s #OscarsSoWhite to 2017’s wrong delivery of the best picture award, the ceremony now seems like a particularly slow bloopers reel. Yet the loss of Kevin Hart – who quit after old homophobic tweets resurfaced – is also a sign of something else. The fact that no one has replaced him, and that it’s difficult to think of many people who could, or would, reveals a much deeper malaise: a scary loss of nerve across showbiz’s top-tier events.

Within weeks, the Super Bowl half-time show will air. In the past, the American football final has been an epic showcase for the likes of Madonna, Prince and Beyoncé, a 20-minute, legacy-defining megamix. This year, though, with Rihanna and Cardi B having turned it down in solidarity with the activist NFL player Colin Kaepernick, we will be left with the hardly epochal sounds of Maroon 5.

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Cardiff City’s Emiliano Sala was on missing plane, French authorities say

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• Flight from Nantes to Cardiff missing over Channel
• Sala signed for Cardiff for £15m last Saturday

Emiliano Sala, the Argentinian footballer who signed for Cardiff City last Saturday, was on a private plane that disappeared near the Channel Islands on Monday evening, the French civil aviation authority has said.

A small plane – a Piper Malibu – travelling from Nantes to Cardiff went missing near the Casquets lighthouse, with Sala one of two people on board.

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Ronaldo agrees to pay €19m fine to settle tax fraud case

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Juventus footballer pleads guilty after agreeing to fine and suspended sentence in Madrid court

The Portugal and Juventus footballer Cristiano Ronaldo has admitted committing tax fraud while playing for Real Madrid and agreed to pay an €18.8m (£16.5m) fine after striking a deal with prosecutors and tax authorities in return for a 23-month suspended prison sentence.

Ronaldo, 33, had been accused of defrauding the authorities of €14.8m (£12.9m) in unpaid taxes between 2011 and 2014.

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Vintage ski posters – in pictures

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A collection of vintage ski and winter sports posters up to a century old – some worth thousands of dollars – is about to be auctioned in New York. The resorts advertised range from Europe’s Alpine jewels to the mountains of Canada, and all offer fun in the outdoors

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Journalist who exposed football corruption shot dead in Ghana

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Exposés by Ahmed Husein, who died in Accra, had also lifted lid on corruption in judicial system

A Ghanaian journalist who helped expose corruption in African football has been shot dead in Accra.

Ahmed Husein was part of a team led by award-winning journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas, whose investigation led to the resignation of the head of the Ghana Football Association.

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Trump orders McDonald’s for football champions as shutdown cuts staff

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Staff absences at White House see president set the menu, and unsurprisingly he chose a Big Mac buffet

Any champion football player disappointed with Monday’s dinner at the White House can blame Democrats, according to a presidential spokesman.

Clemson University’s football team on Thursday joined Donald Trump for dinner to celebrate their win over Alabama in the College Football Playoff National Championship. However, the government shutdown has left much of the White House staff furloughed, forcing the president to set the menu, the spokesperson said.

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Andy Murray: from gangly kid to genuine sporting grownup

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Widely loved and politically progressive, the Scot will retire as arguably the greatest individual British sports person of the modern age

Stop all the green and yellow Timex clocks. Put away that union jack tea towel. Stow the Pimms-sodden crash barriers at the foot of the Aorangi Terrace.

Andy Murray may yet play another Wimbledon this summer, depending on the state of his chronic, career-capping hip injury. But in the wake of a raw and tearful press conference on Friday morning it seems highly likely that next week’s Australian Open will be the final appearance of a stellar, transformative, broadly-sketched tennis career.

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Tearful Andy Murray says Australian Open could be last tournament

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• Murray unsure he will make it to Wimbledon
• ‘The pain is too much. I don’t want to continue’
• Latest updates: tributes paid as Murray admits time is up

Andy Murray’s career is all but over. He expects his match against Roberto Bautista Agut in the first round of the Australian Open on Monday to be his last but, even if another hip operation were to help him reach a more emotional and perhaps more fitting farewell at Wimbledon, it will never be the same for the player who stood alongside Fred Perry as the greatest Britain has ever had. Many would say Murray was the greater, but it is a fine call.

