Korea Olympic hockey coach: No pressure to play North Koreans

By Nick ZaccardiJan 22, 2018, 7:28 AM EST

Sarah Murray, the Minnesota-native coach of the unified Korea Olympic women’s hockey team, reportedly said she has been assured she has “ultimate control” over playing-time decisions regarding South and North Korean players.

“We’re not going to make a line just to make a line of North Korean players just so they can get ice time,” Murray said Monday, according to Yonhap News Agency. “We’re going to put in players that are going to be successful, and we’re going to play to win with the roster we have.

“As far as I know, I have complete control, and I am going to play the players I want.”

When the IOC approved adding 12 North Koreans to the South Korean Olympic women’s hockey team on Saturday, it created a unique situation.

Olympic women’s hockey teams can dress 22 players per game. Murray now must choose 22 players out of 35 — rather than 23 — for each game in PyeongChang.

And at least three of those players must be North Korean, meaning at least four South Korean team members must be deactivated for each game. Normally, Olympic head coaches must deactivate one player per game, the third-string goalie.

“We didn’t really have a lot of say in it,” Murray said, according to Reuters. “We’re just happy that we don’t have to play six [North Korean] players, and this was the best case scenario for the options that were given to us.”

Murray, 29, won two NCAA titles as a player at Minnesota-Duluth. Her father, Andy Murray, spent 10 seasons coaching the Los Angeles Kings and St. Louis Blues in the 2000s.

A Murray-led South Korean team beat North Korea 3-0 in a lower-level world championship tournament game in South Korea in April.

Now, players from both of those teams will seemingly be vying for ice time in PyeongChang in three weeks on the first unified Korean team in any sport at the Olympics.

“It’s exciting to be a part of something that’s so historic, to have two countries so divided come together through sports,” Murray said, according to Yonhap. “I think the story is great, and to be a part of it is important. But at the same time, it’s mixed feelings because it’s at the expense of, ‘We don’t get to play our full roster.'”

Before the unified team announcement, Murray reportedly said it would be a distraction and present challenges.

“I think there is damage to our [players],” Murray said last Tuesday, according to Yonhap. “It’s hard because the players have earned their spots, and they think they deserve to go to the Olympics. Then you have people being added later. It definitely affects our players.

“Adding somebody so close to the Olympics is a little bit dangerous just for team chemistry because the girls have been together for so long. Teaching systems and different things … I’d have about a month to teach these (new) players the way our team plays. That makes me a little nervous.”

Actually, less than a month. Murray said Monday that she doesn’t know which 12 North Koreans are joining her team or when they’re arriving, according to Yonhap.

“We don’t have a lot of days leading up to the Olympics, and we can’t waste any extra energy being angry,” she said, according to the report.

OlympicTalk is on Apple News. Favorite us!

MORE: U.S. athletes qualified for Winter Olympics

Follow @nzaccardi

French Open: Ukraine’s Marta Kostyuk says crowd ‘should be embarrassed’ for booing her

Associated PressMay 28, 2023, 8:55 AM EDT

Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus (left) and Marta Kostyuk of Ukraine before their French Open first round match./Getty

At first, Aryna Sabalenka thought the boos and derisive whistles coming from the French Open crowd were directed at her after a first-round victory Sunday. Instead, the negative reaction was aimed at her opponent, Marta Kostyuk, for not participating in the usual post-match handshake up at the net.

Kostyuk, who is from Ukraine, avoided so much as any eye contact with Sabalenka, who is from Belarus, after the match, instead walking directly over to acknowledge the chair umpire. Sabalenka walked toward the net as if expecting some sort of exchange.

“What happened today, I have to say I didn’t expect it,” Kostyuk said of the crowd. “I did not, but I have no reaction to it. People should be honestly embarrassed, but this is not my call.

“I want to see people react to it in 10 years when the war is over. I think they will not feel really nice about what they did.”

But this is something Kostyuk has been doing whenever she has faced any opponent from Russia or Belarus since her country was invaded by Russia, with help from Belarus, in February 2022.

Perhaps the fans on hand at Court Philippe Chatrier did not know the backstory and figured Kostyuk simply failed to follow tennis etiquette by congratulating the winner after the lopsided result: Sabalenka grabbed six games in a row during one stretch and came out on top 6-3, 6-2.

