Matthew Brennan won stage 17 of the Vuelta a España into Sevilla on Wednesday, his fifth stage victory of a race that is also his first Grand Tour — and, in the process, he became the youngest rider ever to reach five Grand Tour stage wins.

The 185km run from Dos Hermanas was flat by this Vuelta's standards, with no categorised climbs, but it was not quiet. A brief crosswind split, a nine-rider counterattack containing sprinter Bryan Coquard, and a stand-off in which Visma-Lease a Bike and Cofidis both stopped pulling and let the break's lead balloon to five and a half minutes all threatened to unpick the sprint. Enzo Paleni went solo with 15km left and held around a minute before he was caught 3km from the line.

Visma had spent the day controlling the race and arrived in the final kilometres short of riders, with Wout van Aert forced to close down a late three-man move himself. Uno-X Mobility filled the gap with a six-man lead-out train, and Van Aert simply dropped Brennan onto the back of it. He opened up later than usual and still won by more than a bike length. Jordi Meeus took second, Magnus Cort third.

It is Visma's seventh stage win in 17 days here. The general classification did not move: Enric Mas finished safely in the bunch and keeps the red jersey ahead of Thursday's 32.1km time trial, the stage most likely to decide the race before it reaches Granada on Sunday.

The hosts are still standing. Germany brushed aside South Korea 94-56 in Berlin on Tuesday to reach the quarter-finals of the FIBA Women's Basketball World Cup, a result that turned the Berlin Arena into the loudest room of the tournament so far. Captain Marie Gülich scored 19 points with five rebounds, and the home side led by 17 at half-time.

It is a considerable recovery. Germany opened the tournament by losing to Spain by 30 points, then beat Japan 74-58 and Mali 83-58 before Tuesday's rout. Their reward is a quarter-final against European champion Belgium.

The day's other story came from Hungary, who beat Japan 84-63 to reach the last eight of a World Cup for the first time in 40 years. Réka Lelik led them with 23 points and eight rebounds, and Virág Takács-Kiss added 17. Hungary shot 11 of 25 from three; Japan, who had set a World Cup record with 20 three-pointers on Friday only for France to break it with 22 on Monday, managed seven.

"It's been 40 years since we went to the quarterfinals and I still can't believe it," Lelik said.

That win sets up the tie nobody in the draw wanted: Hungary against the four-time defending champion United States, who won Group D and have had two days off waiting to learn their opponent. It goes in the late quarter-final slot on Thursday.

Japan's win was overshadowed by a serious injury to shooting guard Saki Hayashi, who left the floor with what appeared to be a broken right arm after an awkward fall late in the second quarter.

All four quarter-finals are played on Thursday. Spain and France are already through and wait on Wednesday's remaining play-offs — Italy against Australia, and China against Puerto Rico — to complete the bracket. The final is in Berlin on Sunday, with a direct place at the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics for the winner.

Carlos Alcaraz's US Open reign ended at 3:33am on Wednesday, the latest any match has ever finished in the tournament's history. Ben Shelton, the American sixth seed, put him out 6-7(5) 6-1 6-3 1-6 7-6(10-7) in four and a half hours in front of an Arthur Ashe crowd that never left.

Shelton had looked like closing it early, taking nine games in a row from the second set into the third, but Alcaraz — playing his first tournament since April after a right wrist injury — forced a decider and won the fourth 6-1, vomiting on court before the fifth began. The match went to a tiebreak, and Shelton took it.

“It's always about the people in the crowd,” Shelton said afterwards, crediting a New York crowd that stayed until 3am.

The result guarantees an American man in Sunday's final for the first time in a generation. Shelton meets Frances Tiafoe on Friday, after Tiafoe came from two sets down to beat Alex Michelsen. It is the first meeting between two Black American men at the semi-final stage or later of a major in the Open era, and the winner becomes the first Black American man in a US Open final since Arthur Ashe in 1972. No American man has won a major since Andy Roddick here in 2003.

