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Justin Rose extends lead at Abu Dhabi

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Justin Rose extended his lead at the Abu Dhabi Championship on Saturday, shooting a four-under 68 to take a two-shot lead over Jamie Donaldson and Thorbjorn Olesen.

A day after top-ranked Rory McIlroy and second-ranked Tiger Woods missed the cut at the United Arab Emirates tournament, the fifth-ranked Englishman made his third round look easy with seven birdies.

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David Frost shot a 65 to hold a two-stroke lead on John Cook after the second round of the Mitsubishi Electric Championship at Kaupulehu-Kona, Hawaii.

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Frost’s bogey-free round left him at 14-under-par 130 at Hualalai Golf Club in the season opener of the Champions Tour.

ETC.

Former USADA chief says Armstrong offered agency a donation

The former chief of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency says a representative of Lance Armstrong’s offered the agency a donation in the range of $200,000 to $250,000 in 2004 and the agency immediately rejected it.

Terry Madden, who led USADA from 2000 to 2007, corroborated a story current Chief Executive Travis Tygart told in an interview earlier this month.

In his interview with Oprah Winfrey on Friday, Armstrong said no one in his camp made such an offer.

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Madden countered that, saying the Armstrong representative called Tygart — then USADA’s general counsel — who came to Madden’s office with the proposal.

“Then, 10 seconds later, because of our ethics, I told Travis to turn it down,” Madden said. “We called back that representative and gave them our decision immediately.”

Madden called the offer “very, very strange and it was such an easy decision for us.”

“It’s very clear, we cannot accept gifts from people we’re either currently testing or would be testing in the future,” he said.

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Wise Dan easily beat out I’ll Have Another for Horse of the Year at the Eclipse Awards on Saturday night.

Wise Dan won five of six starts in 2012, winning the Breeders’ Cup Mile in course-record time and two other Grade I turf stakes. The 5-year-old gelding’s lone defeat was by a head in the Stephen Foster Handicap at Churchill Downs, where he gave weight to winner Ron The Greek.

Trained by Charles Lopresti, Wise Dan became the first gelding to win Horse of the Year since John Henry in 1984. He also became the first horse to sweep Horse of the Year, top older male and top male turf horse honors since John Henry in 1981.

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I’ll Have Another, trained by Doug O’Neill, won all four of his starts, including the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes. He was scratched from the Belmont Stakes due to a tendon injury that led to his retirement.

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Lou Williams, the Atlanta Hawks’ third-leading scorer, will miss the remainder of the season with a right knee injury. The Hawks said Williams tore the anterior cruciate ligament in the knee in Friday night’s loss at Brooklyn.

Williams, a guard in his first season with the Hawks, is averaging 14.1 points.

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Lindsey Vonn won a World Cup downhill Saturday for her first victory in more than five weeks, beating overall leader Tina Maze by nearly half a second at Cortina D’Ampezzo, Italy.

More important, she’s back to being healthy after a bacterial problem that sapped her energy the last few months.

Vonn clocked 1 minute 38.25 seconds down the Olympia delle Tofane course. Current overall leader Maze finished second, 0.43 seconds behind, and Vonn’s American teammate Leanne Smith was third, 0.89 back.

Vonn, who had left the circuit for 27 days and missed six races, wondered whether she would win again this season.

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“I was off snow completely,” she said. “I was just in the gym working out two to three times a day, doing a lot of endurance training, a lot of weight training — just really trying to get back to where I was in the fall, before I got sick.”

Vonn earned her seventh win in Cortina and the 58th of her career, moving within four of the all-time record held by Austrian legend Annemarie Moser-Proell.

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Christof Innerhofer of Italy won the classic Lauberhorn downhill at Wengen, Switzerland, and Johan Clarey of France set a World Cup speed record of 100.6 mph.

Innerhofer timed 2 minutes 29.82 seconds down the 2.74-mile course, the longest on the World Cup program.

“For me, it’s amazing winning at Wengen. It cannot be better,” said Innerhofer, who won the downhill in November at Beaver Creek, Colo.

Klaus Kroell of Austria was second, 0.30 of a second behind, and teammate Hannes Reichelt was third.

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Clarey, who placed fifth, clocked the fastest speed recorded in competition in the 46-year history of the World Cup. He did it at the Hanneggschuss straight two minutes into his run.

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