Sports Briefs

BASEBALL

Choo Shin-soo keeps pumping out home runs

Choo Shin-soo of the Texas Rangers hit another solo home run against the Washington Nationals on Saturday at Nationals Park in Washington, D.C. to help the Rangers win 6-3.

While the Rangers were losing 3-1, Choo got into the batter’s box as the first batter at the top of the ninth and hit Koda Glover’s change-up at a speed of 142 kilometers (88 miles) per hour over the center fence.

With the hit, he is now ranked second for the most hits made throughout his career by an Asian player in Major League Baseball (MLB) at 1,253 since the 2006 season, along with Matsui Hideki formerly of the Rays. Suzuki Ichiro leads in this category with 3,044 hits throughout his 17 years in the major league.

OLYMPICS

Olympics decides to keep 28 categories, add 15 more

The International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) executive board held a meeting on Friday at the IOC headquarters in Lusanne, Switzerland, to discuss changes in the summer Olympic categories for the upcoming events.

The IOC decided to retain 28 categories from the 2016 Rio Olympics until the 2024 Olympics.

Of the 28 categories, golf, which returned to the Olympics for the first time in 112 years, will remain until 2024.

Aside from the categories that maintained, the IOC decided to exclude men’s 50-meter pistol, which Jin Jong-oh won gold for three consecutive times, starting with the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

The IOC has also decided to add 15 additional events such as basketball 3X3, BMX freestyle, a 4x100 meter medley mixed relay in swimming, a judo mixed-team event, an archery mixed-team event, table tennis mixed doubles and more to improve gender equality.

By Kang Yoo-rim