Monzanator

Simona Halep's comeback ends in R1 as she loses in three sets to Paula Badosa.

Caroline Wozniacki said she doesn't understand why players coming from doping suspensions receive wild cards but Miami director James Blake made that call on his own. I'm sure Halep will receive more WC later on.

The whole WC system is a joke overall. 44 year old Venus Williams won six games today and was a predictable walking bye in R1. At least she will skip the clay season most likely so next time she gets a WC will be Wimbledon.

Could be a historical feat as will host for two friendly matches this week!

San Marino hasn't won any game since April 2004 (1-0 vs Liechtenstein) so let's see if they end this winless streak of 19 years and 11 months!

Word is Aryna Sabalenka's boyfriend passed away in Miami so she will probably withdraw from this tournament and who knows how many after that.

Kenjiro Shinozuka - the first Japanese driver to win a WRC round and Dakar Rally winner passed away at the age of 75.

9 minutes ago, rybak said:

Iga got Noskova again in third round, this time in Miami 

It's clear these draws are not exactly random anymore. First they rarely broadcast it live these days and secondly they are not done by hand but with some automatic programme so you can easily implement an algorithm in the system - technically for more balanced draw - but in reality the algorithm will put the same names in the same sections over & over again.

Not only Noskova goes into Świątek's R3 quarter again but also Alexandrova is in R4 again too as the #9-16 seed (albeit she'd have to get there first which is always a problem given her inconsistency).

Bears running around Slovakia? Guess it must be spring already! @hckošice

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68591540

Well, the final was less than great for Sakkari.

Świątek wins her 2nd Indian Wells title 6-4 6-0.

And Wozniacki promptly retired during the QF match vs Świątek.

Meanwhile the final is set between Iga Świątek and Maria Sakkari @Makedonas

U-17 World Cup will be expanded and the next FIVE editions will be staged in Qatar (boys) & Morocco (girls)

Triple gold medallist from Tokyo An San didn't even make Last 16 at the national quals so I guess she won't defend her title?

I believe the Academy has finally thrown in the towel and started handing out awards to the commerically successful films the last few years? Times do change, I still remember some of the old days when extremely random movies floated around the palmares because "critics loved them"

This of course means some of these awards are extremely predictable but we're talking about an industry where everyone has a giant ego one way or another. If Tom Cruise was born 25 years later maybe even he would have won it!

boxing is more or less dead but here we are winning Olympic quotas in the women's events!

Sophie Chauveau will miss Soldier Hollow because she visited Cuba on a holiday trip some years ago and this was the reason USA didn't grant her a visa

Dayana Yastremska got away with that excuse (i.e. her boyfriend's penis lotion was contaminated) so someone else might try to copy the story

ITF officially allows Russian & Belarussian players to compete as neutral athletes in Paris.

Meanwhile where are those people who preached the liberal democracies will boycott the Olympics?

https://www.itftennis.com/en/news-and-media/articles/itf-statement-eligibility-of-russian-belarusian-athletes-at-paris-2024/

1 hour ago, vlad said:

Yeah, but who pay for the time lost by Simona? I have a message for Mouratoglou but is better to not write it here because Sindo will delete it I say only one thing: now we know why Serena was the best athlete in the Universe so much time

Nobody will. She's lucky CAS is a lap dog of an organisation. This case pretty much proves money buys you justice and I wonder how WTA will try to sweep this under the carpet and how many of players will speak against Halep on her return. I suspect Eugenie Bouchard would if only she wasn't so irrelevant these days.

My header banner vanished. Guess some data settings were defaulted

CAS reduced Simona Halep's ban for roxadustat from 4 years to 9 months so her ban retrospectively expired in July 2023

I wonder if she gets WC to Miami now.

College basketball. This would be too looney for a Looney Tunes cartoon

running wide for the gold

I swear Polish commentators called Reekie per Emma a couple of times. Maybe they forgot "J" is not a silent letter in English?

Yarigo took some Joker smiley gas with her reaction

Charlton with WR!!!

Bronze for Skrzyszowska

Ehammer survives by 11 points aka less than one second?

So apparently Klaver run the fastest leg despite a standing start