Sports round-up

Athletics: Defending world high jump champion Blanka Vlasic of Croatia announced that she will compete at this month’s World Athletics Championships despite an injury to her leg. Vlasic suffered a “partial rupture of the semi-membranous muscle of the left leg” – her take-off leg. “I can’t do jumps of 2.05m but I can no longer stay at home watching others on the television,” she said.

Cycling: Britain’s Bradley Wiggins is eager to deliver at the Vuelta a Espana after crashing out of the Tour de France. The 31-year-old Team Sky leader fractured a collarbone in the first week of the Tour, revising his season’s targets to include the Tour of Spain. Ahead of today’s start ihe said: “Hopefully I’ll stay upright this time and have the opportunity to do what I didn’t get to do at the Tour de France.”

Rugby union: Japan will host a Sevens World Series tournament for the first time next year in a boost for rugby union in Asia. The Japanese leg will take place a week after the Hong Kong Sevens tournament at Tokyo’s Prince Chichibu Stadium from March 31 to April 1. Japan, which will also host the 15-a-side Rugby World Cup in 2019, becomes the seventh of nine stops on the expanded Sevens series.

Tennis: World number one Caroline Wozniacki has dropped her father Piotr as coach in a dramatic attempt to halt a worrying slump in form just 11 days before the start of the US Open. “I am no longer her coach. Who will be the new one? I promised I wouldn’t say,” Piotr Wozniacki said. The pair agreed to make the change, he said, after Wozniacki’s third consective fourth-round exit at Wimbledon earlier this year.