Sport

LONDON — Britain looks set to witness the final chapter this weekend of an underdog story that arguably outshines even the 1980 “Miracle on Ice.” Leicester City — a pro soccer team built on a shoestring budget, and hailing from an unfashionable city in central England — can clinch the British Premier League on Sunday with a win over 13-time champions Manchester United. Before the season began, they were 5,000-to-1…

TALLADEGA, Ala. — Bobby Labonte quietly bowed out of full-time Sprint Cup Series competition at the tail end of the 2013 season. No retirement tour, no gifts. Certainly no ponies. The 2000 premier series champion has selectively dabbled in the sport since, however, with a handful of unremarkable starts at Indianapolis and the restrictor plate tracks, knowing the pack racing may be his last remaining shot at picking up his first —…

Chase Elliott captured his second pole of the season and of his young career Saturday at Talladega Superspeedway, and he will lead the field to the start-finish line in Sunday’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Geico 500. As pointed out by Jeff Gluck of USA Today, Elliott’s qualifying run continued a trend of the No. 24 team excelling at superspeedways:  Chase Elliott makes it two-for-two on restrictor plate poles. First Daytona…

RELATED: Lineup | See all 40 cars   TALLADEGA, Ala. – Numerologists doubtless will have a field day with the front row for Sunday’s GEICO 500 at Talladega Superspeedway (on FOX at 1 p.m. ET, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).   Touring the 2.66-mile race track in 49.704 seconds (192.661 mph) during Saturday’s time trials, Chase Elliott put the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet on the pole, making the 20-year-old rookie driver two-for-two at restrictor-plate…

Tony Stewart appreciates NASCAR changing its lug nut policy following his comments that vehemently encouraged the sanctioning body to do just that, a measure supported by several drivers. What makes Stewart less happy is why he was fined $35,000 at all and how he can go about getting his money back considering NASCAR ultimately heeded Stewart’s advice and mandated teams apply the maximum number of lug nuts to fasten…

LONDON — Britain looks set to witness the final chapter this weekend of an underdog story that arguably outshines even the 1980 “Miracle on Ice.” Leicester City — a pro soccer team built on a shoestring budget, and hailing from an unfashionable city in central England — can clinch the British Premier League on Sunday with a win over 13-time champions Manchester United. Before the season began, they were 5,000-to-1…

NPR’s Scott Simon talks to Shannon Galpin, founder of the nonprofit Mountain2Mountain, about withdrawing her support of the scandal-plagued Afghanistan Women’s Cycling Team.

RELATED: Full schedule for Talladega   TALLADEGA, Ala. — Dale Earnhardt Sr. would have been 65 years old on Friday. Fittingly, his son, Dale Earnhardt Jr., spoke about his father on Friday at Talladega Superspeedway, where the paternal duo has a combined 16 Sprint Cup Series victories. “It’s crazy to think of what he would have been like at 65 years old,” said the Hendrick Motorsports driver. “You kind of had an idea he wouldn’t…

LONDON — Britain looks set to witness the final chapter this weekend of an underdog story that arguably outshines even the 1980 “Miracle on Ice.” Leicester City — a pro soccer team built on a shoestring budget, and hailing from an unfashionable city in central England — can clinch the British Premier League on Sunday with a win over 13-time champions Manchester United. Before the season began, they were 5,000-to-1…

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5:33 PM ET print TALLADEGA, Ala. – Catastrophic. That’s not the description of a crew chief in the garage of what would happen if a wheel is loose. It’s the description of the potential penalty if his car has 19 instead of 20 tight lug nuts on a car that comes into victory lane. Kurt Busch crew chief Tony Gibson is an old-school crew chief. And he shudders at the…

The second round of the Western Conference playoffs began on Friday night in Dallas with the Stars defeating the St. Louis Blues, 2-1, in an outstanding, fast-paced hockey game to take an early 1-0 series lead. Antoine Roussel and Radek Faska provided the offense for the Stars in the win. Meanwhile, in the late game, the San Jose Sharks took a 1-0 series lead over the Nashville Predators with a…

Since 1988, television giant NBC has fiercely guarded its valuable trove of Summer Olympics footage. That worked well for decades, as viewers could be counted on to tune in regularly to television broadcasts of the games. But a dramatic shift in the way people — particularly younger consumers — seek entertainment has led the broadcast network to reach an unprecedented deal with Snapchat, with the two companies announcing Friday that…

RELATED: Full schedule for Talladega   TALLADEGA, Ala. — Dale Earnhardt Sr. would have been 65 years old on Friday. Fittingly, his son, Dale Earnhardt Jr., spoke about his father on Friday at Talladega Superspeedway, where the paternal duo has a combined 16 Sprint Cup Series victories. “It’s crazy to think of what he would have been like at 65 years old,” said the Hendrick Motorsports driver. “You kind of had an idea he wouldn’t…

To save articles or get newsletters, alerts or recommendations – all free. Don’t have an account yet?Create an account » Subscribed through iTunes and need an NYTimes.com account?Learn more » Need to connect your Home Delivery subscription to NYTimes.com?Link your subscription »

To save articles or get newsletters, alerts or recommendations – all free. Don’t have an account yet?Create an account » Subscribed through iTunes and need an NYTimes.com account?Learn more » Need to connect your Home Delivery subscription to NYTimes.com?Link your subscription »

Eight days after being fined $35,000 by NASCAR, presumably for making critical comments about safety and lug nuts, Tony Stewart said he still has questions about what exactly he said that got him fined. On April 21, just hours after announcing his return to competition, Stewart was fined $35,000 by NASCAR for violating Section 12.1; 12.8.a; 12.8.1.b of the NASCAR rulebook. Those sections contain language about making disparaging marks about…

It has not been a vintage week for women’s cycling, with one of the world’s top female riders accusing her coach of sacking her, criticising her bum and telling her to “go and have a baby” instead of training for the Rio Olympics. The 25-year-old Jess Varnish’s allegations against Shane Sutton, the technical director of British Cycling, led to his resignation and triggered a series of further accusations of misconduct…

Further pressure was heaped on British Cycling when the beleaguered governing body was criticised by the Orica-GreenEdge owner, Gerry Ryan, for its handling of the positive drugs test involving Orica’s British cyclist Simon Yates. Yates, world champion in the points race in 2013 and regarded as a strong hope for the Great Britain road race team in Rio, returned an adverse analytical finding for the asthma drug Terbutaline, due to…