The former world No1 and three-time slam champion conceded that the pain that has been running through his right hip with increasing strength the past few months has brought his serious playing days to a reluctant conclusion.

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Cristiano Ronaldo rape allegation: lawyer confirms police have issued warrant for DNA

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  • Juventus star is subject to allegations from 2009
  • Forward has denied claims he raped woman in hotel room

Cristiano Ronaldo’s lawyer has confirmed authorities in Las Vegas have issued a warrant to collect DNA from the football star in the wake of allegations he raped a woman in the city in 2009.

“Mr Ronaldo has always maintained, as he does today, that what occurred in Las Vegas in 2009 was consensual in nature, so it is not surprising that DNA would be present, nor that the police would make this very standard request as part of their investigation,” Ronaldo’s lawyer, Peter S Christiansen, said in a statement to the BBC. The Wall Street Journal reports that the warrant has been sent to courts in Italy, where Ronaldo plays for Juventus.

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Hallucinations and $100,000: the poker player who shut himself in a pitch-black room for weeks

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Rich Alati had a six-figure sum in his sights. As long as he could survive 30 days in the dark with no human contact

Three – or was it four? – days after he shut himself in a pitch-black bathroom, Rich Alati started to hallucinate. He saw little white, bubble-like balls, floating around the room. To calm himself he imagined he was in a magical cloud, cozy and relaxed. Embracing the visions was key. “Or else,” he says, “you might get a little scared.”

Alati was in the dark for a bet, which makes a little more sense once you know he is a professional poker player. On 10 September last year, the American was sitting at a poker table at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, when he was asked a question by a fellow professional player, Rory Young: how much would it take for him to spend time in complete isolation, with no light, for 30 days? An hour later a price had been agreed: $100,000.

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Cyclist, 90, stripped of world record after failing drugs test

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  • Carl Grove accepts public warning from Usada
  • Violation likely caused by contaminated meat

A veteran American cyclist has accepted a public warning issued by the US Anti-Doping Agency after failing a drugs test and being stripped of a world record he set earlier this year.

Carl Grove set a new record when winning the 90-94 age group sprint title at the US Masters Track National Championships in July, only to test positive for epitrenbolone, a metabolite of trenbolon, which is a substance prohibited by Usada.

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Australia v India: SCG fourth Test, day three – as it happened

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  • Bad light brings an early end to day three with Australia 236-6

So an early end to another day of Indian dominance at the SCG. The lost overs will make it more difficult for them to force a victory but the delay will allow their attack to rest up in preparation for enforcing the follow on should Australia’s batting woes continue.

Day three actually began promisingly for the home side. Marcus Harris showed plenty of intent during the opening session and he was ably supported by Marnus Labuschagne on a pitch perfect for batting. But both fell in a sloppy afternoon session that yielded four wickets for India and reinforced the issues at the heart of this brittle Australian XI.

“As this game hurtles towards a swift conclusion (barring a Cummins century and inclement weather)” begins Abhijato Sensarma, “I am left to wonder about minuscule things which I frankly have no time for - yet, one can’t help overthinking ideas during such sessions of Test cricket.

Ever since the dawn of professional cricket, the scorecard has been said to say ‘only half the story’. The minutes batted column, the last saving grace of first-class matches, are slowly disappearing too. Can it not be that annotations are used for cricketing scorecards?

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Teen’s round-the-world yacht Wild Eyes found floating eight years after boat abandoned

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Yacht spotted near Kangaroo Island off South Australian coast after being abandoned by 16-year-old sailor Abby Sunderland in 2010

Eight and a half years after it was abandoned in the middle of the Indian Ocean when 16-year-old solo sailor Abby Sunderland had to be rescued in rough seas, a yellow yacht named Wild Eyes has been found floating upside down off the coast of South Australia.

The 40-foot yacht was encrusted with barnacles, the signature eyes on the hull scratched and faded. Its mast snapped off in the wild weather that forced Sunderland’s rescue midway through her world record attempt to be the youngest solo sailor to circumnavigate the globe in 2010.

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