* At the $3.45-million Nasdaq-100 Open tennis tournament in Miami, Florida (through April 2):
- Maria Sharapova, seeded 4 for the tournament, cruised into the semifinals of the women's singles after defeating compatriot Anastasiya Myskina (10), 6:3, 6:3, to take on Tatiana Golovin (22) of France in the semifinals.
- Svetlana Kuznetsova (12) will face world No. 1 Amelie Mauresmo in another Russian-French semifinals
- Svetlana Kuznetsova and France's Amelie Mauresmo advanced to the semifinals of women's doubles by defeating Daniela Hantuchova (Slovakia)/Ai Sugiyama (Japan), 7:6, 7:5
* Russian biathletes took a landslide victory in the men's 12.5 km pursuit at the IBU Grand Prix 2006, being held in the Siberian town of Khanty-Mansiisk. Sergei Rozhkov won the gold with perfect shooting. Ivan Cherezov, yesterday's 10 km sprint winner, took the silver, missing two targets. Pavel Rostovtsev finished third, with two targets missed
* Biathlete Olga Zaitseva won the gold in the women's 10 km pursuit at the IBU Grand Prix 2006, being held in the Siberian city of Khanty-Mansiisk. Natalya Guseva, yesterday's 7.5 km sprint winner, took the bronze, missing four targets to finish just 0.1 second behind Bulgaria's Ekaterina Dafovska, who won the silver
* Russian basketball champions CSKA Moscow lost to Spain's Tau Ceramica Vitoria, 63-70 away, its last match of the Euroleague tournament's six-leg Top 16 stage, but nevertheless retained the top spot in Group F with 11 points from the six games. CSKA will face Efes Pilsen of Turkey in the best-of-three quarterfinals series.
Quarterfinals legs are set for April 4 (Moscow), 6 (Istanbul), 13 (Moscow, if necessary)
* Alexander Morozevich (world No. 11) is currently in second place before the last round of the $260,000 Amber Rapid and Blindfold Chess Tournament being held in Monaco. The world's top 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 10 (combined score):
1 Viswanathan Anand (3) - 13.5 points
2 Alexander Morozevich (11) - 13 points
3 Francisco Vallejo (54, Spain) - 11.5 points
4 Alexander Grishchuk (12, Russia) - 10.5
5 Veselin Topalov (2, Bulgaria) - 10 points
6-8 Peter Leko (7, Hungary), Pyotr Svidler (4, Russia), Loek Van Wely (54, Netherlands) - 9.5 points
9 Boris Gelfand (9, Israel) - 9.0 points
10 Levon Aronian (5, Armenia), - 8.5 points
11 Vasiliy Ivanchuk (8, Ukraine) - 8.0 points
12 Peter Heine Nielsen (66, Denmark) - 7.5 points
* Zenit St. Petersburg, Russia's last remaining representative in this season's European soccer club competitions, will play the first leg of its UEFA Cup two-way quarterfinals series with Sevilla in Spain. The match will kick off at 8:45 p.m. GMT. The second leg of the tie is set for April 6, in St. Petersburg.
The two clubs clashed earlier this season in the group stage of the UEFA Cup, when two goals from national-team striker Alexander Kerzhakov helped Zenit to a 2-1 win at home.
