auto racing
Chase leader Johnson grabs pole with a track record
AVONDALE, Ariz. – Jimmie Johnson won the pole Friday for the penultimate race in the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship, moving him a step closer to his sixth NASCAR title.
The five-time NASCAR champion set a track record with a lap of 139.222 mph in his Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet to earn the top starting spot for Sunday’s race at Phoenix International Raceway. The lap broke the mark of 138.766 set by Kyle Busch last November.
Cycling
Tour de France will start in the Netherlands in 2015
UTRECHT, Netherlands – Utrecht will host the start of the 2015 Tour de France, making it the sixth Dutch city to stage the “Grand Depart” of cycling’s marquee race.”
Details of the opening stage of the race will be announced Nov. 28.
Amsterdam was the first Dutch city to host the Tour’s opening in 1954. Since then, the race also has started in Scheveningen (1973), Leiden (1978), ’s-Hertogenbosch (1996) and Rotterdam (2010).
NHL
At an unhappy 3-9-4, Florida fires its head coach
SUNRISE, Fla. – Here’s the status of the Florida Panthers these days: The owner is disappointed, the general manager is angry, and the players are underachieving.
Add it up, and it equals the coach being fired.
Kevin Dineen – the only coach to win a division championship in Panthers’ history – was let go Friday morning, a move that general manager Dale Tallon called “the first of many changes” that are coming to a franchise that finished at the bottom of the NHL last season and is off to one of the worst starts in the league this year.
Peter Horachek was summoned from the team’s AHL affiliate in San Antonio to replace Dineen on an interim basis.
Dineen, who was in his third season, and Florida lost 4-1 on Thursday night in Boston, the team’s seventh consecutive loss and 10th defeat in its last 11 games. The Panthers are 3-9-4.
Ski Racing
Who sets the next record? Lindsey Vonn? Tiger Woods?
VAIL – The race is on between Lindsey Vonn and Tiger Woods to see who can set a record first, even if the power couple really doesn’t discuss the topic.
Vonn was asked Friday at a news conference to promote the upcoming World Cup race season if the couple ever discussed going for records in their respective sports, and she simply said: “Not really. One of those unspoken things.”
The Olympic downhill champion needs three wins to match Austrian great Annemarie Moser-Proell’s record of 62 World Cup race victories. Vonn possibly could break the record this season as she returns after tearing her anterior cruciate ligament in a crash last winter.
Woods, whose 79 career victories are second only to Sam Snead (82) and six ahead of Jack Nicklaus, remains four victories away from tying Nicklaus’ mark of 18 major titles, a quest he will resume next April at the Masters.
Tennis
Wawrinka pulls off the upset to join Nadal in the semis
LONDON – Rafael Nadal held off Tomas Berdych 6-4, 1-6, 6-3 to finish the round robin 3-0 and win his group at the ATP World Tour Finals, allowing Stanislas Wawrinka to join him in the last four.
Wawrinka beat David Ferrer 6-7 (3), 6-4, 6-1, but he needed Nadal to win to advance to the semifinal.
Nadal lost his grip on the match in the second set, dropping his serve twice. The Spaniard already had qualified from Group A after winning his first two matches, clinching the year-end No. 1 ranking the process.
Nadal only needed to claim a set against Berdych to clinch the group win, but he broke him in the eighth game of the third set after Berdych double-faulted twice.
Associated Press
