Sports briefs
By NewsPress Now
In Japan, Ohtani’s ‘perfect person’ image could take a hit
SEOUL, South Korea | Shohei Ohtani is referred to in Japan as “kanpeki no hito” — the perfect person — because of his manners and impeccable behavior.
That image may have taken a hit when the Dodgers fired his good friend and interpreter Ippei Mizuhara on Wednesday over allegations he gambled illegally and stole Ohtani’s money to pay off debts.
The law firm representing Ohtani called it a “massive theft” in a statement.
The Seoul Series — the first MLB games in South Korea — were supposed to be a showcase for Ohtani before a fertile baseball audience in Asia. The games between San Diego and Los Angeles were scheduled before he signed a $700 million, 10-year deal with the Dodgers in December. For MLB, the stars seemed perfectly aligned and there is already talk of a similar series next year in Tokyo.
A bomb threat Wednesday briefly put a cloud over the series. Police were warned before the first game of a bomb at the stadium but found no explosives. Ohtani was reportedly the target.
Then came the other Ohtani bombshell.
“I was shocked when I read it,” said Jorge Kuri, a hardcore Dodgers fan from Tijuana, Mexico, who runs a garment business there.
Wearing a blue Dodgers sweatshirt and cap at the Gocheok Sky Dome, Kuri said he was trying to sift through the information that’s out there. He said he’d just returned from vacation in Japan “where Ohtani is king.”
“I don’t know what the end is going to be with this because I think it’s just the tip of the iceberg,” he added. “Right now he’s the image of Major League Baseball.”
Mizuhara, 39, was let go from the team following reports from the Los Angeles Times and ESPN about his alleged ties to an illegal bookmaker. He was in the dugout and with the team through Wednesday’s game — the shocking reports dropped Wednesday evening in the U.S., while most fans in Asia were asleep.
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts confirmed Mizuhara had a meeting with the team Wednesday but declined to elaborate. He said he did not know Mizuhara’s whereabouts and said a different interpreter would be used.
“Anything with that meeting, I can’t comment,” Roberts said, adding that “Shohei’s ready. I know that he’s preparing.”
Ohtani didn’t practice on the field before Thursday’s game. In his absence, his face appeared on the video board promoting a line of Japanese cosmetics.
He seemed unfazed hours later in his first at-bat as he lined a single to right field. In two other at-bats he hit towering drives to right just a few feet short of a home run.
Mizuhara is likely to be investigated by U.S. authorities and MLB, and the whole story is a stunning turn for the man who has been inseparable from Ohtani since the two-way star came to the U.S in 2017. He told ESPN this week that Ohtani knew nothing of his illegal wagers on international soccer, the NBA, the NFL and college football.
As Mizuhara told it, Ohtani was an innocent victim to his close friend’s gambling addiction.
As long as Ohtani isn’t directly accused of illegal betting, the allegations won’t meaningfully hurt his carefully crafted public image, said Lee Seung-yun, a marketing professor at Seoul’s Konkuk University.
“Ohtani’s image is like clean, white porcelain, and that could make a speck look bigger than it is,” he said. “Information spreads at amazing speeds these days, narratives are made before the truth of the facts are figured out, and if Ohtani was seen as a questionable character, the allegations would have really hurt him.”
“But his image is so strong and impeccable, and as long as he wasn’t directly involved, the allegations may just end up a blip,” Lee added.
Lee Jong-Sung, a sports culture expert at Seoul’s Hanyang University, said Ohtani’s image to global fans, including South Koreans, was that of a mysterious monk who “fully devoted himself into a religion called baseball.”
He said the allegations facing Mizuhara so far only may only strengthen that impression of Ohtani — a person who’s driven by perfection in baseball but more naïve and simple-hearted with other things.
“It’s a problem you often see with athletes — putting too much trust and depending excessively on the people they have known for long and are comfortable with and not knowing when they are taken advantage of,” Lee Jong-Sung said.
“It’s not all about you being perfect. Ohtani and the Dodgers should have better judgment in picking the people he works with,” he added.
NASCAR’s next
big hopeful makes national series debut
CHARLOTTE, N.C. | A promising young driver who might just be one of NASCAR’s budding new stars will make his national series debut this Saturday in the Truck Series race at Circuit of the Americas.
