all about sports in here!

VANCOUVER, British Columbia —Zhou Yang of China easily won the gold medal and set an Olympic record in women’s 1,500-meter short track speedskating.

Zhou breezed to the finish line Saturday night in 2 minutes, 16.993 seconds, well ahead of Lee Eun-byul of South Korea, who earned the silver in 2:17.849. Park Seung-hi of South Korea took the bronze, finishing in 2:17.927.

American Katherine Reutter finished fourth.

Zhou’s victory was China’s second gold in women’s short track. Wang Meng won the 500, but she was disqualified in the semifinals of the 1,500.

Zhou, the 18-year-old world-record holder, put her hands together in a thank-you gesture as she crossed the finish line of the eight-woman final. She is competing in her first Olympics.

(source)

Dallas at Orlando

There are a lot of good games on tonight. Cleveland in Charlotte should be a brutal, competitive affair, Miami in Memphis should be solid, Atlanta and Phoenix will be good, as will Boston's trip to Portland.

But I'm going orthodox with the Mavericks in Orlando. It's a nationally televised contest that should allow you non League Pass'ers to keep tabs on the other 11 games, and it features two teams trying desperately to stay relevant.

The Magic's trade deadline was sometime last July, while the Mavericks were the first to strike in the rest of the NBA's trade deadline, procuring Caron Butler(notes) and Brendan Haywood(notes) for a package revolving around Josh Howard(notes) (or, as we should probably start calling him, "the NBA player that your uncle thinks every NBA player acts like").

I thought I'd have a little burnout after a week like this, but I can't wait to lose myself in tonight's lineup. You're welcome to be burned-out, however. Either way, comment away.

Dallas Mavericks: 33-21, 92.2 possessions per game (19th), 108.3 points scored per 100 possessions (12th), 106.6 points allowed per 100 possessions (16th).

Orlando Magic: 93 possessions per game (15th), 108.9 points scored per 100 possessions (tenth), 102.9 points allowed per 100 possessions (fourth).

All statistics courtesy of basketball-reference.com.

Thants for hanging around this week.

(source)

Ah, those tired old formula questions that journalists ask drivers. "How did it feel when you almost won the race?" is one of my favorites. Seems the retired drivers are not immune from this treatment; they just get different questions. For example: "If you were building a team right now, what current driver would you choose?"

Racing legend Junior Johnson, who won fifty races as a driver and six Championships as an owner, gets this kind of thing fairly regularly. In 2008, a reporter for ESPN asked him to choose between Jimmie Johnson, Kyle Busch, and Carl Edwards. Johnson had three championships, Carl had a great season and the cover of Men's Fitness, and Kyle had 8 Cup wins that season, and an attitude.

And the winner was... drumroll please... Kyle Busch. (Insert record-scratch sound effect here.) "I like his hell-bent driving style," Johnson was quoted as saying. "He's going to do what he needs to do. You've just got to polish him a little." (A little?)

Asked a similar question just a few days ago, Junior Johnson would choose ... Tony Stewart. Not four-time champion Jimmie Johnson. "I like Tony Stewart's kind of driving; and Jimmie Johnson's a great race driver, there's no question about it, but he's got one of the greatest mechanics I've ever seen come along, and I've had some great ones," Johnson said Sunday. (I hear his crew chief's nothing to sneeze at either.) But, Johnson continued, "I just think Tony, I would take Tony over the rest of them." ALL of them? Really? Wow.

Which leaves me wondering what kind of a quandary Junior would be in if he were asked to choose between, say, Kyle Busch and Brad Keselowski?

(source)

VANCOUVER, British Columbia – Seconds before the biggest moment of his career, the excitement and adrenaline were finally too much for Apolo Anton Ohno. He couldn't hold it in any longer.

He yawned.

Television viewers were stunned by the American's apparently lackadaisical approach to the race, which would determine whether he would become the Winter Olympian with the most medals in U.S. history. (He did, with a bronze.)

British Open golf champion Stewart Cink even Tweeted that Ohno's action made him yawn, too, as he watched on TV.

Yet some sneaky investigation by Yahoo! Sports revealed there is madness behind Ohno's moribundity.

A friend of Ohno's – who asked not to be named because, er, "Apolo might not like it" – revealed that the yawning lets extra oxygen into his lungs in the seconds before bursting across the ice.

Or maybe he's just bored.