Los Angeles to host 2015 Special Olympics

Los Angeles, Sep 15 : Los Angeles will host the 2015 Special Olympics World Summer Games. The announcement was made Wednesday by the Special Olympics International Board of Directors. The board expects that in less than four years, Los Angeles would welcome more than 7,000 Special Olympics athletes from 170 countries and regions to compete in 21 Olympic-type sports, and gather more than a half-million spectators.
"Bringing our World Games to a city as powerful and prominent on the world stage as Los Angeles will allow our Special Olympics athletes to showcase their talents and demonstrate to the world the best in sports," Timothy P. Shriver, chairman of the Special Olympics International Board of Directors, said in a statement as he awarded the event to Los Angeles at the Staples Center.
Shriver said Los Angeles won the bid for its fantastic facilities and its deep understanding of the mission of Special Olympics.
"So, we couldn't say no. They had it all. They have everything we wanted to do the future of our movement, which is centered on the idea that we can teach true sport, the power of unity, we think this is the best place in the world to teach that lesson," Shriver was quoted as saying by Xinhua.
Patrick McClenahan, president and chief executive officer of the 2015 Special Olympics World Games Organising Committee, told Xinhua that Los Angeles is able to create a world stage for these athletes to perform on, to show their skills, courage and spirit of joy.
"When that happens, people see that, and their perceptions are changed. And it becomes of appreciation, for what they can do, that start to change the way about people with disabilities start to including them and accepting them more," he said.
China's Shanghai hosted the Special Olympics in 2007. The most recent one was held in Athens, Greece, in July this year. South Korea will host the 2013 Special Olympics.

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Djokovic beats Nadal in epic US Open final

New York, Sep. 13 : Serbian Novak Djokovic defeated Spaniard Rafael Nadal in an epic U S Open final on Monday.
Djokovic beat Nadal in four sets, 6-2, 6-4, 6-7, 6-1, but it was more like a five-setter in its intensity.
According to The Telegraph, the match lasted four hours and ten minutes.
In each of the three sets, Nadal broke Djokovic's serve early on and gave himself the chance of taking control. On each occasion, Djokovic broke straight back again, wrestling the mighty Spaniard back with a focus that can only stem from absolute self-belief.
There were so many extraordinary moments in this final, so many apparently unreturnable shots that were sent back with interest.
Nadal, serving for 3-0, had game point thrice and break point five times. And then, in a rally that just kept giving, Djokovic retrieved three lost causes until a disbelieving Nadal finally dumped a smash into the net.
Nadal will go away listed as the loser of this match yet he was almost as immovable as Djokovic. He did perhaps start a little slowly, making only 58 per cent of his first serves in the first set and struggling to find the necessary depth with his backhand.
As it stretched past the three-hour mark, one might have expected the players to become weary and erratic. Instead they achieved a zen-like focus, entering that glassy-eyed place that athletes call "the zone".
In some of their exchanges, you wondered whether we would we would have to wait until dawn for one of them to miss.
At the peaks of the performance, points were constructed with a skill and ingenuity that made any normal tennis match look crude, like a wooden shack alongside a cathedral.
This final was a magnificent conclusion to what has been a flawed yet never less than fascinating tournament.

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Samantha Stosur upsets Serena to win US Open

