12 1GS Saturday May 28 2022 | the times
Sport
Asher-Smith
ready to take
on champion
Athletics
Rick BroadbentDina Asher-Smith will finally get to run
against the five-times Olympic
champion Elaine Thompson-Herah in
Oregon today as she seeks to build on a
solid but unspectacular start to her
season.
The British sprinter, 26, won the
100m in Birmingham last week but
admitted that she made mistakes, and
her time of 11.11sec made her only the
33rd fastest woman this year. She will
expect to go considerably quicker on
the second day of the Prefontaine
Classic Diamond League meeting in
Eugene, which is taking place in the
same stadium where the World
Championships will be staged in July.
Thompson-Herah, 29, was due to
race in Birmingham but pulled out two
days beforehand, saying she had
experienced “discomfort” in training.
Meeting chiefs there were somewhat
surprised when the Jamaican then ran
three races at the national stadium in
Kingston on the same day. Her 100m
best was still 10:94 into a strong 1.8
headwind.
“We all face our challenges and I am
not 100 per cent fit and I think it was the
best decision not to travel,” she said. As
Nike’s star turn, she is expected to run
in Eugene, where Nike has its
headquarters, and she has made no
secret of her desire to break Florence
Griffith-Joyner’s 34-year-old world
record of 10:49 this summer.
In another race full of interest Keely
Hodgkinson, the Olympic silver
medallist, takes on fellow GB athlete,
Jemma Reekie, in the 800m. A meeting
between Hodgkinson and Athing Mu,
the Olympic champion, has been pre-
vented by the American’s withdrawal.
Laura Muir faces her toughest test since
Tokyo when she races Faith Kipyegon
in a battle between the Olympic 1,500m
silver and gold medallists.
It is also a big weekend for Katarina
Johnson-Thompson who is in Gotzis,
Austria, to compete in her first heptath-
lon since hobbling out of the Olympics
with a torn calf. She has since had sur-
gery and moved training camps to join
Florida-based Petros Kyprianou.Buttler’s century smashes Royals into IPL final
Jos Buttler hit his fourth
century of the IPL to
take the Rajasthan
Royals into tomorrow’s
final against Gujarat
Titans.
His 106 from 60 balls
equalled Virat Kohli’s
record from 2016 of
most centuries in an IPL
season. Only Kohli, who
made 973 runs that
year, and David Warner,848 in the same year,
have made more runs
than Buttler’s 824 in a
single season.
After a slight dip in
form following an
incredible start to the
tournament, Buttler was
back to his best in the
qualifier against Kohli’s
Royal Challengers
Bangalore. RCB made
157 for eight from their20 overs, but Buttler
reached 40 off 18 balls
by the end of the fifth
over and was still there
as Rajasthan won with
seven wickets and 11
balls to spare.
“It is a great
excitement to have the
opportunity to play in
the final of the biggest
tournament in T20
cricket,” Buttler said.SAIKAT DAS/SPORTZPICS824
Buttler’s runs in IPL this
season — only David
Warner (848 in 2016)
and Virat Kohli (974 also
in 2016) have moreThe Saudi rebel golf series suffered
another blow yesterday as bosses were
forced to delay the announcement of
the field for the first $25 million event at
Centurion Club, near St Albans, in 12
days’ time.
Who is in and out of the LIV Golf
Invitational Series opener has been a
source of debate for weeks, with May 27
scheduled for the big reveal. However,
as the day wore on and a spokesperson
said they were “happily delayed” and an
announcement would come soon,
some players were believed to be
nervously weighing up the risk to their
reputations and futures. Graeme
McDowell is one of those who asked for
a release to play but has been debating
whether a potential ban from being a
Ryder Cup captain or assistant is a price
worth paying.
Although the eight-stop series has
prize money totalling $255 million
(£216 million), players have also seen
how Phil Mickelson became an outcast
after his negotiations with the Saudis
were exposed. Although that stance was
softening at last week’s US PGA Cham-
pionship, it is understood UPS (United
Parcel Service) has dropped its sponsor-
ship of Lee Westwood and Louis Oost-
huizen after they asked for releases to
play in the event.
It has been a torrid build-up for
LIV Golf, which is funded by the PIF,
the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, and
has had to defend itself against
allegations that
it is a front for
sportswashing.
At a media day at
Centurion Club two
weeks ago, Greg Norman,
the LIV Golf chief executive, tried
to brush off questions about
Embarrassment
for Saudis as big
reveal is delayed
Golf
Rick Broadbent
human rights and the murder of the dis-
sident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashog-
gi by saying: “We all make mistakes.”
That sparked outrage and eight days
later Sean Bratches, who had sat along-
side Norman at the media event, quit as
the LIV Golf’s chief commercial officer.
Speculation has also been mounting
about Norman’s own position.
The PGA and DP World Tours have
refused to grant releases for players to
appear at Centurion. The PGA Tour
has made it clear it will ban its members
who sign up with the Saudis anyway.
The DP World Tour may be more
limited in what it can do other than
impose fines, but Norman has prom-
ised to defend players legally and
reimburse fines. With $4 million going
to the winner at Centurion, $1.3 million
more than at the Masters, and with no
cut, a limited 48-man field and a guar-
anteed $120,000 for the man in last,
some will feel it is worth it.
Richard Bland, winner of the British
Masters last year, has gone public and
said: “If I get banned, I get banned. Most
of my career is behind me as regards
playing at the very highest level.”
Westwood has also said golf is his job
and he does it for money. He also opted
for the whataboutery defence to moral
questions and said Newcastle United
were also owned by the PIF and
Formula One and world title boxing
had also taken place in Saudi Arabia.
The reality is that the battle between
the existing tours and the new
series, which will morph into a super
league in 2024, is more about
money and power than
morals.
Next week the Asian
Tour’s International Se-
ries, also backed by
Saudi money, stages an
event at Slaley Hall in
Northumberland with
the winner getting a pass
into all LIV Golf Invitational
Series events and a guaranteed
$1 million.i
Westwood has been dropped
by one of his main sponsors