分类： sports

The 2025 French Open delivered one of its most dramatic quarterfinal days in recent memory on Wednesday, as world No. 1 and pre-tournament favorite Aryna Sabalenka suffered a stunning mental and physical collapse that saw her crash out of the competition at the hands of 25th seed Diana Shnaider. The result leaves the women’s draw guaranteed to crown a first-time Grand Slam singles champion, with the men’s draw already set for the same outcome following earlier upsets of top contenders.

Sabalenka entered her quarterfinal clash on Court Philippe Chatrier as the overwhelming favorite to claim the maiden Roland Garros title that had long evaded her. All of her biggest title rivals — including defending champion Iga Swiatek, 2024 finalist Coco Gauff, and world No. 2 Elena Rybakina — had already exited the tournament in earlier rounds, leaving the top-ranked Belarusian with a clear path to the trophy. But what followed was a stunning unraveling that mirrored her collapse in last year’s French Open final, where Gauff fought back from a set down to claim the title.

Shnaider got off to a fast start, taking the opening set 6-3. Sabalenka battled back, however, grabbing a double break in the second set and appeared poised to turn the match around. But Shnaider kept her composure, clawed her way back to win the second set 7-5, and then completely dominated a broken Sabalenka in the deciding set, closing out a 3-6, 7-5, 6-0 victory that sent her through to her first Grand Slam semifinal.

After the match, Sabalenka opened up about the mental fog that derailed her campaign. “I screw up, and then she stepped in and she played great. I feel like mentally I couldn’t really recover after the second set,” she told reporters. “I don’t know when was the last time that happened to me that I lost 10 games in a row. I guess mentally I got into very deep, dark hole over there, and I just couldn’t get back mentally on track.” In a display of dark humor, she added, “I don’t like easy wins, you know. I guess for me it’s about suffer, overcome, and get it done.”

For Shnaider, the result marks a career-defining breakthrough. The 22-year-old had never advanced past the fourth round of a major before this tournament, with her previous best run coming at the 2024 US Open. Reflecting on her come-from-behind win, she expressed joy at her ability to close out the match after a slow start. “Definitely super happy I managed to finish on a good note rather than start on a good note,” she said. “It’s definitely a special tournament for me here. It’s going be a lefty battle so I’m looking forward to the semi-final.”

That semi-final clash will pit Shnaider against one of the most unlikely stories of this year’s tournament: Polish qualifier Maja Chwalinska, who continued her Cinderella run on Wednesday by becoming just the second women’s qualifier to reach the Roland Garros semifinals in the Open Era.

Ranked 114th in the world, Chwalinska had only ever won two tour-level clay matches in her entire career before arriving in Paris. After battling through three qualifying rounds to reach just her third career Grand Slam main draw, she has now won eight matches total at the tournament, and booked her semi-final spot with a 7-6(3), 6-3 upset over 22nd seed Anna Kalinskaya. The 24-year-old admitted she still can’t process her historic run. “I honestly don’t know what’s going on. I know I repeat myself but every single match here is kind of crazy for me so I’m very grateful,” she said on court after the win. “I’m just focusing on every single match. I honestly don’t feel like it’s, like, a huge, huge moment for me. But definitely after the tournament finishes, I will kind of have time to, I guess, be grateful for what happened and process it as well.”

With both of Wednesday’s winners guaranteeing a new Grand Slam champion on the women’s side, the men’s draw has already been set to produce a first-time major winner as well. After Jannik Sinner and Ben Shelton suffered shocking early exits, world No. 6 Felix Auger-Aliassime is the highest-ranked player remaining in the top half of the draw, and he will face 10th seed Flavio Cobolli in the quarter-finals on Thursday. The winner of that match will go on to face either Matteo Berrettini, the 2021 Wimbledon runner-up and the only player in the remaining quarter with prior major final experience, or Matteo Arnaldi in Friday’s semi-final.

An Australian man has avoided prison time for his role in a coordinated insider betting scheme that exploited confidential umpire voting information for the Australian Football League’s prestigious Brownlow Medal, a plot that earned the group more than $100,000 in illegal profits over two seasons.

William Forde, 36, was handed an 18-month community corrections order Wednesday at Melbourne Magistrates’ Court, which requires him to complete 250 hours of unpaid community work. Forde entered guilty pleas last week to six corruption and illegal gambling-related charges connected to the scheme, which ran through the 2021 and 2022 AFL seasons.

The plot centered on Forde’s decades-long childhood friendship with Michael Pell, a former AFL umpire who has been accused of leaking confidential, round-by-round Brownlow Medal voting details to Forde in advance of the public vote announcement. The Brownlow Medal, awarded annually to the AFL’s best and fairest player over the regular season, is determined by votes cast by on-field umpires after each game, and the vote tallies for individual games are kept secret until the awards night, making pre-count betting a popular market for Australian sports bettors.

