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Avalanche fatality: A 21-year-old Swiss snowboarding champion died in an avalanche yesterday during a film shoot in Switzerland after a slab of snow broke away and swept her down a narrow, rocky slope. Estelle Balet (picture), who won the Freeride World Tour in 2015, died in the avalanche above the Swiss village of Orsières despite efforts of emergency crews to save her, police said. Last year, Balet became the youngest champion of the Freeride World Tour, in which skiers and snowboarders compete by riding down steep, often-rocky ungroomed slopes. Events are sometimes halted due to avalanches, including last February in Austria.
Basketball: Former six-times Euroleague winners CSKA Moscow became the first team to reach this season’s Final Four after a 78-71 win at Red Star Belgrade completed a 3-0 sweep of the Serbian champions in their best-of-five quarter-finals. CSKA, who won their last title in 2008, reached the showpiece event for the fifth time in a row after a mature performance in front of 18,000 fervent Serbian fans in Belgrade’s Kombank Arena.
Golf: New Masters champion Danny Willett has joined the PGA Tour following his triumph at last week’s Augusta National in the year’s first major championship. The 28-year-old Willett will receive a five-year exemption on the US tour that runs through the 2020-21 season on the strength of his stunning three-shot victory for his maiden major. So far in the 2015-16 season, Willett has three top-five finishes in five starts in US tour events.
Basket, NBA: With Stephen Curry out of action due to an ankle injury, Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr was comforted knowing he had Shaun Livingston in reserve. Livingston began and ended a key fourth-quarter spurt with baskets, and supersub Andre Iguodala helped make up for Curry’s lost firepower with four three-pointers as the Warriors won a second straight tie from Houston Rockets in their best-of-seven series, 115-106. Golden State are now 2-0 in the post-season after a record-setting 73-win regular season.
Boxing: Nick Blackwell has announced his retirement from boxing after sustaining serious injuries against Chris Eubank Jr. in the British middleweight title fight last month that left him in an induced coma with bleeding in his brain. “No that’s me done,” Blackwell tweeted after being asked on the social media site if he would be making a comeback. “I can’t put my friends and family and self through that again but I’ll still be involved.” Blackwell, a former British middleweight champion, told Eubank Jr. that he held no grudges after he collapsed in the ring.
Rugby Sevens: Christian Wade scored a Premiership record-equalling six tries in the win over Worcester Warriors, but Simon Amor, the England coach who will lead Great Britain’s Olympic sevens team, is turning a blind eye to the Wasps’ winger. Reports said Amor had approached a small number of 15-a-side players but not diminutive speedster Wade, who made it clear he would love to represent Team GB for the sport’s Olympic return at the August 5-21 Rio Games. “I have always loved sevens and if I got the opportunity to go and do that I would 100 per cent go for it,” Wade said.