Sports briefs
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Coco Gauff to lead
U.S. tennis team at
Paris Olympics
Coco Gauff will lead the U.S. tennis team at the Paris Olympics three years after missing the Tokyo Games because she tested positive for COVID-19.
The 20-year-old Gauff, ranked No. 2, will be joined by No. 5 Jessica Pegula, Danielle Collins and Emma Navarro in women’s singles, along with Taylor Fritz, Tommy Paul, Chris Eubanks and Marcos Giron in men’s singles.
Olympic tennis starts July 27 at Roland Garros, the site of the French Open.
The American team features six first-time Olympians, the U.S. Tennis Association said in Thursday’s announcement.
Gauff is the U.S. Open champion and has reached the semifinals at the year’s first two Grand Slams, the Australian and French Opens. She was a finalist on the Roland Garros clay in 2022 and will be a medal contender in doubles, too.
Gauff and Pegula have won five doubles titles as a pair. Gauff won her first major doubles title — with Katerina Siniakova of the Czech Republic — at the French Open this month.
Gauff tested positive for COVID-19 days before the start of the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Olympics in July 2021.
Pegula returned to action last week from a neck injury in April that forced her to miss the French Open. She was a singles quarterfinalist there in 2022.
The 30-year-old Collins, who has said this will be her final season on the tour, has won two titles this year in Miami and Charleston. The 2022 Australian Open runner-up also reached the Strasbourg final in May before a second-round exit at the French Open, where her best result was the quarterfinals in 2020.
Doubles player Desirae Krawczyk will team up with Collins at the Paris Games. Collins and Krawczyk won a doubles title last year in Charleston. Krawczyk is a four-time Grand Slam champion in mixed doubles.
Navarro, at a career-high No. 17, reached the fourth round at Roland Garros.
For the men, Fritz is the highest-ranked American at No. 12, followed by Paul at No. 13. Eubanks is 44th and Giron 53rd.
Paul and Giron competed at the Tokyo Games.
The U.S. is also taking 40-year-old Rajeev Ram to his third Olympics. He’ll be paired with Austin Krajicek in doubles. Fritz and Paul will also join forces in doubles.
Ram, who has four major doubles titles, won the mixed doubles silver medal with Venus Williams at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games.
The USTA said it will announce one mixed doubles team for Paris at a later date.
Serbia FA threatens to quit Euros over chants
BELGRADE, Serbia | Serbia soccer officials threatened to quit the European Championship after they were offended by fan chants reportedly heard during the Albania-Croatia match.
The game on Wednesday ended 2-2 in Hamburg.
Serbia played its second group match against Slovenia on Thursday afternoon in Munich, and drew 1-1. Serbia’s third and potentially last game is on Tuesday against Denmark.
“What happened is scandalous and we will ask UEFA for sanctions, even at the cost of not continuing the competition,” Serbia Football Association general secretary Jovan Surbatovic said.
“We will request UEFA to punish the federations of both teams. We don’t want to participate in that, but if UEFA doesn’t punish them, we will think about how to proceed.”
In a separate statement on Thursday, the Serbia FA condemned the “shameful racist behavior” of the Albanian and Croatian fans and said the match should have been suspended as soon as the chants started.
“Such insulting of a nation with cries that they should be killed has not been seen at sports events for a long time,” the statement added.
UEFA did not respond to requests for comment on the threats from Serbia.
UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin was with Serbian officials in Munich at the game against his home country Slovenia.
UEFA tournament rules for Euro 2024 call for sanctions against teams refusing to play, and a federation that is “responsible for a match not taking place or not being played in full loses all rights to payments from UEFA.”
Serbia is due to receive at least 9.25 million euros ($9.9 million) from a tournament prize fund of 331 million euros ($355 million) paid from UEFA revenues for broadcast and sponsor deals, plus ticket sales. The Serbia FA also would be liable to pay compensation and face further disciplinary action.
The animosity between Croatian and Albanian fans toward the Serbs, and vice versa, dates to the 1990s wars in the Balkans.
Serbian fans are notorious for their chants against the Croats and Albanians as well as racist shouts and vocal support of convicted war criminals responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands during the bloody breakup of the former Yugoslavia.
UEFA fined the Albanian and Serbian federations 10,000 euros ($10,700) each after their first group matches for fans displaying banners with nationalist maps.
Each federation is responsible for the conduct of its fans, and UEFA charged Serbia and Albania with “transmitting provocative messages not fit for a sports event.”
Albania fans displayed a banner with a map of their country extending its borders into the territory of neighboring countries. It was shown on Saturday during the 2-1 loss against Italy in Dortmund.
A Serbia fans banner included the territory of Kosovo, a former Serbian province that declared independence in 2008, and a slogan, “No Surrender,” in the 1-0 loss against England in Gelsenkirchen.
UEFA has also launched an investigation into claims of monkey chants aimed at England players during the clash.
Six-time Olympic medalist Matt Grevers comes out of retirement
INDIANAPOLIS | Matt Grevers had a different perspective on the U.S. Olympic swimming trials this time around.
