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Sports Briefs: Williams sisters, Blake, Bryan brothers listed on Olympics tennis rosters
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Published: June 27, 2008
Former gold medalists Venus and Serena Williams are expected to play singles and doubles for the U.S. Olympics tennis team, which was named yesterday at Wimbledon by the U.S. Tennis Association.
The women's team also includes Lindsay Davenport, who won a gold medal in singles at the 1996 Games. She'll play singles and has been nominated for doubles with Liezel Huber, who is ranked No. 1 in the world in doubles.
First-time Olympians James Blake, Sam Querrey and Robby Ginepri were named to the men's team in singles, and No. 1-ranked Bob and Mike Bryan and Blake and Querrey have been nominated in men's doubles.
The International Tennis Federation is still filling roster spots, and the USTA anticipates that another spot will be available on the women's team. It's expected to go to Jill Craybas, who would be a first-time Olympian at age 34.
More Olympics
■ The deadline for double-amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius to qualify for Beijing has been extended. Pistorius' manager, Peet van Zyl, said that the South African athletics federation moved its deadline from July 11 to July 17 to give Pistorius time to compete in four European races as he tries to meet the 400-meter qualifying time of 45.55 seconds.
■ A federal court in Atlanta has denied sprinter Justin Gatlin's appeal to run in the U.S. Olympic track trials this weekend.
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said yesterday that Gatlin has not shown he meets the "applicable standard for such an injunction."
Earlier this month, the Court of Arbitration for Sport upheld a four-year ban against Gatlin for doping violations, but the defending Olympic champion in the 100 meters went to federal court seeking to run in trials starting Saturday.
He said he had been discriminated against under the Americans with Disabilities Act because his first doping violation was for taking prescribed medication to treat attention deficit disorder.
Football
■ Barry Sims, a veteran offensive lineman, signed with the San Francisco 49ers yesterday after spending nine years with the Oakland Raiders. Sims, who joined the league as an undrafted free agent in 1999, started all 16 games at left tackle for the Raiders last season and was their longest-tenured player. He had made made 68 straight starts for the Raiders at left tackle but was released Feb. 29 in a cost-cutting move.
■ New York Giants' fans will have to pay as much as $20,000 for the right to buy season tickets under a plan to raise money for a $1.6 billion stadium being built in New Jersey. The New York Jets, who will share the stadium with the Giants when it opens in 2010, haven't determined whether they also will sell personal-seat licenses, a team spokesman said.
The Giants said that their PSL prices will range from $1,000 to $20,000, with 90 percent of seats in the stadium's upper bowl having the lowest licensing fee. Fewer than 5,000 seats in the stadium, which will have a capacity of 82,500, will have a PSL price of $20,000.
Soccer
■ Xavi Hernandez, Dani Guiza and David Silva scored second-half goals yesterday to lift Spain to a 3-0 victory over Russia in the semifinals of the European Championship. Spain, which won its only European title in 1964, will play Germany for the championship Sunday in Vienna, Austria.
■ The Italian Football Federation fired national-team coach Roberto Donadoni yesterday, four days after Italy's loss to Spain on penalty kicks at the European Championship, and brought back Marcello Lippi to replace him. Lippi coached Italy to its fourth World Cup title in 2006, then resigned and has not coached since. Donadoni replaced Lippi and coached Italy to a 13-5-5 record.
■ European Championship organizers apologized yesterday for the 18-minute blackout of the Germany-Turkey semifinal that left TV companies unhappy and mulling possible action. A freak storm in Vienna, with hurricane-force winds up to 87 miles an hour, created three power outages Wednesday that disrupted the worldwide telecast of the end of the game, which Germany won 3-2 on a last-minute goal.
Hockey
■ Martin Straka, who spent the past three National Hockey League seasons with the New York Rangers, is rejoining his former team in the Czech Republic. Straka, 35, will be a player and athletics director for HC Lasselsberger Plzen starting July 1, the team said on its Web site. Straka played for Plzen before moving to the NHL in 1992 and played for the club again in 2004-05 during the NHL's lockout.
■ The National Hockey League and the NHL Players' Association announced yesterday that each team will have a salary cap of $56.7 million for the 2008-09 season -- an increase of $6.4 million from last season and of $12.7 million from 2006-07. The minimum salary was set at $40.7 million for each of the 30 teams, and the most a player can make in a new contract next season will be $11.34 million a year.
■ Defenseman Scott Niedermayer has ruled out retirement and will play out the final year of his four-year, $6.75-million contract with the Anaheim Ducks, team spokesman Alex Gilchrist said. Niedermayer, a 16-year NHL veteran, won the Norris Trophy in 2004 and the Conn Smythe Trophy in 2007.
Miscellaneous
■ Rocco Mediate has committed to play in the Wyndham Championship in Greensboro in August, tournament officials announced yesterday.
Mediate, who lost to Tiger Woods in an 18-hole playoff to finish as the runner-up in the U.S. Open, has two PGA Tour victories in Greensboro (1993, 2002). He jumped from 158th to 47th in the world rankings after the U.S. Open and is now ranked 45th.
The Wyndham is scheduled Aug. 14-17 at Sedgefield Country Club.
■ Rick Greenspan will resign as the athletics director at Indiana at the end of December amid new NCAA allegations that the school failed to monitor the men's basketball team. The NCAA said that former coach Kelvin Sampson committed five major recruiting violations during his 1½ years at the school.
■ North Carolina led all ACC schools with a 14th-place finish in the Sports Academy Directors Cup standings, which measure postseason success by ranking schools based on their 10 best finishes each in men's and women's sports. Also, Florida State was 15th, Virginia 17th, Duke 19th, Virginia Tech 37th, Clemson 43rd, Wake Forest 45th, Miami 46th, Maryland 52nd, Georgia Tech 55th, N.C. State 56th and Boston College 69th.
Stanford won the Cup for the 14th straight year.
■ The 100-mile Western States Endurance Run has been canceled for the first time in its 35-year history, with organizers citing smoky air from the hundreds of fires burning in California.
The decision was announced on the race's Web site Wednesday, three days before 370 runners were set to start the run from Squaw Valley at Lake Tahoe to Auburn in the Sierra foothills.
■ An appeals court in Wisconsin has reinstated a lawsuit brought by family members of Richard Umansky, an ABC Sports cameraman who died in 2003 after he fell eight feet from a platform while installing a camera at Camp Randall Stadium.
Lawyers for his estate say that the platform lacked railings required under federal law and filed the lawsuit against an athletics official in charge of complying with safety regulations. The appeals court said that additional proceedings are needed to determine if the employee can be held responsible.
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