FRENCH OPEN DRAWS: Women | Men | Broadcast Schedule

“It was a very tough match — I would say tough emotionally,” said the No. 2-seeded Sabalenka, who won her first Grand Slam title at the Australian Open in January.

During an on-court interview in the main stadium, Sabalenka told the spectators she was sure their jeering “was against me, so I was a little surprised, but then I felt your support.”

Before play began on Day 1 of the clay-court tournament, the players did not pose together for the standard photos up at the net after the coin toss to determine who would serve first.

Kostyuk, a 20-year-old who is ranked 39th, won her first WTA title in March at Austin, Texas, by beating a Russian opponent and neither player went to the net afterward that day.

During her pre-tournament news conference on Friday, Sabalenka was asked about the likelihood there would be no handshake on Sunday.

“If she hates me, OK. I can’t do anything about that. There is going to be people who loves me; there is going to be people who hates me,” Sabalenka said then. “If she hates me, I don’t feel anything like that (toward) her.”

OlympicTalk is on Apple News. Favorite us!

Follow @nbcolympictalk

Ryan Crouser breaks world record in shot put at Los Angeles Grand Prix

By OlympicTalkMay 27, 2023, 5:56 PM EDT

Two-time Olympic champion Ryan Crouser registered one of the greatest performances in track and field history, breaking his world record and throwing three of the six farthest shot puts of all time at the Los Angeles Grand Prix on Saturday.

Crouser unleashed throws of 23.56 meters, 23.31 and 23.23 at UCLA’s Drake Stadium. His previous world record from the Tokyo Olympic Trials was 23.37. He now owns the top four throws in history, and the 23.23 is tied for the fifth-best throw in history.

“The best thing is I’m still on high volume [training], heavy throws in the ring and heavy weights in the weight room, so we’re just starting to work in some speed,” the 6-foot-7 Crouser, who is perfecting a new technique coined the “Crouser slide,” told Lewis Johnson on NBC.

Sha’Carri Richardson won her 100m heat in 10.90 seconds into a slight headwind, then did not start the final about 90 minutes later due to cramping, Johnson said. Richardson is ranked No. 1 in the world in the 100m in 2023 (10.76) and No. 2 in the 200m (22.07).

Jamaican Ackeem Blake won the men’s 100m in a personal best 9.89 seconds. He now ranks third in the world this year behind Kenyan Ferdinand Omanyala and American Fred Kerley, who meet in the Diamond League in Rabat, Morocco on Sunday (2-4 p.m. ET, CNBC, NBCSports.com/live, the NBC Sports app and Peacock).

The next major meet is the USA Track and Field Outdoor Championships in early July, when the top three in most individual events qualify for August’s world championships.

Richardson will bid to make her first global championships team, two years after having her Olympic Trials win stripped for testing positive for marijuana and one year after being eliminated in the first round of the 100m at USATF Outdoors.

LA GRAND PRIX: Full Results

Also Saturday, Olympic champion Jasmine Camacho-Quinn of Puerto Rico won the 100m hurdles in 12.31, the fastest time ever this early in a year. Nigerian Tobi Amusan, who at last July’s worlds lowered the world record to 12.12, was eighth in the eight-woman field in 12.69.

Maggie Ewen upset world champion Chase Ealey in the shot put by throwing 20.45 meters, upping her personal best by more than three feet. Ewen went from 12th-best in American history to third behind 2016 Olympic champion Michelle Carter and Ealey.

Marileidy Paulino of the Dominican Republic ran the fastest women’s 400m since the Tokyo Olympics, clocking 48.98 seconds. Paulino is the Olympic and world silver medalist. Olympic and world champion Shaunae Miller-Uibo of the Bahamas is on a maternity break.

Rio Olympic bronze medalist Clayton Murphy won the 800m in 1:44.75, beating a field that included most of the top Americans in the event. Notably absent was 2019 World champion Donovan Brazier, who hasn’t raced since July 20 of last year amid foot problems.

CJ Allen won the 400m hurdles in a personal best 47.91, consolidating his argument as the second-best American in the event behind Olympic and world silver medalist Rai Benjamin, who withdrew from the meet earlier this week.

OlympicTalk is on Apple News. Favorite us!

Follow @nbcolympictalk

More: Olympics

More: Olympics