World Sports

Tears in the octagon. So many were shed, so many others held in by a state of shock. Holly Holm cried her face red as she ran circles inside the cage late Saturday night, looking for someone to share the moment with, a moment that just couldn’t be real, could it? The UFC 193 main event had just ended suddenly and stunningly, and Etihad Stadium in Melbourne, Australia, was rocking…

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“It is a standing insult to sportsmen to have to play under a rule which assumes that players intend to trip, hack and push their opponents, and behave like cads of the most unscrupulous kidney.” So said Charles Burgess Fry, one of England’s all-time sporting greats, arguing against football adopting the law that in 1891 brought into existence the penalty area and the penalty kick. Related: Football doesn’t want to…

When an athlete as dominant as Ronda Rousey loses as suddenly and as violently as she did to Holly Holm on Saturday in the main event of UFC 193, the finger-pointing begins instantly. Holm had a brilliant game plan against Rousey, the part-time movie star and full-time superstar, and executed it to perfection, knocking her out with a kick to the head at 59 seconds of the second round in…

“It is a standing insult to sportsmen to have to play under a rule which assumes that players intend to trip, hack and push their opponents, and behave like cads of the most unscrupulous kidney.” So said Charles Burgess Fry, one of England’s all-time sporting greats, arguing against football adopting the law that in 1891 brought into existence the penalty area and the penalty kick. Related: Football doesn’t want to…

UPDATE: All sports events in Paris this weekend have been canceled following the terrorist attacks. A series of attacks targeting young concert-goers, soccer fans and Parisians enjoying a Friday night out at popular nightspots killed at least 120 people in the deadliest violence to strike France since World War II. President Francois Hollande condemned it as terrorism and pledged that France would stand firm against its foes. The worst carnage…

The action by IAAF, the international sports federation that rules over track and field, followed an explosive report that detailed widespread doping in Russian athletics. It said officials at all levels of sport were party to the cheating. The report — commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency and led by former WADA President and International Olympic Committee Vice President Dick Pound — detailed a “deeply rooted culture of cheating at…

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Media playback is not supported on this device Message could not be stronger – Coe Russia’s athletics federation has been provisionally suspended from international competition – including the Olympic Games – for its alleged involvement in widespread doping. The IAAF took action after the publication of an independent World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) report that alleged “state-sponsored doping”. Its council members voted 22-1 in favour of Russia being banned. “This is…

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BEIJING—China is filled with sports fans, from President Xi Jinping on down. Now Chinese companies are betting big that those fans will pony up to watch their favorite teams. Chinese media and Internet companies have struck big deals in recent months for the rights for everything from the Los Angeles Clippers to Spanish soccer-club matches, often paying many multiples to the prices they paid in the past. The companies are…

I get it. You see a headline like “Real Madrid Star Karim Benzema Charged In Sextape Blackmail Case” or “Transcript: Karim Benzema Helped Facilitate Blackmail Plot Against Teammate Over Sextape” and you aren’t quite moved. Sure, words like sex tape and blackmail seem juicy, but who is Karim Benzema to you, the typical American sports fan? You might know about Real Madrid—though even that is no guarantee—but why, you think,…

I get it. You see a headline like “Real Madrid Star Karim Benzema Charged In Sextape Blackmail Case” or “Transcript: Karim Benzema Helped Facilitate Blackmail Plot Against Teammate Over Sextape” and you aren’t quite moved. Sure, words like sex tape and blackmail seem juicy, but who is Karim Benzema to you, the typical American sports fan? You might know about Real Madrid—though even that is no guarantee—but why, you think,…

Media playback is not supported on this device Russia doping crisis in 60 seconds Russia hopes to prevent its athletes being banned from next year’s Rio Olympics by claiming “irregularities” around its drug-testing system were down to the sport’s “old leadership”. The country’s athletics federation has written to athletics’ governing body after allegations of “state-sponsored doping” were made by a World Anti-Doping Agency independent report. The response will be discussed…

I get it. You see a headline like “Real Madrid Star Karim Benzema Charged In Sextape Blackmail Case” or “Transcript: Karim Benzema Helped Facilitate Blackmail Plot Against Teammate Over Sextape” and you aren’t quite moved. Sure, words like sex tape and blackmail seem juicy, but who is Karim Benzema to you, the typical American sports fan? You might know about Real Madrid—though even that is no guarantee—but why, you think,…

The Russian sports minister, Vitaly Mutko, has lashed out at Britain, saying testing at the London 2012 Olympics must have been worth zero if it failed to catch cheats. However, there were mixed messages coming from the country, as Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, ordered Mutko and his colleagues to take the allegations seriously and cooperate fully with international anti-doping bodies. A 325-page report published by a World Anti-Doping Agency independent…

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Wada mess. It was buried amid the jaw-dropping revelations about shadow labs, undercover secret servicemen and the sabotage of London 2012, but Dick Pound’s exposé of state-sponsored doping in Russia did not make great reading for the organisation that commissioned it, either. Like a parent expressing disappointment in the way his teenage child had matured, Pound, the no-nonsense founding father of the World Anti-Doping Agency who still sits on its…

A stunning report from the World Anti-Doping Agency has made a series of allegations against Russian athletes and authorities, including the accusation that a Russian laboratory deliberately destroyed 1,400 blood and urine samples ahead of a visit by inspectors. The report recommends the suspension of all Russian athletes over a period including the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, as well as lifetime bans for five individual athletes and five…