Connor Zilisch will then hop a private jet and hustle his way to Pensacola, Florida, to compete in a feeder series race later that night. It’s a strange doubleheader — the 17-year-old Zilisch has yet to ever drive in one of NASCAR’s trucks or the ARCA East Series.
He’s probably got Kevin Harvick — or maybe Harvick’s 11-year-old son — to blame for the grueling schedule laid out for him this year.
Born and raised in Charlotte and go-karting before he started school, Zilisch never had any interest in NASCAR despite living in the de facto homebase for America’s stock car racing series.
He liked karting, liked racing in Europe, and followed that path. That’s how he became karting teammates in 2021 with Keelan Harvick, who was only 8 at the time. When Keelan’s father could make it to a race, 15-year-old Zilisch received exposure and advice he once could only have dreamed of accessing.
“Kevin kind of suggested that I look into stock car racing, and he got me my first race in a stock car when I was 15, and I qualified on the pole and was leading the race until the engine broke,” Zilisch told The Associated Press. “It was good enough to get me a ride for the season after in the Trans-Am Series and that started my stock car transition.
“It’s rare that a father there to see his own son race wants to help someone else, but he was keen to help me and wanted to make sure I got the opportunities that he felt I deserved. I wouldn’t be where I am without Kevin’s guidance and him giving me the chance to meet the right people. It’s not about what you know, it’s about who you know, and Kevin knows everybody.”
Zilisch is now represented by Harvick’s management firm and in January signed a multi-year development deal with Trackhouse Racing.
“This kid is an amazing talent who we wanted to be a part of the Trackhouse family,” Trackhouse team owner Justin Marks said. “We are going to go slow with Connor and make sure he’s fully prepared as he advances in what we believe will be a long racing career.”
He’ll run a variety of different series this year in the CARS Tour, ARCA, Trans-Am, IMSA, Trucks, and, when he turns 18 later this year, is expected to enter four Xfinity Series races for JR Motorsports.
In all, Zilisch figures he has 37 race weekends scheduled for this year spanning multiple series.
His NASCAR debut comes with Spire Motorsports in a truck on the road course of the Austin, Texas track, and Spire drivers have won three of the first four Truck Series races this season.
But Zilisch goes to COTA on a winning streak of his own. Age eligible to compete in IMSA sports car racing, he made his debut in January as the endurance driver for Era Motorsports and picked up LMP2 class wins in both the Rolex 24 at Daytona and last weekend at the 12 Hours of Sebring.
He also finished second at Sebring in both Mazda MX-5 Cup races last weekend — losing both on last-lap passes. His second defeat was by a scant .0004 seconds.
Zilisch’s credentials are legitimate and now he gets to see what he can do in NASCAR, where he’s not eligible until he turns 18 in July to compete in anything higher than the Truck Series.
This first weekend is a big one for him — even after his two wins in his first-ever endurance races. Prior to Daytona and Sebring, Zilisch had never raced in an event that lasted longer than an hour.
All his preparation for his Truck Series debut has been in a simulator and his 20-minute practice session at COTA will be his first time on track in a truck.
“I just want to run all the laps. The Truck Series is totally new to me, so I don’t want to set my expectations anywhere,” Zilisch said. “I do want to succeed, but I’ve got to do what’s in my control and not make mistakes. Pit road is going to be new to me, so just minimizing mistakes, if I can do that, the speed will be there and I can get a good finish. It’s going to be tricky.”
And then it’s off to Pensacola, where Zilisch will start his pursuit of the ARCA East championship. Because he will be at COTA starting Thursday, he’ll be jumping directly in the car once he arrives.
“I’m going to show up without practice or qualifying and just start the race,” he said. “I’ve never been to Pensacola before … it’s definitely not going to be easy to show up without any experience at the place, but I feel confident in the team around me.”
His motto for what will be a whirlwind season driving in just about every series is simple: “I’ve just got to show up and learn quickly.”
Zilisch has so far done that at every step of his young career.
IOC says it was tricked by Russian prank callers amid tension
LAUSANNE, Switzerland | The International Olympic Committee believes its president Thomas Bach fell prey to a prank telephone call amid rising tensions with Russia over restrictions on its athletes competing at the Paris Games.