Prosecutor Greg Buchhorn told the court that Forde recruited third parties to open betting accounts and place wagers under their own names, concealing his identity and connection to Pell. The bets targeted specific matches that Pell had officiated, with the group placing large stakes on the exact players Pell had awarded three votes to — the highest possible vote for a single game. The scheme generated roughly A$40,750 in illegal profits during the 2021 season, and another A$60,345 in 2022, adding up to a total of more than A$101,000 in ill-gotten gains. Buchhorn noted that the full breakdown of how profits were split between Forde, Pell, and other co-conspirators remains unclear, but confirmed the total profit amount is well-documented.

In handing down the sentence, Magistrate Siobhan Whittle emphasized that Forde’s offense was serious, sophisticated, and organized, stretching across two full playing seasons. She rejected the defense’s argument that the conduct amounted to ordinary gambling that spun out of control, noting that the only risk the group faced was being caught by authorities. Whittle also outlined the elaborate steps the group took to avoid detection, including passing handwritten notes about voting details, using unregistered burner phones to communicate, and consistently using proxy bettors to avoid drawing attention from bookmakers or law enforcement.

Whittle did note that there were mitigating factors that justified a non-custodial sentence: she accepted that Forde has expressed genuine remorse for his actions, and she took into account significant delays in the court process as well as Forde’s cooperation with police investigators. She added that the sentence is intended to send a clear deterrent message to other potential actors who might consider exploiting insider information for illegal sports betting gains.

Pell and two other co-accused men have not entered guilty pleas, and are scheduled to appear for a committal hearing later this month. That hearing will determine whether there is sufficient evidence to send their cases to a full criminal trial.

The 2025 French Open has entered its final week, with the men’s draw guaranteed to crown a first-time Grand Slam champion and women’s world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka one win away from reaching her second consecutive Roland Garros semi-final.

Sabalenka, the 2024 French Open runner-up and one of only two remaining top-10 seeds in the women’s draw, has called this a golden opportunity to go one step further and claim her first clay-court major. Fresh off a straight-sets last-16 victory over four-time Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka, the 28-year-old Belarusian said she has avoided overthinking her past runner-up result to stay focused on the current tournament.

“I’m bringing my best level that I have, and I’m there, I’m fighting, and you know, I’m doing everything I can to get this trophy,” Sabalenka said post-match. Before she can secure a spot in her seventh straight Grand Slam semi-final, she will face 22-year-old Russian 25th seed Diana Shnaider in Wednesday’s quarter-final. This will be the first meeting between the two players, with Sabalenka acknowledging Shnaider’s tricky all-court game. “She’s a great player. I’d say tricky game, changing the rhythm a lot, and moving well, great serving. So I’m super excited to face her for the first time,” Sabalenka added.

In the other women’s quarter-final on Wednesday, 22nd-seeded Russian Anna Kalinskaya will go up against unheralded Polish qualifier Maja Chwalinska. Kalinskaya, who reached the Australian Open quarter-finals in 2023, enters the match as the heavy favorite to advance to her first major semi-final. But Chwalinska, ranked world No. 114, has already pulled off a series of stunning upsets to reach this stage, opening the tournament with a win over Olympic gold medalist Zheng Qinwen before beating 23rd seed Elise Mertens and former world No. 3 Maria Sakkari. Accepting her underdog status, Chwalinska said: “Everyone here is higher in the ranking than me. So they are the favourites to win. I’m like an underdog. No one really knows me.”

The men’s side of the draw has already made history after early exits of top contenders including Novak Djokovic and Jannik Sinner, opening the door for an unprecedented first-time Grand Slam champion. Canadian fourth seed Felix Auger-Aliassime, the highest-ranked player left in the top half of the draw, is targeting his first major title, but has never advanced past the French Open’s fourth round in his career.

Auger-Aliassime admitted the early upsets of Djokovic and Sinner created a stir, but he has since shifted focus to his own run. “Of course not having Sinner, for example, in semi-finals is another opportunity, but you need to be there. So I have to focus on the next match and try to be in the semi-finals,” he said. To reach the semi-final, he first has to beat Italian 10th seed Flavio Cobolli, with the winner advancing to face either Matteo Berrettini (ranked 105th) or Matteo Arnaldi (ranked 104th) for a spot in the final. Auger-Aliassime is the only non-Italian left in the top half of the draw.

