2012 January at LinesMaker

Allmendinger Leads Michael Shank Racing to Win

By JENNA FRYER, Auto Rac­ing Writer DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — The lit­tle team with no pedi­gree knocked off thebig boys with all those championships. Michael Shank Rac­ing did it with a pair of dri­vers hop­ing Sunday’s vic­toryin the Rolex 24 at Day­tona is the kick­off to their career comebacks. NASCAR dri­ver AJ All­mendinger closed out the twice-around-the-clock win bypilot­ing the No. 60 Ford Riley for the final stint, a nearly three-hour drivethat included some door-to-door bang­ing with Allan McNish for the lead. It was Allmendinger’s first win in a major series in almost... 

Rock Rolls Over Tiger in Abu Dhabi

Tiger Woods hasn’t won a Euro­pean or PGA Tour tour­na­ment in more than two years, and Robert Rock (and his hair) have made Woods wait at least two more weeks. Rock won the Euro­pean Tour’s Abu Dhabi HSBC Golf Cham­pi­onship on Sun­day by one stroke over Rory McIl­roy, with Woods among a group tied for third, two behind Rock. Woods and Rock shared the third-round lead, but in the final round Rock carded a 2-under 70 to Woods’ even-par 72. Woods started the back nine with a bogey, then made eight straight pars to the finish. Woods won in his last start of 2011, at his own Chevron... 

Once Again, J.R. Smith’s Family Fights With Chinese Fans

In ret­ro­spect, the Chi­nese Bas­ket­ball Asso­ci­a­tion may have wanted to mod­ify their rule to say teams could only sign NBA play­ers for a full sea­son AND those play­ers fam­i­lies needed to stay home. There’s a cul­ture clash going on. For the sec­ond time, J.R. Smith’s sis­ter got in an alter­ca­tion with fans at a Chi­nese game, and this time Smith’s girl­friend joined in. Via Deadspin. Accord­ing to Chi­nese news sources, con­flict erupted after Tian­jin fans heck­led J.R. Smith as he went to the line late in the third quar­ter. After what I believe to... 

Tom Coughlin Thinks Colts Fans Will Become Giants Fans This Week

Tom Cough­lin thinks Colts fans will become Giants fans this week Posted by Josh Alper on Jan­u­ary 30, 2012, 4:48 PM EST The Giants have arrived in Indi­anapo­lis and their coach is mak­ing a bid to become the home team this weekend. At Monday’s media ses­sion, Tom Cough­lin said that he “would think Indi­anapo­lis fans will become Giants fans” for this weekend’s game. There are two rea­sons why things would play out that way. One is that the Patri­ots and Colts have had a rivalry for the last decade that has ended up in some mem­o­rable games and some painful losses... 

Irsay Wants Break From Manning Speculation During Super Bowl

INDIAN OLIS — Jim Irsay did his own pol­i­tick­ing Monday. Instead of talk­ing about Pey­ton Man­ning and the fran­chise quarterback’s future in Indi­anapo­lis, the Colts owner quickly tossed the foot­ball to a real politician. “When I was asked about Pey­ton, I was going to say why don’t you ask Mitch (Daniels) about his pres­i­den­tial run? Any com­ments, Mitch?” Irsay said draw­ing laugh­ter as he turned to the Indi­ana governor. Irsay’s diver­sion­ary tac­tic didn’t work. With the Manning-Irsay spat still dom­i­nat­ing talk around town, Irsay tried to deflect... 

Rutgers Closing in on FIU’s Cristobal

Rut­gers was in con­tract dis­cus­sions Mon­day with Florida International’s Mario Cristo­bal to become the Scar­let Knights’ foot­ball coach, a per­son famil­iar with the nego­ti­a­tions said. The per­son spoke to The Asso­ci­ated Press on con­di­tion of anonymity because the deal, first reported by The Star-Ledger, was not complete. Rut­gers is replac­ing Greg Schi­ano, who left the school last week to become coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The 41-year-old Cristo­bal, a for­mer Rut­gers assis­tant under Schi­ano, just com­pleted his fifth sea­son at FIU. He... 

Elliott’s Surprising Showing Leads to All-Star Berth

Brian Elliott spent most of the sum­mer look­ing for a job. He spent this week­end as an All-Star. There was no more unlikely par­tic­i­pant in the 2012 Tim Hor­tons NHL All-Star Game than Elliott, who had to scram­ble for a job last sum­mer after a dread­ful sea­son split between Ottawa and Col­orado. He finally found a taker when the St. Louis Blues signed him to a two-way deal and gave him a chance to earn the backup job behind Jaroslav Halak. Not only did Elliott earn a job, he got an oppor­tu­nity when Halak strug­gled in the early going. Elliott made the most of his chance... 

Azarenka Rips Sharapova for Title, No. 1

By JOHN PYE, Sports Writer MELBOURNE, Aus­tralia — Vic­to­ria Azarenka started cel­e­brat­ing, thensud­denly did a double-take to ask her coach, “What happened?” The answer: She had just pro­duced one of the most lop­sided Aus­tralian Openfinal vic­to­ries to cap­ture a Grand Slam title and the No. 1 rank­ing for thefirst time. Azarenka routed three-time Grand Slam win­ner Maria Shara­pova 6–3, 6–0 in 1hour, 22 min­utes on Sat­ur­day night, win­ning 12 of the last 13 games afterdrop­ping her first ser­vice game and falling behind 2–0. “It’s a dream come... 

Talk of Returning Prixs

With all the doubts sur­round­ing the two F1 races in Spain, the head of the Span­ish Grand Prix at Barcelona today told Autosport and that not only does he want to keep the race to the end of its 2016 cur­rent con­tract, but he wants to extend it to 2020, if possible. Mean­while, Bernie Eccle­stone is meet­ing with French offi­cials today to talk about the pos­si­ble return of the French Grand Prix at his own Paul Ricard track in the south of France. There is a pos­si­bil­ity of rotat­ing that race with the Bel­gian Grand Prix. And to com­plete this Grand Prix come­back post,... 

Algorithms Wins Holy Bull at Gulfstream Park

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. — Algo­rithms capped a big day for trainer Todd Pletcher’s speedy 3-year-olds at Gulf­stream Park, win­ning the $ 400,000 Holy Bull Stakes. Algo­rithms, rid­den by Javier Castel­lano, passed 2-year-old cham­pion Hansen in the stretch and pulled away to win by five lengths, run­ning a mile on the sloppy dirt track in 1:36.17. “We had a good post and he broke sharp, but Javier said he relaxed from there,” Pletcher said. “This race was going to tell us where we were with him, run­ning against the 2-year-old cham­pion. Now he’s done every­thing we’ve...