分类： sports

CHALON-SUR-SAÔNE, France – On a tense Thursday of the 2024 Tour de France, Belgian sprinter Tim Merlier secured his third stage victory of this year’s race, capping off a dramatic final sprint that was marred by a multi-rider crash just meters from the finish line. Reigning overall champion Tadej Pogacar emerged from the incident unscathed, retaining his comfortable general classification lead heading into the race’s second weekend.

The 12th stage of the Tour covered a mostly flat 111-mile route that began at the Magny-Cours motor racing circuit – a former host of Formula 1 Grand Prix – and wound through eastern France to the finish in Chalon-sur-Saône. Early in the stage, French rider Baptiste Veistroffer launched a solo breakaway that held off the peloton for much of the day. He was eventually reeled in by a 14-rider counter-attack group inside the final 30 kilometers, and that small group was itself caught by the charging main peloton shortly before riders reached the third and final minor climb of the day.

As teams jockeyed to position their top sprinters for the final push to the line, tension ran high on the home straight. The crash unfolded when Colombian sprinter Fernando Gaviria clipped another rider’s rear wheel and tumbled to his left, pulling Wednesday’s stage winner Soeren Waerenskjold of Norway down with him. Trailing riders had no time to avoid the fallen pair, and four additional cyclists went over their handlebars in the pileup. Race medics reported that none of the involved riders suffered serious injuries. After several minutes of assessment and recovery, Gaviria – who sported a heavily bloodied left knee and appeared to have injured his left arm – walked across the finish line with assistance from a teammate.

When the dust settled, Merlier crossed the line first to claim his sixth career Tour de France stage victory. Young Dutch sprinter Olav Kooij took second place, while Belgian Jasper Philipsen finished third. The result extended Merlier’s impressive run of form at this year’s race, and the rider credited extra motivation from having his family trackside for the stage. “Winning for them is special,” Merlier told reporters after the finish. “I managed to find the opening, I had to stay calm and wait. It was a finale and a finish that suited me very well.” For Philipsen, the day brought another near-miss: his Alpecin-Premier Tech team placed three riders at the front of the peloton to lead out his sprint, but the team’s early attack mirrored mistakes from previous stages, leaving the three-time stage winner still searching for his first victory of the 2024 Tour.

In the overall general classification standings, Pogacar – a four-time Tour champion – maintained his large lead over his closest rival, two-time champion Jonas Vingegaard of Denmark. After 12 stages, Pogacar holds a 3-minute 36-second advantage over Vingegaard in second place, while Belgian Remco Evenepoel sits in third, 4 minutes 6 seconds off the overall lead. Pogacar extended his lead earlier this week with a signature attacking performance in the 10th stage, one that has put him in a commanding position with less than two weeks of racing remaining.

The Tour’s next challenge will be the 13th stage on Friday, the longest route of this year’s race at 206 kilometers. The stage is set to test general classification contenders with a steep Category 1 climb – the Tour’s second-hardest ranking – coming late in the route. The 2024 Tour de France will conclude with its iconic traditional finish on the Champs-Élysées in Paris on July 26.

World Rugby has handed Italy men’s national rugby union head coach Gonzalo Quesada a two-match suspension, marking one of the first high-profile sanctions under the governing body’s sweeping new policy aimed at cracking down on abuse toward match officials. The suspension, announced by World Rugby on Thursday, was triggered automatically by critical comments Quesada made in broadcast interviews following Italy’s 47-17 defeat to the All Blacks (New Zealand) in last Saturday’s Nations Championship fixture held in Wellington.

The controversial turning point of the match came roughly 30 minutes before full-time, when Italian lock Niccolò Cannone was first issued a yellow sin-bin card by referee Luc Ramos for a head-butting incident. The foul was later upgraded to a permanent red card following a video review by the match’s officiating team, forcing Italy to play the remainder of the test with 14 players. Cannone has already received his own separate four-match suspension for the incident.