The all-Italian quarter-final clash between Cobolli and Arnaldi has been billed as an Italian derby, with Arnaldi noting the historic moment for all four players left in the bracket. “It’s so special, I mean, for everyone. For Flavio, for Matteo, for me. I feel like we all have different stories, but we’re all so happy to be here, so happy to play quarters in a Slam,” Arnaldi said. The 24-year-old has already made history this tournament, spending a record 17 hours and 42 minutes on court through the quarter-finals, the longest total play time for any player reaching this stage of a major since tournament tracking began. “Definitely it’s going to be a tough one for us, because it’s a derby,” Arnaldi added.

For nearly three decades, the iconic chant “No Scotland, no party” has been confined to qualifying campaigns and domestic matches — but this year, the world’s most beloved traveling fanbase is finally bringing its legendary energy back to the World Cup. After 28 years of heartbreak and near misses, Scotland’s men’s national team has secured its spot at the 2026 tournament in North America, marking the nation’s first appearance at the global event since the 1998 finals in France. And while fans are eager to see their team compete on the biggest stage, the Tartan Army itself is already gearing up to steal the show, as it has done at every major tournament it has attended.

Scotland’s national team has long been defined by a curious legacy: the Tartan Army’s reputation for creating unforgettable, vibrant atmospheres far outshines the team’s on-pitch tournament record. Across 12 previous attempts to progress past the group stage at both World Cups and European Championships, Scotland has never advanced to the knockout rounds. Even at Euro 2024 in Germany, where the side failed to secure a single win, an estimated 200,000 Scottish supporters won global acclaim for their relentless passion, infectious enthusiasm, and ability to turn every matchday into a celebration.

This time around, tens of thousands of fans are planning to defy soaring costs to travel to host cities Boston and Miami for Scotland’s group stage matches. For long-suffering supporters like 50-year-old Niall Fitzgerald, who spoke to AFP outside Glasgow’s Hampden Park following a recent friendly win over Curacao, the moment feels almost surreal. “If you would have told me 28 years ago that we wouldn’t see another World Cup until now I would’ve burst into tears to be honest,” Fitzgerald explained, dressed in a traditional tartan kilt and a signature Stetson cowboy hat. “But now that I’m going I can barely believe it. Every day I think about nothing else. I’m beyond excited.”

Scotland’s qualification was sealed with a dramatic 4-2 victory over Denmark, a match that has already entered Scottish football folklore. Midfielder Scott McTominay’s stunning overhead kick to seal the win has been immortalized in a giant mural outside Hampden Park, and even featured on a limited-edition £20 banknote — a testament to how much this milestone means to the nation.

For the travelling Tartan Army, the campaign gets underway against Caribbean minnows Haiti, a fixture that offers a rare chance to kick off the tournament with a win, breaking a decades-long streak of early tournament exits. But the challenge will ramp up quickly after the opener: Scotland is drawn against 2022 World Cup semi-finalists Morocco and five-time tournament champions Brazil, a tough group that has tempered expectations of a deep run for the side. Still, fans say the on-pitch result is secondary to the experience of bringing the Tartan Army’s carnival atmosphere back to the world’s biggest sporting event. “I think they’ll probably bring a lot of drinking, partying. I think they’ll be some of the best fans there,” said supporter Ivor Much. “I think it’s a perfect match to have Brazil and Scotland together.”

Not all fans have been able to join the trip, however. The unbridled joy of qualification has been dimmed by the exorbitant cost of attending the tournament in North America, with sky-high prices for match tickets, transatlantic travel, and accommodation pricing out many working-class supporters. Scotland manager Steve Clarke even publicly urged fans to avoid taking on crippling debt just to follow the team. Category-one tickets for the high-profile group stage clash with Brazil are priced at $700 face value, with resale tickets on secondary markets hitting thousands of dollars.

The cost crisis has left many long-time fans making alternative plans. Steven Webster, a 49-year-old supporter who has not missed a Scotland home match since the end of COVID-19 lockdowns, is one of hundreds heading to southern Spain instead, where fans will gather to watch matches on big screens in bars and still celebrate the occasion together. He points to a banner displayed by Polish fans at a recent tournament that sums up the current state of ticket pricing: “Stolen from the poor, given to the rich.” “The cost of going to America for the games, we could have bought a brand new car for the same sort of money,” Webster said. Though he is excited for the team’s achievement, he admitted he is struggling with fear of missing out on the action in North America.

Yet for the thousands of fans lucky enough to make the trip across the Atlantic, the party is already gearing up to begin. Even with widespread criticism of price gouging across the tournament, nothing can dampen the enthusiasm of the Tartan Army after 28 years of waiting. “Everybody has got their hand out in this World Cup and it’s been a bit of a shame. But that said nothing would deter us from being there, whatever the cost,” Fitzgerald said. “Everybody loves the Tartan Army. Even if they’ve never met the Tartan Army, they never want them to leave, and they want them to come back again and again. That’s what we are taking to the World Cup — the party!”