FIGURE SKATING
Yarmouth native Franz-Peter Jerosch and his partner Analise Gonzalez placed ninth of 10 teams in the junior pairs competition Wednesday at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Jerosch and Gonzalez, who is from North Reading, Massachusetts, dropped down one position after finishing eighth in Tuesday’s short program. They received a score of 65.94 in Wednesday’s free skate for a two-day total of 104.20, one point better than they received in the U.S. Pairs finals in November.
Kate Finster and Balazs Nagy, who train out of Colorado Springs, Colorado, earned gold medals with a score of 169.37. They were silver medalists in junior pairs last winter.
EUROPEAN CHAMPIONSHIPS: Czech veteran Michal Brezina took a surprise lead as Kevin Aymoz of France failed to qualify for the free skate at Graz, Austria.
Brezina scored 89.77 points in his short program to take the lead, seven years after he won the only major championship medal of his career with bronze at the European Championships.
He leads two Russians. Dmitri Aliev has 88.45 points and Artur Danielian has 84.63.
Aymoz had been a favorite for gold after winning bronze at the Grand Prix Finals in December as the top-ranked European skater. However, he fell twice and missed another jump element, scoring 64.40 points for 26th place – missing out on Saturday’s free skate by less than a point.
BASKETBALL
WNBA: Minnesota Lynx star Maya Moore will sit out a second straight season to continue her push for criminal justice reform.
Moore told The New York Times in a story published of her choice to stay off the court for 2020. She said in her interview with the newspaper that she’s not ready to retire. Moore’s agent confirmed her decision to The Associated Press.
The 30-year-old, who won the WNBA Most Valuable Player award in 2014 and was a five-time first team All-WNBA selection, also cited fatigue when she first surprised the basketball world last winter by announcing she would step away.
DOPING
RUSSIA: The World Anti-Doping Agency ordered Moscow’s drug-testing laboratory to be shut down again.
That followed WADA’s finding last month that data stored at the lab was tampered with in an apparent bid to cover up past drug use by Russian athletes and implicate WADA witnesses.
Closing the lab, which is operated by Moscow State University, could make it harder and more expensive to conduct blood testing on Russian athletes ahead of this year’s Olympics in Tokyo.
SKIING: Austrian prosecutors have charged a cross-country ski coach and a skier in connection with a crackdown on a blood doping ring.
Prosecutors in the city of Innsbruck said they charged Coach Gerald Heigl, a former coach with the Austrian ski federation, with sports fraud and violating an anti-doping law. He is accused of supplying a skier with growth hormone and having approved blood doping treatments for two others.
Also charged is a former skier, identified by prosecutors only as Harald W. He is accused of providing a specialized refrigerator that was used to store blood for doping purposes and faces charges of providing false evidence.
TENNIS
WHEELCHAIR: Esther Vergeer, the retired Dutch wheelchair tennis star who had a winning streak of 470 matches during her record-breaking career, has been diagnosed with breast cancer.
Vergeer announced the diagnosis in a tweet, saying her “full focus will be on the treatment and healing of the cancer. Full of positive energy and with the support of my family, friends and colleagues, I will go for it. I am sure I will get through this!”
Vergeer, 38, has used a wheelchair since she was 8, when an operation to correct hemorrhaging around her spinal cord left her paraplegic.
GAMBLING
XFL: New Jersey gambling regulators have authorized betting on XFL football games, becoming the sixth state to authorize wagers on the revived league.
The league’s games will now be wagered on in the two largest states for sports betting – Nevada and New Jersey. Gamblers in Pennsylvania, Indiana, Rhode Island and Iowa also will be able to bet on the XFL, according to the league. Approvals from additional states could come soon.
AUTO RACING
INDYCAR: Charlie Kimball and his longtime sponsor will move to AJ Foyt Racing for the upcoming IndyCar season. Kimball is the only driver so far announced for the Texas-based team, which is seeking funding to keep two cars on the track in 2020.
Kimball was named the full-time driver of the No. 4 Chevrolet. The car will be sponsored by Novo Nordisk, a global healthcare company that has been associated for 12 seasons with Kimball, who is diabetic.
CYCLING
UAE TOUR: Four-time Tour de France champion Chris Froome will return to competition at the UAE Tour next month, less than a year after suffering multiple career-threatening injuries.
The British rider has not raced since he broke his right femur, elbow, hip and several ribs in a training crash as he geared up for last year’s Tour de France.
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