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.

ABU DHABI (AFP) - Barcelona will go into the FIFA Club World Cup as favourites to win the competition for the first time, but winger Lionel Messi says they must learn the lessons from their last involvement.

The Club World Cup is the only international honour missing from Barcelona's well-stocked trophy cabinet after their previous attempt to win it, in 2006, ended in a 1-0 defeat to Brazilian side Internacional.

"I think the most important lesson we've learned is not to be over-confident and to get to know our opponents in depth," said Messi, in an interview with the FIFA website on the eve of the December 9-19 tournament here.

"The last time we maybe thought that the other sides were a bit below us and that's something we can't afford to let happen again if we want to be champions."

Victory in the tournament would crown a remarkable year for current Spanish league leaders Barcelona, who last season won the Champions League, Spanish league and King's Cup to claim an unprecedented treble.

It has also been an unforgettable 12 months for Messi, who last week became the first Argentine player to be named European Footballer of the Year when he was awarded the prestigious Ballon d'Or by France Football magazine.

"It's one title the club has never won and it's one title that?s eluded most of the players at Barca," said Messi.

"It's also the last competition of what's been a historic 2009 and we want to end the year in style. On a personal level, I'm really looking forward to it because it will help me keep on developing."

Barcelona's strongest challenge is likely to come from Messi's homeland, with South American champions Estudiantes set to enter the competition at the semi-final stage alongside the Catalan club.

Estudiantes won the Intercontinental Cup, the precursor to the current competition, by beating Manchester United in 1968 and finished runners-up in the two years afterwards.

Their participation in Abu Dhabi marks a return to the event after a 39-year absence, but a strand of continuity running between the sides can be found in the shape of Estudiantes midfielder Juan Sebastian Veron, whose father Juan Ramon starred in the 1968 victory over United.

"It's an enriching experience for all of us, for the older players, who will be leading the way, and the younger ones, who'll be taking up the baton in the future," said Veron.

"You have to make them aware of what it means to be there, how fantastic it is. It's also important that nobody sits back and says 'I've made it now'. With a tournament like this you have to want to come back and experience it again."

The competition's other teams cannot boast players with reputations to match Messi or Veron, but all - with the exception of host club Al-Hahli - are continental champions.

South Korean side Pohang Steelers (Asia), Congolese outfit Tout Puissant Mazembe (Africa) and Mexico's Atlante (CONCACAF) will provide the biggest threat to the two heavyweights.

Auckland, who play Al-Hahli in the tournament's opening game on Wednesday, are the reigning champions from the Oceania region.

"We didn?t score a single goal in 2006 and that was a big disappointment for us," said Auckland captain Ivan Vicelich.

"We've prepared well this year though, and we're going to score a lot of goals. We've been talking about this match for weeks now and we need to go out and execute our gameplan."

The winners of the match between Al-Hahli and Auckland will join TP Mazembe, Atlante and Pohang Steelers in the quarter-finals, where a potential meeting with Pep Guardiola's Catalan conquerors Barcelona will be at stake.