Returning to the pool at age 39, the six-time Olympic medalist competed Thursday in the preliminaries of the 50-meter freestyle without the least bit of pressure.
He didn’t come close to advancing to the semifinals, tying for 47th out of 82 swimmers who competed in the all-out dash from one end of the pool to the other.
Grevers touched in 22.82 seconds, 1.12 behind top qualifiers Michael Andrew and Ryan Held.
The time wasn’t really all that important. Grevers ended his three-year retirement from competitive swimming for the chance to swim in an NFL stadium and catch up with old friends without all the expectations that came along with being a leader of the U.S. team.
“It’s cool to know at 39 that my body definitely still has it,” Grevers said. “It’s just what are you willing to put into it. So it was really fun to make the (trials), really fun just to know I get to swim here, hang out with a lot of friends, walking on the pool deck, saying hi to all the coaches and older athletes. It felt kind of like a homecoming.”
Grevers was inspired by Gabrielle Rose, the oldest swimmer at the trials at age 46.
Rose, who competed in the 1996 and 2000 Summer Games, advanced to the semifinals in both of her breaststroke races, drawing large, appreciative cheers each time she walked across the deck.
“Gabby’s cheer when when she went out for semifinals, it was like one of the loudest ones of the meet,” Grevers said. “So people are rooting for the old guys just to see what you can do. Like, hey, you’re almost 40 and you’re able to push your body to that level. I think everyone can kind of then picture themselves and say, ‘Hey, what I can do if I was eating or training a little more carefully?’”
Grevers won two golds and a silver at the 2008 Beijing Olympics and repeated the feat four years later in London, including a victory in the 100 backstroke.
With limited time for training, he focused on meeting the qualifying standard for the 50 free at these trials rather than his signature backstroke event.
After all, this was about the experience, not the result.
“Just to be in this environment without that much pressure is super refreshening,” Grevers said. “Just a really great time.”
Broncos hire
former Stanford
coach David Shaw
ENGLEWOOD, Colo. | Former Stanford football coach David Shaw is returning to the NFL as a senior personnel executive with the Denver Broncos.
Shaw, who coached the Cardinal from 2011-22, will help evaluate college and pro players and assist general manager George Paton in roster evaluation.
Before coaching at Stanford, where he won three Pac-12 titles, Shaw, 51, was an assistant coach for the Eagles, Raiders and Ravens, and he’s been trying to get back into the NFL for a couple of years.
He interviewed for the Chargers’ and Titans’ head coaching vacancies last winter and also was a candidate for the Broncos job that went to Sean Payton in 2023.
Shaw and Paton kept in contact afterward and they recently started to create a role for Shaw in the personnel department that’s similar to the one Gary Kubiak held after stepping down as Broncos head coach at the end of the 2016 season.
Kubiak, however, had an office at team headquarters while Shaw will work mostly from his home in the Bay Area with trips to training camp and a few games.
Shaw has several connections to the Broncos. He and Payton were young offensive assistants together in Philadelphia in 1997. Also, team owners Carrie Walton Penner and Greg Penner each have degrees from Stanford and limited shareholder Condoleezza Rice is the director of the Hoover Institute at Stanford.
Shaw is the second high-profile addition to the Broncos’ personnel department this year, following the hiring of vice president of player personnel Cody Rager, a longtime scout in New Orleans while Payton was head coach of the Saints.
The Broncos, who have churned through 13 starting quarterbacks and a half-dozen head coaches since winning the Super Bowl in 2016, are trying to snap a streak of seven straight losing seasons and a playoff drought of eight years.
After going 8-9 in Payton’s first season, they bid farewell to several high-profile veterans, including Justin Simmons, Russell Wilson and Josey Jewell, and they drafted quarterback Bo Nix in the first round.
Alcaraz’s Wimbledon defense takes a hit with loss in Queen’s Club
LONDON | Wimbledon champion Carlos Alcaraz’s buildup took a hit when he lost in the second round of Queen’s Club on Thursday.
Alcaraz, the defending Queen’s champion and top seed, lost to Jack Draper 7-6 (3), 6-3.
For Draper, the British No. 1, it was the biggest win of his career. He was impressively composed in front of his home crowd.
Queen’s was Alcaraz’s only grass-court preparation last year en route to winning Wimbledon for the first time.
But this time the Spaniard will have only two grass matches under his belt following his French Open victory. Wimbledon starts in 11 days.
Draper ended Alcaraz’s eight-match win streak while extending his own to seven after winning his first ATP title last week in Stuttgart.
Draper didn’t drop serve against Alcaraz. They were finally separated in the first set in the tiebreak, where Draper shot to 4-0 then 6-1. Alcaraz netted a return to concede the set.
Alcaraz suffered the only break in the sixth game of the second set, after Draper’s backhand return serve down the line.
Draper saved a break point to hold for 5-2, then Alcaraz saved three match points to hold. Draper served out and threw his arms in the air.
“I knew I had to come out here and play really well, and luckily I did that,” he said on court.
He faces fifth-seeded Tommy Paul in the quarterfinals.
—From AP reports
