* Men's basketball team Ural-Great Perm won the CEV Challenge Cup trophy in the two-way finals series against Khimik Yuzhny from Ukraine, on aggregate, despite losing the second leg 74:80 at home. In the first leg Ural-Great beat Khimik 80:67 away
* At the $3,450,000 Nasdaq-100 Open tennis tournament in Miami, Florida (March 22-April 2):
- Former world No.1 Marat Safin, recently recovered from a long-term knee injury, failed to advance into the men's singles second round losing to Tim Henman of Great Britain, 3:6, 3:6
- Russian Mikhail Yuzhny was beaten by Greg Rusedski of Great Britain in the first round, 3:6, 1:6
- Eelena Vesnina advanced into the women's singles second round, defeating Emilie Loit of France, 6:3, 7:6
- Anna Chakvetadze advanced into the women's singles second round by defeating Croatia's Karolina Sprem, 1:6, 6:3, 6:3
- Alisa Kleybanova failed to advance into the women's singles second round losing to France's Virginie Razzano, 5:7, 2:6
* Grandmaster Alisa Galliamova lost the first game of the four-leg finals series at the Women's World Chess Championship to Xu Yuhua of China. The four-leg finals series, being held in the West Siberian city of Yekaterinburg, will run through March 26. Tie-breakers (if necessary) are set for March 27
* Russian and Hungarian grandmasters Alexander Morozevich (world No. 11) and Peter Leko (7) currently share first place in the $260,000 Amber Rapid and Blindfold Chess Tournament in Monaco. The top world players compete in separate rapid chess and blindfold round-robin mini-matches with prizes for each event, alongside the best combined score. The tournament will run through March 30.
Standings after Round 5 (combined score):
1-2 Alexander Morozevich (11), Peter Leko (7) - 5.0 points
3-4 Viswanathan Anand (3), Francisco Vallejo (54, Spain) - 5.5 points
5-8 Levon Aronian (5, Armenia), Alexander Grishchuk (12, Russia), Peter Heine Nielsen (66, Denmark), Veselin Topalov (Bulgaria, world No. 2 and defending FIDE world champion) - 5.0 points
9-11 Boris Gelfand (9, Israel), Vasiliy Ivanchuk (8, Ukraine), Loek Van Wely (54, Netherlands) - 4.5 points
12. Pyotr Svidler (4, Russia) - 3.5 points
* Metallurg Magnitogorsk, winner of the regular season in Russia's hockey championships, the SuperLeague, defeated Lada Tolyatti, 7:0 at home, in the second leg of the best-of-five quarterfinals series.
Second leg quarterfinals results (host teams listed first):
Metallurg Magnitogorsk (1) - Lada Tolyatti (10) - 7:0 (Score in the series 1:1)
Ak Bars Kazan (3) - Salavat Yulayev Ufa (9) - 3:1 (Ak Bars leads in the series 2:0)
Avangard Omsk (4) - CSKA Moscow (5) - 6:1 (Avangard leads 2:0)
Lokomotiv Yaroslavl (2) - Khimik Voskresensk (6) - 4:3, on penalties (Lokomotiv leads 2:0)
The remaining quarterfinals legs are set for March 25 (26, 28 if necessary)
* The president of the Russia's ice-hockey federation, Alexander Steblin, submitted his resignation to the head of Russia's Olympic Committee, Leonid Tyagachyov
