TENNIS
Andrey Rublev produced an audacious display of attacking tennis to hand record 11-time champion Rafael Nadal a 6-2, 4-6, 6-2 defeat in the Monte Carlo Masters quarterfinals on Friday.
Rublev’s next opponent is unseeded Norwegian Casper Ruud, who also beat a former champion by knocking out 2019 winner Fabio Fognini of Italy, 6-4, 6-3.
A day after upsetting top-ranked Novak Djokovic, unseeded Dan Evans beat 11th-seeded David Goffin 5-7, 6-3, 6-4 to reach the first Masters semifinal of his career.
It will be against fourth-seeded Stefanos Tsitsipas, who led 7-5 against Alejandro Davidovich Fokina when the unseeded Spaniard abandoned because of a thigh injury.
FIGURE SKATING
WORLD TEAM TROPHY: Three-time world champion Nathan Chen won the free skate in Osaka, Japan, to continue his dominance of two-time Olympic gold medalist Yuzuru Hanyu.
First after the short program, Chen opened with a quadruple flip and landed a quad salchow in the first half of his routine set to a selection of music by Philip Glass. He landed two more quadruple toeloops as part of combination jumps to score 203.24 points.
Hanyu, who was second after the short program, finished with 193.76 points. Russian skater Mikhail Kolyada was third with 180.72 points.
Russia led the competition after the second day with 91 points, eight ahead of the United States. Japan was third with 78 points.
TRACK AND FIELD
COLEMAN DENIED ON APPEAL: The man who had been expected to succeed Usain Bolt as Olympic champion will miss the Tokyo Games after failing in an appeal to overturn his ban for missed doping tests.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport cut current 100-meter world champion Christian Coleman’s ban from two years to 18 months, but it won’t expire until November, three months after the Olympics.
Coleman has never tested positive, but the American sprinter broke anti-doping rules by missing three no-notice attempts to take samples from him in a one-year period. The panel of three judges said 18 months “was the appropriate sanction in the circumstances” because Coleman was not entirely at fault for one of the missed tests.
SOCCER
CHAMPIONS LEAGUE: UEFA is set to approve a new 36-team format for the Champions League at an executive committee meeting on Monday but delay decisions on control of the finances.
Broad agreement on the key takeaway – adding four teams to the Champions League, each playing 10 games instead of six in a single standings table – has been in place with UEFA and Europe’s top clubs and leagues. A controversial change is giving two of the four new places, worth tens of millions of dollars, to clubs that did not qualify on merit but are ranked highly by UEFA on historical record. This season, such a proposal could have been a safety net for Liverpool and Borussia Dortmund.
ENGLAND: Harry Kane scored twice, including a second-half equalizer, before limping off with an ankle injury in Tottenham’s 2-2 draw at Everton as both teams stayed on the fringe of the race for Champions League qualification.
GERMANY: Leipzig had an apparently injury-time winner ruled out through VAR and had to settle for a 0-0 draw with Hoffenheim.
The result left Leipzig four points behind Bayern Munich, which plays Saturday at third-place Wolfsburg. Only five rounds remain after this weekend.
FRANCE: Lille needed a late equalizer from Luiz Araujo to draw 1-1 at home to Montpellier and guarantee it will keep the top spot in a close title race, regardless of whether defending champion Paris Saint-Germain wins this weekend.
Lille is four points ahead of PSG, which hosts Saint-Etienne on Sunday without the suspended Neymar.
There are five rounds remaining after this weekend’s matches.
U.S. OPEN CUP: The tournament will not be held this spring because of the novel coronavirus pandemic, a decision that follows the tournament’s cancellation last year.
AUTO RACING
FORMULA ONE: Mercedes topped both practice sessions for the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix in Imola, Italy, as Red Bull endured a torrid day.
Red Bull was favored heading to Imola, but fortunes swung in Mercedes’ favor as the reigning championship team managed a one-two in both practices while its rival finished each session with just one driver. Valtteri Bottas was fastest in both, edging Lewis Hamilton by just .010 seconds in the second practice and .041 in the first.
Red Bull driver Max Verstappen, who looks set to be Hamilton’s closest rival this season, had a problem with his car early in the second practice and his session ended abruptly 10 minutes in. Verstappen had been third-fastest in the morning, .058 behind Bottas.
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