BOXING
New York boxer Patrick Day, who had been in a coma since Saturday night, died Wednesday at Chicago’s Northwestern Memorial Hospital after suffering a traumatic brain injury during his fight, promoter Lou DiBella said in a statement.
Day, 27, was surrounded by his family, trainer Joe Higgins and close friends, DiBella said.
Day, a world-rated junior middleweight, was knocked out in the 10th round of a USBA title fight by Charles Conwell at Wintrust Arena.
Day was a former New York Golden Gloves champion and an alternate on the 2012 U.S. Olympic team. As a pro, he reached the top 10 in the 154-pound world rankings. The high volume of punches he delivered in every fight endeared him to boxing fans.
TENNIS
EUROPEAN OPEN: Fourth-seeded Stan Wawrinka outlasted Feliciano Lopez 6-7 (4), 6-4, 7-6 (4) to reach the quarterfinals at Antwerp, Belgium.
KREMLIN CUP: Belinda Bencic won six of the last seven games and beat Polona Hercog 1-6, 6-3, 6-4 to reach the quarterfinals at Moscow.
The 10th-ranked Bencic needs to reach the final to overtake Serena Williams and Kiki Bertens for the last WTA Finals spot.
LUXEMBOURG OPEN: Coco Gauff lost her opening match in straight sets, just three days after winning her first WTA title in Austria.
Eighth-seeded Anna Blinkova beat Gauff 6-4, 6-0 in their first-round match
BASEBALL
UNITED STATES: Joe Girardi quit as manager of the U.S. baseball team trying to qualify for the Olympics before it played a single game.
Girardi said he is leaving to pursue a major league managing job.
He will be replaced by Scott Brosius, who had been slated to be Girardi’s bench coach. Brosius, the MVP of the 1998 World Series with the New York Yankees, became the senior director of baseball development for USA Baseball earlier this year.
AUTO RACING
NASCAR: Ricky Stenhouse Jr. landed the open seat at JTG Daugherty Racing in a multiyear deal that essentially makes a seat swap with Chris Buescher and the Roush Fenway Racing team.
Buescher had a clause in his contract that gave him a rare opportunity to leave the No. 47 Chevrolet of JTG and return to Roush Fenway Racing. That move happened last month and came as a surprise to Stenhouse, who thought he was signed through 2021 to drive the No. 6 Ford.
Dumped into a tight free-agent market with no warning, Stenhouse made quick use of a new management team owned by Kevin Harvick, and the KHI group needed less than a month to get Stenhouse’s deal complete.
CYCLING
RETIREMENT: Three-time Olympic cyclist Taylor Phinney is retiring from professional racing, ending a career that included 10 world championship medals and a stage win at the Giro d’Italia.
Phinney, 29, announced that he would ride for his team, EF Education First, for the last time this weekend in Japan.
BASKETBALL
WNBA: A diversity report shows the WNBA remains the leader among all professional sports leagues in hiring women and minorities for coaching and front-office positions.
The league earned an overall A-plus grade, including an A-plus for racial hiring and an A for gender hiring, The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports (TIDES) announced.
The WBNA scored 94.8 points in the TIDES rating system, down slightly from last year’s record-setting score of 97.6 points. TIDES also issues report cards for the NFL, MLB, NBA, MLS and college sports.
• The New York Liberty are not renewing the contract of Coach Katie Smith the team announced.
Smith’s current contract ends this month. She was elevated to the team’s head coaching position in 2018 after serving as an assistant and associate head coach since 2014.
The team went 10-24 this past season, following up a 7-27 record in Smith’s first year as coach.
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