Mixon victim says she rejected his advances
A woman struck by Oklahoma running back Joe Mixon said she rejected his advances before he punched her and broke bones in her face.
Mixon was suspended from the team for a year after the July 2014 incident at a restaurant in Norman, Okla.
In a video dated Aug. 14, 2014, and released by the Norman Police Department on Thursday, Amelia Molitor said four men made catcalls at her and suggested she go home with Mixon as a gift for Mixon’s 18th birthday. Molitor said she was not interested, and she said Mixon questioned why she would rather go home with the man who was with her — a man she said Mixon described with a homosexual slur.
Molitor said her friends used a racial slur against Mixon during the incident but said she never did.
Mixon entered an Alford plea, acknowledging there likely was enough evidence to convict him of misdemeanor assault while still asserting innocence. He did not serve jail time and was ordered to perform 100 hours of community service.
After setting the school record for all-purpose yardage in a season during the Sugar Bowl victory over Auburn, Mixon chose to leave the Sooners and enter the NFL draft. In other college news: • Wake Forest completed its football staff by hiring Sam Houston State assistant Brad Sherrod. Coach Dave Clawson said Sherrod will be on the defensive staff but did not say in what capacity. Sherrod was the Bearkats’ defensive coordinator and linebackers coach in 2016.
• Washington senior forward Malik Dime was indefinitely suspended for slapping a student at halftime of an 81-66 loss at Colorado on Thursday. Dime slapped the student after the halftime buzzer.
Swiss skiers 1-2 in combined
On a bitter-sweet day for the home team at the Alpine world championships, Wendy Holdener led a 1-2 finish for Switzerland in the combined event at St. Moritz, and Lara Gut was airlifted from the course after a crash.
American Lindsey Vonn was fifth after a gutsy slalom run left her 0.47 seconds from a medal. She was only sixth fastest in the opening downhill.
Holdener, a slalom specialist, was 0.05 ahead of teammate Michelle Gisin, who took silver. Michaela Kirschgasser of Austria trailed Holdener by 0.38, and repeated her combined bronze from the 2015 worlds.
Gut had been favored to end the winless streak but one hour before the slalom leg, the Swiss star crashed in practice. Gut ruptured the anterior cruciate ligament in her left knee but opted against emergency surgery, the Swiss team said in a statement.
Gut, who won bronze in the super-G on Tuesday, had been third after the morning downhill. She now will miss the anticipated showdown with Vonn in the marquee downhill Sunday and will be lost for the remainder of the World Cup season.
Russian champ stripped of gold
Russian runner Maria Savinova was stripped of her 2012 Olympic gold medal for doping, putting Caster Semenya in line to become a two-time champion.
Savinova, 31, who won the 800-meter title at the London Games ahead of Semenya, also was banned for four years by the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
CAS said Savinova was “found to have been engaged in using doping” from July 2010 until August 2013.
In 2014, Savinova was caught in undercover footage filmed by Russian doping whistleblower Yulia Stepanova appearing to admit to injecting testosterone and taking the banned steroid oxandrolone. The footage helped spark a World Anti-Doping Agency investigation into Russia and led to Savinova’s blood samples being re-examined.
Wings, Tigers owner Ilitch dies
Detroit Red Wings and Detroit Tigers owner Mike Ilitch, who founded the Little Caesars Pizza empire, died Friday. He was 87. Ilitch and his wife opened their first Little Caesars restaurant in suburban Detroit in 1959, and the business eventually grew into the world’s largest carry-out pizza chain. Ilitch paid a reported $8 million for the Red Wings in 1982, and the team won at least four NHL championships under his ownership. A decade later, Ilitch paid $85 million for the Tigers and began pumping money into player salaries. The Tigers advanced to the World Series in 2006 but lost to the St. Louis Cardinals . ...
Don McNelly, known worldwide for powering through marathon runs and running up record totals into his 70s and 80s, died this week. A retired paper company executive from upstate New York, McNelly died Sunday at 96. McNelly didn’t start running marathons until he was nearly 50 after a close friend died of a heart attack. He ran his first marathon at Boston in 1969. Forty years later, he had completed 744 of them, running 26.2-mile races in all 50 states, every Canadian province and on every continent, including Antarctica.