The night also broke a run of streaks. Alcaraz had won 18 consecutive Grand Slam matches and 12 straight five-setters, level with Björn Borg's Open-era record, and had never lost a US Open match after taking the first set. He is now the 18th consecutive US Open champion not to defend the title — nobody has managed it since Roger Federer's five in a row ended in 2008.

Frances Tiafoe was two sets down and, later, a break down in the fifth before he found a way past Alex Michelsen on Arthur Ashe Stadium, winning 5-7, 3-6, 7-5, 6-3, 7-6 (10-6) after four hours and 38 minutes to reach a third US Open semi-final.

Michelsen, 22 and ranked No. 46, had gone through the tournament without dropping a set and served at 5-4 in the third for the match. He led 3-0 in the decider too. He is now 0-6 in five-set matches, and wept on Tiafoe's shoulder at the net.

The win puts Tiafoe back inside the world's top 10 for the first time in three years, adding to his New York runs in 2022 and 2024. In the women's draw, Jessica Pegula beat Emma Navarro in an all-American quarter-final and will meet Aryna Sabalenka, still chasing a third straight New York title, in the semi-finals.

“I'm going to enjoy this one, though. Let's go!” Tiafoe told the crowd afterwards.

Matthew Brennan won stage 16 of the Vuelta a España in La Rábida on Tuesday, taking his fourth individual stage of this Grand Tour and confirming Visma-Lease a Bike's grip on the race's sprint finishes.

The British rider was delivered to the line by teammate Wout van Aert, who wound up the sprint out of the final left-hander with 600 metres to go on the wide coastal road. Bryan Coquard (Cofidis) took second and Vito Braet (Lotto-Intermarché) third, with Jordi Meeus (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) fourth and Magnus Cort (Uno-X Mobility) fifth after fighting back from a split inside the last 20km.

Visma controlled the 181.1km stage from Cortegana for most of the day and reeled in a five-rider breakaway with 25km remaining. It was the team's sixth stage win of this Vuelta.

"It's unbelievable, four victories here. The plan was for one," Brennan said at the finish.

The general classification was unchanged on a flat day. Enric Mas keeps the red jersey into Thursday's 32.1km time trial, the stage most likely to settle the race before it finishes in Granada on Sunday.

Enric Mas has carried the red jersey of the Vuelta a España into the race's final week, and into the one day that has repeatedly cost him: a 32.1km individual time trial on Thursday's stage 18.

The Movistar rider inherited the lead after Tadej Pogačar crashed, and has looked untroubled in the mountains since. His buffer at the last rest day was 2:06 over Felix Gall of Decathlon CMA CGM and 2:10 over Primož Roglič — a narrow margin against a rider who has won this race four times and knows exactly how to use a time trial. Roglič took the 2024 Vuelta off Ben O'Connor in a 24.6km test against the clock; Mas lost more than a minute to him that day and finished third overall.

Movistar are unbothered. "I think we've seen probably the best version of Enric Mas, maybe ever," Director of Racing Matt White told TNT Sports after stage 15.

Mas has stood on the Vuelta podium four times without ever reaching the top step. Thursday decides whether that changes, with the race finishing in Granada on Sunday.

Flushing Meadows spends most of a fortnight deciding a title. This year it also decides who runs the women's game: the WTA's No. 1 ranking is being settled inside the last four days of the tournament, and the player currently holding it cannot keep it by playing well.

Aryna Sabalenka arrived in New York as world No. 1 and two-time defending champion, and the arithmetic gives her exactly one way out — win it a third time. Everything else hands the ranking to Elena Rybakina, who beat Naomi Osaka 6-1, 6-4 on Monday to make the quarter-finals. Reach the semi-finals and Rybakina is No. 1 outright. Lose before that and she still takes it, provided none of Sabalenka, Coco Gauff or Jessica Pegula lifts the trophy.