The IOC on Thursday detailed a call from people claiming to be from the African Union — a similar trick to one played by Russian callers on Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni in September.
In Meloni’s call, she acknowledged “fatigue” with the war in Ukraine believing she was talking with officials of the African Union.
The IOC said it had calls with “a person pretending to be the chair of the African Union Commission” wanting to discuss a statement on the politicization of sport.
The IOC and Bach have publicly criticized the Russian state including over plans to organize an international multi-sports event in September, weeks after the Paris Olympics close.
Russian athletes who pass vetting to compete in Paris also will not take part in the opening ceremony parade of boats on the River Seine, the IOC decided this week.
“There appears to have been a new incident in the Russian disinformation and defamation campaign against the International Olympic Committee and its president,” the Olympic body said in a statement.
“Fake calls purporting to be from the African Union Commission appear to have been made by the very same group that has already attacked a number of global political leaders and other high-ranking personalities in the same way,” the IOC said.
Russian pranksters Vladimir Kuznetsov and Alexei Stolyarov, known as Vovan and Lexus, also tricked the president of Poland, Andrzej Duda, in November 2022.
Duda believed he was talking to France’s President Emmanuel Macron.
Russia is on track to have about 35 athletes qualify for the Paris Olympics — about 10% of its usual team for a Summer Games.
Nike deal ends German soccer’s long-standing partnership with Adidas
BERLIN | German soccer and Adidas are breaking up.
American sportswear giant Nike will supply all of Germany’s national teams with its apparel and equipment from 2027, the German soccer federation (DFB) announced Thursday.
The new deal extends to 2034 and ends Germany’s long-standing association with Adidas, which goes back some 70 years.
“We’re looking forward to working with Nike and the trust they’ve placed in us,” federation president Bernd Neuendorf said in a statement. “The future partnership will enable the DFB to continue to carry out key tasks in the coming decade with regard to the comprehensive development of soccer in Germany. But one thing is also clear — until December 2026, we will do everything we can to achieve shared success with our long-standing and current partner Adidas, to whom German soccer has owed a lot for more than seven decades.”
German teams wore Adidas gear for all four of the men’s World Cup titles, their three European titles, and the women’s two World Cup and eight European titles.
Adi Dassler, the founder of the German sportswear brand, sat on the bench beside West Germany coach Sepp Herberger when the German team won the World Cup for the first time in 1954, wearing his company’s screw-in stud boots.
Dassler did not invent the boots with changeable studs, as many believe. They were invented some years before by German shoemaker Alexander Salot, who registered his invention with the German patent office on Aug. 30, 1949.
But they certainly helped the Germans beat Hungary in the 1954 World Cup final. Dassler’s company has been supplying German soccer with its gear ever since, and only last week it presented the new jerseys for the upcoming European Championship, which Germany is hosting this summer.
Over 300 French sports coaches, teachers and officials accused of sexual abuse or cover-ups
PARIS | More than 300 French coaches, teachers and sports officials have been accused of sexual abuse or of covering up such wrongdoing in 2023, the country’s sports minister said Thursday.
France launched a nationwide effort to uncover and combat sexual violence in sports four years ago when 10-time French skating champion Sarah Abitbol said in a book that she was raped as a teen athlete by her coach.
Since 2020, complaints have been filed against 1,284 coaches, teachers and sports officials. Of those, 186 faced criminal proceedings and 624 have been sanctioned with temporary or permanent bans.
Sports Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra presented the latest annual report on the nationwide investigation at a news conference Thursday in Paris. She said most of the victims, or 81%, were women and girls. Most of those accused, or 90%, were men.
The alleged abuse included sexual assault, harassment or other violence. The abuse reached across the country and across the whole sector, with accusations targeting a total of 45 sports federations, she said.
In 2023, complaints were filed against 377 people. Among those suspected of abuse or its cover-up, 293 were coaches and teachers and 15 were sports officials, the minister said. The rest held minor or voluntary administrative positions.
Thirty-six have faced criminal proceedings, 176 have been temporarily or permanently removed from their posts, and local investigations are under way into other cases.
Abitbol said in her book that she was raped by coach Gilles Beyer from 1990-92, when she was a teen. Beyer was handed preliminary charges of sexual assault and the investigation is ongoing.
—From AP reports
