COLLEGES

Amherst cross country suspended over emails

Amherst College has suspended its men’s cross-country team following a report that athletes made misogynistic and racist comments in team-wide email chains over a number of years. The report, by the school’s student newspaper, included team members describing women as “meatslab” and “walking STD,” as well as using vulgar racial phrases.

“The messages are appalling,” Amherst President Biddy Martin said Sunday in a statement. “They are not only vulgar, they are cruel and hateful. No attempt to rationalize them will change that. My reaction is one of profound sadness, disappointment, and anger.”

The Amherst suspension follows similar actions recently taken by Harvard and Columbia in regard to their men’s soccer and men’s wrestling teams, respectively. In both cases, team members were discovered to have been sending each other messages of a sexually explicit and demeaning nature.

BOBSLED

WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS: Bobsled and skeleton officials are moving this season’s world championships out of Sochi, Russia, amid concerns by athletes about the depth of a state-sponsored doping operation in the country.

The new site for the event is expected to be announced in the coming days. The International Bobsled and Skeleton Federation voted on Tuesday to move the event.

A number of Olympic medalists had voiced opposition to competing in Russia, citing concerns over the integrity of drug testing there. Latvia’s skeleton team said Sunday it would boycott any world championships held in Russia.

TRACK AND FIELD

DOPING: The IAAF may reanalyze Russian samples from the 2014 world indoor track championships over suspicions that athletes who failed doping tests were allowed to compete.

OLYMPICS

OUTSTANDING BILLS: Almost four months after the Olympics ended, Rio de Janeiro organizers are unable to pay some of their bills, including $3.7 million owed to the International Paralympic Committee.

IPC spokesman Craig Spence told The Associated Press that the money is owed for travel grants, which is part of the contractual agreement to host the Olympics and Paralympics.

Spence said “never have we faced an issue like this with an organizing committee so late paying travel grants.”

SOCCER

MLS: Seattle’s penalty-kicks win over Toronto last weekend drew 3.5 million television viewers, the most for a Major League Soccer final.

PREMIER LEAGUE: Leicester’s poor away form in its stuttering title defense continued with a 1-0 loss at Bournemouth, while Ashley Williams scored an 86th-minute winner as Everton came from behind to beat title-chasing Arsenal 2-1 at Liverpool.

• Manchester City and Chelsea were fined a combined 135,000 pounds ($170,000) by the English Football Association after their players were involved in a melee in the closing stages of a match on Dec. 3.

• Individuals at four London-based Premier League clubs are among those being investigated by the city’s police force as part of the escalating sex-abuse scandal in British soccer.

The Metropolitan Police said that its investigative team has received 106 allegations in five days since opening its inquiry, and that individuals at 30 clubs are connected.

– News service report