"Of course I want it, I don't know anyone who wouldn't wish this," Rybakina said of the top ranking.

Her quarter-final on Wednesday is against Zheng Qinwen, who came through qualifying after elbow surgery and then beat Iga Swiatek 7-5, 6-3 — the first qualifier in the New York last eight since Emma Raducanu won the whole thing in 2021. Gauff, past Iva Jovic 6-1, 6-4, is still in the other half with a route of her own to the top spot.

Belgium's win over Australia in Berlin on Monday did two things at once: it sent the European champions straight through to the World Cup quarter-finals, and it moved Julie Allemand to the top of a list that has stood for a decade and a half.

The 80-68 result closed out Group C in Belgium's favour. Allemand, who runs the offence for a side that has built its identity on moving the ball rather than isolating a scorer, passed Spain's Laia Palau to become the all-time assists leader at the Women's Basketball World Cup. She arrived in Berlin on 87 career assists and has added 24 across three games, taking her past Palau's 108 to 111 — and past Dawn Staley and Sue Bird on the way.

"I'm just so proud because for Belgium, this is how we play. We are so unselfish," Allemand said.

The record fits the team it came from. Belgium have spent this cycle turning collective passing into a genuine competitive edge, and the quarter-final berth means they skip the qualification round on 8-9 September that awaits the second- and third-placed sides. Australia, beaten here, take the longer route.

Quarter-finals are played on 10 September, with the final on 13 September at the Berlin Arena. The champion takes a direct place at the LA28 Olympic tournament.

The United States is still unbeaten at a World Cup, but Berlin came closer than anywhere has in two decades. Italy pushed the four-time defending champions to a 55-52 finish on Sunday at the Women's Basketball World Cup, and led 50-49 inside the last three and a half minutes before the Americans steadied.

It was the narrowest World Cup result for the US since their last defeat, to Russia in 2006 — a run now stretching to 32 straight wins at the tournament. The margin came from a cold night rather than a collapse: the Americans shot 29% from the field and failed to reach 70 points for the first time since that 2006 loss, after opening the game on a 19-8 first quarter. Cecilia Zandalasini had a three to tie it with three seconds left; it drifted wide, and Breanna Stewart took the rebound.

"You do have to be able to win when you don't have your fastball," US coach Kara Lawson said afterwards.

The win clinched a quarter-final place, leaving Monday's group finale against Czechia as a formality. The knockout rounds begin Thursday at the Berlin Arena and Max-Schmeling-Halle, with the final on 13 September — and a direct berth at the LA28 Olympic tournament waiting for whoever wins it, unless that is the US, who are already in as hosts.

The men's draw at Flushing Meadows has done something New York has not seen in years: it has guaranteed a home semi-finalist. Frances Tiafoe and Alex Michelsen, both American, meet in Tuesday's quarter-final, so one of them will be in the last four regardless of the result — a rare piece of good news for a country that has not produced a men's Grand Slam champion since Andy Roddick won here in 2003.

Above them sits the defending champion. Carlos Alcaraz beat Tommy Paul 6-4, 6-3, 6-4 in the fourth round, dropping just one set across four matches in what is his first tournament back after four months out with a right wrist injury. His Grand Slam winning streak now stands at 18 matches, and a second straight title in New York would make him the first man in the Open Era to successfully defend majors on all three surfaces.

“Every time that I come here, I play my best,” Alcaraz said after the win.

In the women's draw the top seed is also still standing. Aryna Sabalenka, chasing a third consecutive US Open title, was broken three times early by Taylor Townsend before settling to win 6-4, 6-3; she faces Wimbledon champion Linda Noskova next.

For the tournament itself, the shape of the second week matters commercially as much as competitively. An American in the semi-finals is the single most reliable driver of late-round ticket demand and domestic broadcast audience at this event, and it lands with a full week of play still to sell. The finals are scheduled for Saturday 12 and Sunday 13 September on Arthur Ashe Stadium.