Alex Zanardi remains in stable condition after a crash on his handbike and for now will stay in a medically induced coma, doctors said Monday in a fresh medical update.

The Santa Maria alle Scotte hospital in Siena, Italy, said the Italian auto racing champion-turned-Paralympic gold medalist spent a third night in intensive care without change and that his neurological condition remained grave.

“The neurological evaluations will be carried out only when we reduce the sedation, which we are not thinking of doing at the moment,” Dr. Roberto Gusinu said. “We need to have patience, a lot of patience.”

Zanardi, who lost both of his legs in an auto racing crash nearly 20 years ago, has been in a medically induced coma and on a ventilator since he crashed his handbike into a truck near the Tuscan town of Pienza on Friday during a relay race.

Doctors said he suffered serious facial and cranial trauma and have warned of possible brain damage.

The 53-year-old Zanardi won two championships in CART in the United States and had two stints in Formula One. He crashed during a CART event in Germany in 2001 when both of his legs were severed in a horrific accident the weekend after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

During his recovery, Zanardi designed his own prosthetics and learned to walk again. He then turned his attention to hand cycling and developed into one of the most accomplished athletes in the world. He won four gold medals and two silvers at the 2012 and 2016 Paralympics, competed in the New York City Marathon and set an Ironman record in his class.

GOLF

PGA CHAMPIONSHIP: Brooks Koepka will try to become the first player to win the PGA Championship three straight times in stroke play, and there won’t be anyone at Harding Park to cheer him on.

The PGA of America confirmed Monday the first major of this most unusual year won’t have spectators.

The PGA Championship, originally scheduled for May 14-17 in San Francisco, now is set for Aug. 6-9 and will be the first of three majors this year. The U.S. Open moved from June to Sept. 17-20 in New York, with the Masters moving to November two weeks before Thanksgiving. The British Open was canceled.

Still to be determined is whether the other two majors have fans. The PGA Tour resumed its schedule following its coronavirus-caused shutdown two weeks ago without fans, and it is not planning to have them until a reduced number July 16-19 at Memorial.

HOCKEY

NHL: The NHL has begun winnowing its possible locations to resume the season amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The Blue Jackets were informed Monday that Columbus will not be one of the NHL’s hub cities. Columbus was one of 10 finalists, including seven in the U.S.

Las Vegas is now considered the U.S. favorite to host NHL playoff games, unless two Canadian cities are selected. Canada’s federal government last week said it would allow the league to quarantine internally, making Toronto, Vancouver and Edmonton realistic possibilities – if not the front-runners.

The NHL has said it will select two hub cities – one for the Eastern Conference playoffs and one for the Western Conference. The Stanley Cup Final or “final four” would likely be in one of the two cities.

• Veteran forward Chris Thorburn announced his retirement Monday after playing more than 800 NHL games for four different organizations since 2005 and winning the Stanley Cup with the St. Louis Blues.

Thorburn spent his last time on the ice celebrating the Blues winning their first Stanley Cup last season. Despite playing just one game for the Blues in 2018-19, he was the fourth player handed the Cup after Game 7 in Boston.

“We don’t leave a man behind, Thorburn said at the time. ”Everyone’s part of the group, part of something special. Just feels like everyone had a part in it.”

In his announcement through the NHL Players’ Association, Thorburn thanked teammates for taking him on a “journey of a lifetime.”

“It was an unbelievable ride with a storybook ending,” he said. “To finish my hockey career with the St. Louis Blues and finally get an opportunity to lift the Stanley Cup over my head, I could not have scripted a better way to go out.”

Thorburn was selected 50th overall by the Buffalo Sabres in the 2001 draft and made his debut for them in 2005. He played 801 regular-season games for the Sabres, Pittsburgh Penguins, Atlanta Thrashers/Winnipeg Jets and Blues. He also skated in four playoff games with Winnipeg in 2015.

SOCCER

PREMIER LEAGUE: The Merseyside derby was the most-watched Premier League game ever on British television. An average of five million people across Sky’s channels watched Liverpool draw 0-0 with Everton, which was played on Sunday without supporters in the stadium due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Sky, which is owned by Comcast, said a peak of 5.5 million saw Liverpool move 23 points clear at the top of the Premier League with eight games remaining. The government requested Sky made some games available for free due to fans also being unable to gather in other people’s homes or pubs as part of efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19.

Sky placed the game on a free-to-air entertainment channel, Pick, which attracted 1.9 million viewers. The majority still tuned into the the subscription Sky Sports channels.

The previous record peak audience for a Premier League game in Britain was the 4.4 million who saw Manchester City beat Manchester United 1-0 in 2012.

CONVICTIONS UPHELD: The criminal convictions of former soccer officials Juan Ángel Napout and José Maria Marin were upheld Monday in a 3-0 decision by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The pair were among the group arrested in 2015 at FIFA meetings in Zurich. U.S. prosecutors alleged bribes were received in exchange for awarding media rights to the Copa América, Copa Libertadores and Copa do Brasil tournaments along with World Cup qualifiers.

“Appellants principally contend that their convictions for conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud were based upon impermissible extraterritorial applications of the wire fraud conspiracy statute,” Judge Robert D. Sack wrote.

“U.S. wires provided a – or the – key means of paying those bribes,” Sack wrote. “In other words, in the relatively straightforward quid pro quo transactions underlying these schemes, the quid was provided through the use of U.S. wires.”

Sack was joined by Judges Peter W. Hall and Joseph F. Bianco.

Napout was convicted on Dec. 22, 2017, of one count of racketeering conspiracy and two counts of wire fraud conspiracy, and he was taken into custody that day. He was sentenced to nine years in prison the following Aug. 29 and the 62-year-old is being held at the low-security Federal Correctional Institution in Miami.

AUTO RACING

FORMULA ONE: Formula One announced an initiative on Monday aimed at tackling racism and encouraging more diversity within the series.

F1 said in a statement that “We Race As One” will also address issues surrounding inequality, sustainability and the coronavirus pandemic, which has led to four F1 races being canceled and delayed the season’s start from mid-March to July.

F1 intends to send a strong message about equality when the season begins on July 3 at the Austrian Grand Prix, the first of eight scheduled European races through early September.

“We want our restart to show that as a sporting community we stand united against racism and we will do more to address inequality and diversity in F1,” the statement said.

The announcement comes after six-time F1 champion Lewis Hamilton said he is setting up a commission to increase diversity in motorsports.

Hamilton is the only black driver in F1. He has spoken widely about racism in recent weeks after saying he was left feeling “so much anger, sadness and disbelief” following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis last month.

The 35-year-old British driver attended a protest march as part of the Black Lives Matter movement in London on Sunday. Hamilton previously criticized F1 for staying silent on racism, prompting a flurry of support on Twitter from F1 drivers such as Charles Leclerc and Daniel Ricciardo.

 

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