Basketball: Real Madrid, Anadolu Efes Istanbul and holders Maccabi Tel Aviv reached the Euroleague Top 16 with two games to spare after Thursday’s games produced some rip-roaring action in Europe’s premier club competition. Real, winners of a record eight titles, beat Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod 101-98, Anadolu Efes earned a 66-57 victory at Lithuania’s Zalgiris Kaunas and Maccabi ground a 95-89 home win against Alba Berlin.

Alpine Skiing: It has been a year since Lindsey Vonn last skied a World Cup race, but there is light at the end of the tunnel for the American, who is set to make her return from a lengthy injury absence at her favourite resort this weekend. Two downhills and a Super-G at Lake Louise look like a gruelling return for the 30-year-old, who has had to start almost from scratch after undergoing two knee operations and suffering a shin fracture over the last two years. “I had to build everything back up from nothing. That took a lot of time and a lot of work – there is pretty much nothing I didn’t do,” she said.

Olympics: Former Olympic moguls champion Jean-Luc Brassard was named Canada’s chef de mission for the 2016 Rio Summer Games, the Canadian Olympic Committee said. Brassard, an assistant chef de mission at the 2014 Sochi Games, competed in four Olympics and captured gold in 1994 in Lillehammer to become Canada’s first ever Olympic champion in freestyle skiing.

Swimming: Hungary’s Katinka Hosszu put her first day disappointments behind her to break the women’s 100 metres backstroke world record at the world short-course championships in Doha on Thursday. The 25-year-old Hungarian, who was swum down by Spain’s Mireia Belmonte in two finals on Wednesday, slapped the water when she looked at the scoreboard to show her time of 55.03 seconds, taking 0.20 seconds of the mark set by Japan’s Shiho Sakai in Berlin in 2009. South African Chad le Clos claimed the men’s 100 fly. The 22-year-old clocked 48.44 seconds, taking 0.04 seconds off the mark set by Russia’s Evgeny Korotyshkin in 2009.