New York, Sep 12 : Australia's Samantha Stosur beat Serena Williams to win the US Open Championship and her first Grand Slam tennis title Sunday.
The 27-year-old Stosur become the first Australian woman in 31 years to capture a major singles championship.
Ninth-seeded Stosur overpowered the 28th-seeded Williams 6-2, 6-3 in one hour and 13 minutes.
She is the third women's player to capture her first major this year after China's Li Na took the French Open title and Petra Kvitova of the Czech Republic won Wimbledon, Xinhua reported.
"I think I had one of my best days," Stosur said. "This was a dream of mine to be here one day, and I don't really know what to say and how I'm feeling."
Williams, whose previous appearance at the US Open in a 2009 semifinal loss ended with a foot fault and a penalty point when she threatened a lineswoman, had another controversy in store in Sunday's final.
She lost a point, and a service game, in the second set because she yelled "Come on!" before the point was over. She faced a break point on her serve when she slammed a forehand that Stosur barely tipped as it shot past her.
Match umpire Eva Asderaki cited Williams for a verbal hindrance because she shouted before Stosur had a chance to swing at the ball. The point, and first game of the second set, went to Stosur.
Williams had a contentious discussion with chair umpire that included her saying, "If you ever see me walking down the hall, look the other way."
"I get a code violation for this? I express who I am. We're in America," Williams said later after the awarding ceremony in an on-court interview.
"I hit a winner, but I guess it didn't count," Williams said. "But it wouldn't have mattered in the end."
Talking about what she said to the umpire in the post match conference, Williams said: "I don't even remember what I said. It was just so intense out there. It's the final for me, and I was -- I guess I'll see it on YouTube. I was just in the zone. I think everyone, when they play, they kind of zone out kind of thing. I don't know."
Williams made a brief comeback after the controversy, breaking Stosur's serve in the next game and winning her next two service games to take a 3-2 lead. Stosur, who won the final 12 points of the first set, responded by winning the final four games of the match.
Stosur played 147 games in the first six rounds of the tournament compared with 103 for Williams, and was part of a women's Grand Slam record when she and Maria Kirilenko played a 17-15 tiebreaker, in which Stosur lost, in the fourth round,
Williams, who had not lost a set in the tournament before the final, was the pre-tournament favorite to win her 14th Grand Slam singles title.
The 29-year-old American was playing the US Open for the first time since 2009 and was coming back from two operations on her foot and blood clots in her lungs, returning to the courts in June after more than a year on the sidelines.

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American duo Huber-Raymond wins US Open women's

New York, Sep 12 : Fourth-seeded American team of Liezel Huber and Lisa Raymond won the US Open Tennis Championship women's doubles title by outlasting defending champions Vania King and Yaroslava Shvedova. The American pair beat third-seeded duo of American King and Kazakhstan's Shvedova 4-6, 7-6 (5), 7-6 (3) to lift the title here Sunday.
It's the sixth Grand Slam women's doubles title for 38-year-old Raymond, for whom it was also her third US Open doubles championship. The prevois title came in 2005 when she teamed with austrlian Sam Stosur.
Stosur overpowered Serena Williams 6-2, 6-3 to win the US Open women's singles in a later match, Xinhua reported.
Raymond and Huber saved match point trailing 5-4 in the second set, then got to the third-set tiebreaker.
After winning the point to go ahead 6-2, Huber started celebrating, thinking they had won.
Two points later, they actually did. Huber, who teamed with Nadia Petrova last year, avenged a loss to the King and Shedova team, who won last year's Wimbledon, in the 2010 final.
The winning pair will carve up a prize of $420,000.
Huber and Raymond overcame Slovakia's Daniel Hantuchova and Poland's Agnieszka Radwanska, 6-2, 6-4 to reach the final Friday.
King and Shvedova upended the fifth-seeded Russian tandem of Maria Kirilenko and Nadia Petrova, 7-6 (9-7), 2-6, 6-3 in another semifinal.

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US Open: USTA to rule on Serena Williams outburst

New York, Sep. 12: American tennis star Serena Williams will discover on Monday whether she faces further punishment for an angry tirade at umpire Eva Asderaki in the US Open final.
Australia's Samantha Stosur won the match 6-2 6-3 after Williams was given a code violation for verbally abusing the Greek official.
Tournament referee Brian Earley must now decide whether to fine the 13-time Grand Slam champion.
Williams, 29, has been serving a two-year Grand Slam probation for an outburst at the US Open in 2009.
According to the BBC, umpire Eva Asderaki made a brave call - completely within her rights - to penalise Serena for hindrance and didn''t deserve the hurl of abuse.
"Any impact this code violation might have on Serena Williams'' Grand Slam probation would require the incident being ruled a major event," said a statement from the United States Tennis Association. (ANI)

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