The Asian Football Confederation has published the full schedule for the 2027 Asian Cup, and it keeps the tournament in Saudi Arabia on its original dates. The hosts open against Palestine at Riyadh's 72,000-seat King Fahd Sports City Stadium on 7 January, and the final returns to the same ground on 5 February.

The 24-team, 51-match tournament runs for 29 days across eight venues: five in Riyadh, two in Jeddah and one in Al-Khobar. The group stage ends on 20 January and the knockout rounds begin two days later. Defending champions Qatar start against Thailand on 11 January, the same day Japan meet Indonesia. Australia's first opponents are Singapore. South Korea play Yemen, and Iran play China.

The schedule settles the dates on paper, not the doubts. Several federations have raised security concerns after weeks of missile and drone attacks on the kingdom, and last week Japan's football chief said it would "not be easy" to hold the Cup there as planned. AFC president Salman bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa has said the tournament could move back to 2028 if needed, with a decision possible by the end of November. On the same day the schedule came out, the Dakar Rally confirmed it will leave Saudi Arabia for its 2027 edition.

This is the first Asian Cup Saudi Arabia has hosted, seven years before it stages the 2034 World Cup.

Kimi Antonelli arrives in Mexico City next weekend one result away from the Formula 1 world title, after a dominant win at the United States Grand Prix in Austin left him 123 points clear of his Mercedes team mate George Russell.

The 20-year-old started from pole, held the lead off the line and made a one-stop strategy work while Red Bull split their cars across two plans. He finished 13.078 seconds ahead of Ferrari's Charles Leclerc, with Max Verstappen third. It was his ninth Grand Prix win of 2026 and takes him to 365 points.

Austin was his first chance to settle it. He needed to win with Russell ninth or lower and Lewis Hamilton fifth or lower; Russell was eighth after a five-second penalty and Hamilton fourth. In Mexico City he becomes the youngest champion in F1 history as long as he does not lose more than 23 points to Russell, or 24 to Hamilton, who is now a single point behind Russell in the race for second.

"I would love to clinch the title in style with a great result," Antonelli said.

The Mexico City Grand Prix runs 30 October to 1 November at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez, which now looks likely to host a title decider.

There will be no title defence in this year's Melbourne Cup. Half Yours, last year's Caulfield Cup and Melbourne Cup winner, is missing from the 39 horses the Victoria Racing Club listed after third acceptances closed on Monday. The gelding fell in the Caulfield Cup on 17 October.

Ciaron Maher's grip on the race keeps tightening. He trains ten of the 39 still in contention, among them the new favourite Point Of Law, Saturday's golden ticket winner Juja Kibo, and Middle Earth, who was placed last year. Joseph O'Brien, who has won the Cup twice as a trainer, has eight, and James McDonald is booked to ride his Curragh Cup winner Trustyourinstinct. Chris Waller has five.

Twelve of the 39 are trained overseas, one more than at the same stage last year. With every golden ticket now won, Wednesday's Bendigo Cup is the last chance for three horses on the edge of the 24-horse field: The Euphrates, So You Are and Litzdeel.

The final field is named on Saturday 31 October, after Victoria Derby Day, and the Cup is run at Flemington on Tuesday 3 November.

Super Bowl LXI will be the first Super Bowl to get an animated alternate broadcast. ESPN, Lucasfilm, Disney and the NFL will run Star Wars Funday Football alongside the main telecast on 14 February 2027, recreating every play from SoFi Stadium in real time with the players turned into animated avatars and Star Wars characters dropping into key moments. Anthony Daniels, C-3PO since 1977, returns to voice the droid.

The animation runs on Sony's Beyond Sports technology, which combines the NFL's Next Gen Stats player tracking with Hawk-Eye optical tracking. It is the fourth animated NFL broadcast from the partners after Toy Story (2023, three Sports Emmys), The Simpsons (2024) and Monsters (2025), and the first time the format has been put on the biggest game of the season.

The feed streams on Disney+ and the ESPN App and airs on Disney Channel and Disney XD in the US, with live or on-demand access in more than 155 markets. It is one of several versions of the game ESPN is offering in its first Super Bowl production: the main call with Joe Buck and Troy Aikman on ESPN, ABC and Disney+, a Peyton and Eli Manning broadcast on ESPN2, a Pat McAfee show on ESPNU, a Next Gen Stats feed on NFL Network, and Spanish-language coverage on ESPN Deportes and Univision.

The timing suits Lucasfilm, which marks 50 years of Star Wars with a restored release of the original film in cinemas five days after the game. More details, including the commentators and settings, are due closer to February.

Juja Kibo won the Moonee Valley Gold Cup over 2500m at Flemington on Saturday. The race carried the last of the ten ballot-free "Golden Ticket" places in the Melbourne Cup, so it settles the final guaranteed spot before the race on 3 November.

It also confirms how much of the field belongs to one trainer. Ciaron Maher's horses took the first three places: Juja Kibo won by half a length from Kings Valley, with Mr Monaco a long head back in third. Maher now has seven of the 24 runners safely in the Cup. His other Golden Ticket winners this spring are Shockletz (The Archer), Mr Monaco (The Bart Cummings) and Point Of Law, who won the Geelong Cup on Wednesday and is the Cup favourite.

