American Football: National Football League all-time passing leader Dan Marino, who never captured a Super Bowl championship in a legendary 17-year career with the Miami Dolphins, announced his retirement from American football yesterday.
Marino's lone Super Bowl appearance came in 1985, a 3816 loss to San Francisco. That effort followed a 1984 NFL season in which Marino threw for 5,084 yards and 48 touchdowns - NFL records that still stand. The Dolphins never again played for the NFL crown.
Marino, who turns 39 in April, has been pondering retirement after he was forced to miss five games last season due to a nerve root injury.
Cricket: Pakistan's off-field cricket problems grew a step worse yesterday as Saeed Anwar stepped down from the captaincy after just five Tests in charge.
"Anwar came to us and told us that due to health problems and pressure he wants to step down from captaincy and would like to concentrate on his batting," Yawar Saeed, director of operations at the Pakistan Cricket Board told reporters.
Moin Khan will lead Pakistan in the Sharjah tri-series starting on March 22nd until Pakistan's return trip to Sri Lanka in June. Inzamam-ul-Haq will be his deputy.
Olympic Games: Sydney Olympic planners won a stamp of approval for their controversial main stadium yesterday.
A report by Roy Denoon, of the University of Sydney's wind engineering services, found the 110,000-seat Stadium Australia had the best design possible for its exposed location and no modifications would prevent swirling winds inside.
Denoon found last month's national track and field titles experienced freak wind conditions.
"It was very unusual for that time of year, you have some of the windiest February afternoons of the last five years," Denoon said.
"The wind directions then were coming from the east and north-east directions which caused the worst conditions in the middle of the sprint track."
Denoon said conditions for the Olympics would be different.
"If you look at the strong winds in September, they mostly come from westerly directions and in that configuration, you get a lot of shelter to the sprint track from the western stand," he said.
Golf: Royal Troon, scene of Justin Leonard's Open victory three years ago, is to stage the Amateur championship in 2003.
Previous winners of the title over the Ayrshire links were current Walker Cup captain Peter McEvoy 25 years ago, Royal and Ancient Club captain Sir Michael Bonallack in 1968, John Beharrell in 1956 at the age of just 18 and American Charlie Yates in 1938.
The championship is being held at Hoylake this June, Prestwick next year and Royal Porthcawl in 2002.
