Tennis

SESTRI LEVANTE, Italy, May 17th (Reuters) - Denmark's Lars Ytting Bak of the Lotto-Belisol team took his first ever win in a grand tour with a solo triumph on stage 12 of the Giro d'Italia on Thursday. Joaquim Rodriguez of Spain remained the overall leader for a third day. France's Sandy Casar finished second, around 11 seconds back on the very hilly 155 kilometre stage from Seravezza to Sestri Levante. Costa Rica's Andrey Amador was third. Three-times Danish time trial champion Bak took off from a day-long break of nine riders with 1. ...

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MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Hitting rock bottom six months before the London Games was the best thing that could have happened to Steve Hooker, the Olympic pole vault champion said, after climbing out of an abyss of self-doubt to qualify last week. The 29-year-old jets off to Shanghai on Tuesday for the weekend's Diamond League meeting, having only just booked his ticket to London with a vault of 5.72 metres at a sanctioned event in Perth on Friday. ...

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LONDON (Reuters) - McLaren have offered Formula One rivals Williams their assistance after fire swept through the team's garage as they celebrated Pastor Maldonado's Spanish Grand Prix victory on Sunday.

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MADRID (Reuters) - Victoria Azarenka took a step closer to a fifth title of 2012 when she dispatched Agnieszka Radwanska 6-2 6-4 to reach the final of the Madrid Open on Saturday.

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LONDON (Reuters) - Newcastle United's Alan Pardew was named Premier League manager of the season on Friday to cap an impressive campaign in which he turned his unfancied side into contenders for Champions League qualification.

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MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia coach Dick Advocaat has dropped experienced midfielders Diniyar Bilyaletdinov and Vladimir Bystrov from a 26-man preliminary squad for Euro 2012.

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CARACAS (Reuters) - Willy Martinez was a highly-ranked Venezuelan boxer at the age of 18 when an enraged man chopped off his hand with a machete. Martinez's boxing days were over -- but not his athletic ambitions. Now aged 27 and a father-of-three, he is training to qualify as a sprinter for the London Paralympics with the help of President Hugo Chavez's socialist government. "The machete appeared so quickly. When my hand was chopped off I didn't feel anything, but there was blood everywhere," he said, recalling the traumatic incident over a pre-training breakfast. ...

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(Reuters) - Fast bowlers Mitchell Johnson and Patrick Cummins will return to Australia's one-day international side following long-term injury breaks when they were named on Thursday for next month's tour of Ireland and England.

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LONDON (Reuters) - Chelsea must win the Champions League to play in Europe's elite club competition next season after a 4-1 defeat at Liverpool on Tuesday ended their hopes of qualifying via the Premier League.

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LONDON (Reuters) - Seats for the men's 100 metres sprint final at the London Olympics will be among a batch of one million tickets going on sale this week, though most will go to people already unsuccessful in the ballot, organisers said on Tuesday.

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