Juja Kibo arrived in form after winning The Metropolitan at Randwick on 3 October. Sam Clipperton, who has been riding the stayer in his Sydney work, kept the ride. Mr Monaco's third gives Tasmanian apprentice Jabez Johnstone a Melbourne Cup mount.

"They seem to be coming together at the right time," Maher said.

Royal Supremacy, Middle Earth and Saint George are also among Maher's horses in the top 24, and Zahrann is next in line at 25th.

Japan Football Association president Tsuneyasu Miyamoto has said it will be hard for Saudi Arabia to stage the 2027 AFC Asian Cup as planned, the most senior voice from a major member nation so far to question the 7 January start.

Speaking at the AFC's extraordinary congress in Tokyo, Miyamoto said he had met the Saudi delegation, who told him player and fan safety came first and that a decision on whether the tournament goes ahead would be taken with the AFC and would take time. "At this point, I don't think it would be easy to hold the Cup there," he said.

The comments sit awkwardly with the local organising committee, which said last week that venues, facilities and operations were all on the approved schedule. AFC president Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim Al-Khalifa had already said a move to 2028 remained possible, with a decision due by the end of November.

The doubt follows a run of cancelled and postponed events in the kingdom since a deadly attack on Riyadh's international airport this month: golf's Saudi International was postponed indefinitely, the UCI Urban Cycling World Championships were cancelled, the Six Kings Slam tennis exhibition moved to December, and FIFA put back its FIFAe Finals in Jeddah. The Asian Cup, scheduled to run until 5 February, was meant to be an early rehearsal for Saudi Arabia's 2034 World Cup.

Peres Jepchirchir, the reigning world marathon champion, has been provisionally suspended by the Athletics Integrity Unit after an out-of-competition sample taken in Kenya tested positive for EPO, the banned blood booster.

The sample was collected before her win at the Sydney Marathon in August, where she finished in 2:18:31, more than three minutes clear of compatriot Irine Cheptai. A provisional suspension is not a final ruling: she is entitled to due process, and the Sydney organisers say they will not comment further until the case is decided.

The 33-year-old is one of the biggest names in road running. She won Olympic gold in Tokyo in 2021, holds the half-marathon world record, and has won four World Marathon Majors: New York in 2021, Boston in 2022, London in 2024 and Sydney this year. Her agent, Gianni Demadonna, said in a statement: "I can only say that I feel terrible about what happened."

The case puts her world title defence at the 2027 World Athletics Championships in doubt and hits Kenyan distance running hard again. Last year, women's marathon world record holder Ruth Chepngetich was banned for three years over a prohibited diuretic. The Majors say they have already put more money into out-of-competition testing with the AIU.

The AFC Asian Cup is going back to even-numbered years. Meeting in an extraordinary session in Tokyo on Friday, the Asian Football Confederation's General Assembly unanimously approved statute changes that move the tournament from 2032 onwards, making Saudi Arabia 2027 the last edition held in an odd year.

The Asian Cup last ran in an even year in 2004, before switching to its current cycle with the 2007 edition. The AFC says the change follows talks with FIFA over the coming international match calendar. The 2032 host has not been chosen.

The same package realigns the confederation's governance with the tournament. Elections for the AFC's top posts will still be held during 2027, but the winners take office on 1 January 2028 for a term running to 2032, so one leadership oversees each Asian Cup through its decisive phases. Current officials serve until the end of 2027, and the AFC says details of the elections will follow.

The vote settles the long-term calendar, not the near-term one: whether the Saudi edition goes ahead as scheduled in January is still open, with the AFC having said it can wait until the end of November to decide.

FIFA has put the United States and Puerto Rico broadcast rights for the 2030 men's World Cup out to tender, and bidders can also take an option on the 2034 edition. Proposals are due by 19 November.

The packages cover both television and streaming. FIFA says it is open to "innovative approaches" to reach a wider audience, which leaves the door open to streaming services as well as traditional networks. That matches its recent deals: Netflix has already won the 2030 rights in Spain.

Fox held the English-language US rights for the 2026 tournament and Telemundo the Spanish-language rights. FIFA's figures put the 2026 US audience at an average of 13.5 million viewers a match across linear and streaming, up 166% on Qatar 2022. That gives FIFA a strong position going into this round of bidding.

The 2030 tournament marks the World Cup's centenary. Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay stage the opening matches, then Spain, Portugal and Morocco host the rest. Saudi Arabia is the sole host in 2034.

The qualifying tournaments for cricket at the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics will be played in January and February 2028, less than six months before the Games open. The International Cricket Council had first pencilled them in for 2027. The new dates are on a calendar it sent to member boards after its October meetings in Dubai, ESPNcricinfo reports.

The men's and women's qualifiers will have eight teams each: the seven highest-ranked sides not already through, plus the winner of a Caribbean regional qualifier. Venues have not been chosen yet. Each Olympic tournament has six teams.

The ICC has also changed the rule for the host's women's place. In the women's event, Australia, India, South Africa and Great Britain are already in. The United States qualifies as host only if its team is in the top 15 of the T20I rankings by 31 December 2026, and the women are currently 19th. If they miss, the spare place now goes on standings at the first Women's Champions Trophy in India in February 2027, not on the world rankings. The US men, ranked 13th, are on track for direct entry.