Raised in Moscow within the Soviet sports system by parents who were accomplished athletes, Alex Ovechkin was given every chance to succeed at hockey and along the way showed he didn’t need special treatment

The winner of FIFA’s first 32-team Club World Cup in the United States could earn $125 million as details of a $1 billion prize money fund were finally published

The NFL competition committee is recommending making the dynamic kickoff rule permanent and moving touchbacks to the 35-yard line in hopes of generating even more returns

AP All-America center Lauren Betts, Ayoka Lee and Sedona Prince are traditional post players

The St. Louis Blues just keep on winning

Jasmine Paolini is headed to the Miami Open semifinals for the first time

Several new bars dedicated to women’s sports have made the mad dash to open in time to capitalize on March Madness, now in full swing

Mikaela Shiffrin’s flashbacks to her November crash in the giant slalom are happening less and less when she’s training

Years of bracket chaos have given way to the year of the power conference

Former UFC champion Cain Velasquez has been sentenced to five years in prison for a shooting in 2022 where he chased after the man accused of molesting his son

Italian ski racer Federica Brignone wrapped up the season-long giant slalom title at the World Cup finals in a race won by Lara Gut-Behrami of Switzerland

Zimbabwe’s Tawanda Chirewa scored in the final minute to deal a major blow to Nigeria’s World Cup qualification prospects in a 1-1 draw between the teams

Tests are underway at Cortina’s controversial Olympic sliding track

Duke guard Tyrese Proctor has made 13 of 16 3-pointers through two games of the NCAA Tournament

Lamont Butler doesn’t want to settle for just one shining moment on a Final Four stage

Bold decisions to change Major League Baseball’s longstanding rules quickened the pace of games and revived the popularity of stealing bases over the last few years

Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver Xavier Worthy is suing his former girlfriend who accused him of attacking her

Jimmy Butler and the Miami Heat will be linked one last time

There almost certainly won’t be a $700 million deal for any player in the baseball’s next free agency class, nothing like the record contracts for two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani and four-time All-Star slugger Juan Soto the past two winters

There is plenty of star power left in women’s March Madness with Paige Bueckers, Hannah Hidalgo and Lauren Betts still playing even if JuJu Watkins won’t be

Viktor Hovland can sound like a player who is bent on perfection

Stanford fired football coach Troy Taylor following a report last week that he had been investigated twice for allegedly mistreating staffers

Houston coach Kelvin Sampson knows his team can always rely on defense to win games

Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini have won again in court and now lead 2-0 in trial verdicts against Swiss federal prosecutors

Ben McCollum, who led Drake’s dominating run through the Missouri Valley Conference and a win in the NCAA Tournament in his only season with the Bulldogs, is the new head coach at Iowa