Under the terms of Quesada’s ban, the coach is barred from all match-day activities and prohibited from entering the stadium for Italy’s next two scheduled Nations Championship matches. He will miss this Saturday’s test against Australia in Perth and a home fixture against South Africa scheduled for November 7 in Turin. Quesada retains the right to file an appeal against the automatic sanction.

In his public post-match comments aired after the loss, Quesada acknowledged that New Zealand earned its lopsided win, noting “the All Blacks absolutely deserved the win; they played an extraordinary game.” Even so, he argued that officiating mistakes contributed significantly to the final scoreline, saying “I think the refereeing team was partly to blame for the score. They made a lot of mistakes today.” He also pushed back against the red card decision for Cannone, calling the call overly harsh. “I think the decision against Niccolò was harsh. It obviously forced the team to play with 10 men for a very long time. Every minute against the All Blacks lasts more than 60 seconds; playing with 10 men against them is really tough.”

World Rugby’s new automatic sanction process for official abuse, rolled out across all international rugby competitions earlier this month, was first approved during the governing body’s annual Shape of the Game forum held in London last February. The policy is explicitly designed to target critical public comments about officials, which World Rugby says have become a foundational driver of a sharp rise in unacceptable harassment and direct threats toward match officials at all levels of the sport. The framework’s automatic suspension rule is intended to deter harmful rhetoric before it translates to offline harm for the sport’s referees and officiating teams.

LONDON – In the wake of Argentina’s dramatic 2-1 victory over England in a 2024 FIFA World Cup semifinal held in Atlanta, a fresh diplomatic and sporting controversy has erupted over a display of political messaging during Argentine players’ post-match celebrations, prompting the British government to call for a formal investigation from global soccer’s governing body FIFA.

During jubilant celebrations following Wednesday’s final whistle, members of the Argentine national squad unfurled a banner passed to them from fans in the spectator stands that read “Las Malvinas son Argentinas” – a phrase translating to “The Malvinas are Argentine.” Argentina has long claimed sovereignty over the South Atlantic archipelago, which it calls Islas Malvinas; the territory is administered as a British Overseas Territory under the name Falkland Islands.

The act puts the Argentine team at risk of formal disciplinary action from FIFA, as the organization enforces strict regulations that prohibit any form of political expression or messaging on the field of play during official international tournaments. U.K. Business Secretary Peter Kyle publicly condemned the players’ actions in comments to the BBC, labeling the banner display “entirely inappropriate.”

Kyle emphasized that a core foundational principle of global international soccer competitions, including the World Cup, is the separation of political discourse from athletic competition. “That is now a matter for FIFA,” Kyle stated. “I expect FIFA to do its investigation thoroughly.”

Long-simmering political tensions over the Falkland Islands have long amplified the already fierce sporting rivalry between the English and Argentine men’s national soccer teams. The remote archipelago is home to roughly 3,500 permanent residents, sitting approximately 8,000 miles (13,000 kilometers) off the coast of the United Kingdom and just 300 miles (480 kilometers) off the Argentine mainland.

The dispute over territorial sovereignty stretches back nearly two centuries. Argentina asserts that British forces illegally seized the islands from its control in 1833, after Argentine authorities moved to assert sovereignty over the territory. For its part, the United Kingdom maintains its territorial claim dates back to 1765, and that British forces reaffirmed control in 1833 by expelling Argentine personnel that had occupied the islands.

The conflict boiled over into open war in 1982, when Argentine military forces invaded the archipelago. The resulting 10-week conflict ended in a British victory, but left a heavy human toll: 649 Argentine troops, 255 British service members, and three civilian islanders died in the fighting. The sovereignty dispute remains unresolved to this day, with the people of the Falkland Islands overwhelmingly affirming their desire to remain a British territory in multiple public referendums.

SOUTHPORT, England — The opening round of the British Open at Royal Birkdale delivered one of golf’s most unexpected early-storylines, as 26-year-old American rookie Jackson Suber claimed the first-day lead with a blistering 5-under-par 65, capping a stunning debut on traditional links golf just three days after stepping onto European soil for the first time.

