National sports

The Olympic summer games are in full swing, and local gamers are hoping to get more recognition for their sport after the International Olympic Committee unanimously voted to bring professional gaming, also known as “esports” to the Olympics.

From staff reports

ARLINGTON, Texas – For Lexie Hull, this WNBA season has been a case of déjà vu.

Gabe Tesch has one goal in his budding motorsports career, earn a living racing on a national circuit. The recovering pediatric cancer patient has never let traveling across the country or halfway around the world deter him from his dreams. His journey even sparked an Amazon documentary last year that received many positive reviews.

Wednesday was "Kid's Day" at Climate Pledge Arena. If you watched the game, you understand the irony. Because the Las Vegas Aces' 84-79 victory over the previously streaking Storm was, in every sense, a grown woman's game. Two-time MVP A'ja Wilson of the Aces chiseled 24 points and 20 rebounds, the first 20/20 game of her accomplished career. 

LeBron James called Stephen Curry last fall with a simple proposition: Let’s go to France together.

LAS VEGAS – When the meaty palm of Vasil Kamotskii, a 360-pound, 34-year-old pig farmer from Siberia known as Dumpling, struck the tender cheek of the man who faced him, it sounded like a thunderclap. Dumpling didn’t appear to expend much effort – he swung lazily, the way you might bat a fly. But it was enough to send his opponent, Kamil Marusarz, a 26-year-old from Orland Park, Illinois, toppling to the ground.

Chris Evert’s schedule is packed again. Six months after announcing for the second time that she had cancer, Evert, one of the greatest champions in sports history, is back to work as a tennis commentator, coach and charitable fundraiser. She seems to have beaten cancer again.

The U.S. players, for the most part, are not going to change. This is a national team, not a club. There are no transfers and trades. Coaches, they change. The U.S. failure at Copa América – the most important competition until the World Cup comes to North American shores – was Berhalter’s failure.

A top USA Basketball official said Caitlin Clark’s popularity and impact on television viewership weren’t “the purview of the (selection) committee” after the organization announced its roster Tuesday for the women’s competition at this summer’s Paris Olympics. The official announcement came three days after reports emerged that Clark would be excluded from the 12-player squad, igniting debate over whether the rookie WNBA star should have made the team.

The Triple Crown season is over. Three races, three different winners. No clear star in the making. Or maybe three of them. Dornoch etched his name into thoroughbred history by winning the 156th Belmont Stakes, a race run for the first time at Saratoga Race Course in mid-state New York. At 17-1, not much was thought of the 3-year-old colt who finished 10th in the Kentucky Derby following a ...

The favorite in this year’s Belmont Stakes, Sierra Leone, has performed well on the Triple Crown trail, winning two key prep races (Grade I Blue Grass Stakes and the Grade II Risen Star Stakes) plus a second-place performance in the Kentucky Derby as part of a three-way photo finish in which he lost by a nose. Unfortunately, a lack of speed in this race likely keeps him from winning this year’s Belmont Stakes.

We should all protect Caitlin Clark. She is the white knight galloping in to save the Dark Continent known as the WNBA, the singular star uplifting an entire women’s sports movement that only now matters because men are watching. She is the No. 1 draft pick learning the rigors of a professional league, but doing so with the same lean and slightly sinewy 152-pound frame from her college days – every time she’s double-teamed and trapped by grown women who refuse to view her as anything other than a scoring threat, the physical contact takes on a greater meaning.

Caitlin Clark had a bit of a rough weekend.

Josef Newgarden completed a daring pass to the outside of Pato O’Ward on the final lap to win the rain-delayed Indianapolis 500 on Sunday. Newgarden is the first driver to win the Borg-Warner Trophy in consecutive years since Hélio Castroneves went back-to-back in 2001 and 2002.

INIDIANAPOLIS – All eyes will be on the skies Sunday, leading up to the scheduled start of the Indianapolis 500.

RALEIGH, N.C. – A victory at the Coca-Cola 600 is one of the biggest on the NASCAR calendar – not just because the spring race at Charlotte Motor Speedway is the longest of the season, though that in itself is a challenge.

Kyle Larson doesn't get anxious about many things. He thought topping 240 mph for the first time last week was a breeze, and he was barely stressed about qualifying for his first Indianapolis 500. But the Indy 500 weather forecast? That has him shook, at least by Larson's typically unflappable standards.

So you're new to the WNBA, and you're surprised that Caitlin Clark hasn't been an immediate MVP-candidate scorer in the first week of her professional career. Here's something for you to ponder. It's not just that Clark is a rookie stepping up from the college game to the top women's basketball league on the planet. It's not even just the physicality that naturally comes with the pros.