A day of warm, swirling breezes stretched first-round play across 15 hours, packed with dramatic swings, surprising breakout performances from debutants and a high-profile rebuttal of a legendary critic from one of the game’s most controversial stars. Half of the top 12 players on the opening-day leaderboard are first-time British Open competitors, proving links golf can be as kind to newcomers as it is to seasoned veterans.

Few could have predicted Suber’s dream start. A former Ole Miss player who has yet to claim a professional win anywhere in the world and is playing just his third major championship, Suber entered the week with zero experience on a championship links course as demanding as Royal Birkdale. He shrugged off the steep learning curve with a clutch par save on the newly redesigned par-3 15th, where severe sloping on both sides of the green makes holding position notoriously difficult. He followed that up with a birdie on the par-4 16th, then produced a masterclass on the 17th: choking up on a 4-iron from 233 yards out, he landed his approach 6 feet from the pin to sink an eagle that catapulted him to the top of the leaderboard.

“Just kind of kept the ball in good spots and didn’t put much pressure on my game to make pars,” Suber said of his steady performance, which marked just his seventh round of play across any major championship.

Suber holds a one-stroke lead over South Korea’s Sungjae Im and England’s home hopeful Dan Brown, with nine players tied at 4-under 67. That group includes four more British Open debutants: Alex Smalley, Ryan Gerard, M.J. Daffue and Pierceson Coody.

One of the most talked-about performances of the day came from Bryson DeChambeau, who silenced three-time Open champion Nick Faldo’s recent criticism of his links strategy. DeChambeau, who has missed the cut in all three majors this year and largely avoided mainstream media since the Masters, fired a 4-under 67 that left him just two shots off Suber’s lead, defying Faldo’s claim earlier this week that “DeChambeau has zero clue of strategy.”

Faldo, speaking on the Sky Sports Golf Podcast, had argued that traditional links golf rewards controlled placement, not brute force: “You thread it, don’t you? You feed it down the fairway. … You don’t think, ‘Oh, I’ll just blast it down there.’” But DeChambeau turned that criticism on its head, using his signature long-drive strategy to carry Royal Birkdale’s fearsome fairway bunkers entirely, landing on 15 of 18 greens despite only hitting four fairways and rarely finding himself in serious trouble. He carded birdies on both the par-4 second and par-4 10th, blasting blind tee shots over hazards to land within striking distance of the green both times. Only a weak chip and missed putt on the 18th kept him from matching Suber’s score.

“I feel like I did a really good job today of being incredibly strategic and focused super hard on placing it in the right places,” DeChambeau told reporters from the R&A after his round. “Besides 18, I placed the ball in some good areas. I just need to hit more fairways. Other than that, I feel like my strategy was nice today.”

The day also brought dramatic ups and downs for some of the game’s top-ranked players. World No. 1 Scottie Scheffer got off to a blistering start, birdying four of his first six holes to jump to 4-under, but failed to card another birdie over his final 12 holes, finishing with a 2-under 68. Scheffler, who played alongside DeChambeau, shrugged off the late cold streak, noting that the Open is a 72-hole tournament.

“If I continue to strike the ball the way I did today and just keep giving myself looks, that’s part of it,” Scheffler said. “Golf is played over 72 holes, and I definitely liked what I saw today.”

Four-time major winner Rory McIlroy suffered a far tougher opening, struggling with a sudden putting slump that saw him miss three 4-foot putts across a four-hole stretch on his way to a 1-over 72, six shots off the lead. One of the day’s unluckiest breaks hit debutant Alex Smalley, who held a share of the lead late until a wild bounce off a spectator fence sent his 18th tee shot out of bounds, resulting in a double bogey that dropped him back into the tie at 67.

“Got up to where the ball was supposed to be and was told it hit a spectator fence and kicked another 15 yards right out of bounds,” Smalley said. “All three of us in our group actually hit it over there, and mine just got an unlucky break. Poor tee shot, poor break. Sometimes that’s how it goes.”

Other notable players in the tie at 67 include 2018 Open champion Francesco Molinari, Cameron Young, Robert MacIntyre and Thomas Detry, all still well within striking distance of the lead heading into Friday’s second round.