UFC champion Georges St-Pierre to miss fight with knee injury

Ultimate Fighting Championship welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre has a knee injury that has knocked him out of his title defense versus Carlos Condit on Oct. 29, UFC officials said Tuesday.

St-Pierre was hurt in training camp Saturday in Montreal, UFC Chairman Lorenzo Fertitta told The Times in a text message. Fertitta said St-Pierre has a sprained knee and will be out four to six weeks. Condit will wait to fight St-Pierre for the title during the first quarter of 2012, Fertitta said. The new main event for the card in Las Vegas will be a three-round welterweight matchup between Nick Diaz and B.J. Penn.

— Lance Pugmire

Etc.

IndyCar officials have canceled this week’s two-day test of the new 2012 race car at Las Vegas.

The decision comes two days after Dan Wheldon, who did most of the testing for the 2012 car, was killed in a fiery 15-car crash at the same track.

Target Chip Ganassi managing director Mike Hull said IndyCar made the call on its own and that his team will test the new car later this year.

Four-time series champ Dario Franchitti was scheduled to run at the 1.5-mile oval Wednesday and Thursday. He and Wheldon were close friends.

Darren Turner will replace Wheldon in the V8 Supercars Gold Coast 600 this weekend at Queensland Raceway in Australia. Wheldon was one of six IndyCar drivers committed to running at Queensland.

Will Power withdrew after injuring his back in Sunday’s accident. Tony Kanaan cited Wheldon’s death as reason for pulling out of the event.

Ryan Briscoe, Helio Castroneves and Alex Tagliani still plan to race and left Monday night for Australia.

Wheldon was scheduled to team with Supercars champion James Courtney in the three-day event.

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IndyCar’s new Dallara chassis will be named in honor of Wheldon, who conducted most of the testing on the new 2012 IndyCar.

In a statement, company President and founder Gianpaolo Dallara said: “Dan lives in the memory of everybody at Dallara. … We will honor his memory for the years to come by dedicating the Dallara IndyCar2012 in his name. He deserves that.”

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Rory McIlroy made four birdies on the back nine at Hamilton, Bermuda, to grab a share of the lead with Keegan Bradley at the PGA Grand Slam, featuring the winners of this year’s majors. The pair finished the first round tied at four-under-par 67, well ahead of Charl Schwartzel, the Masters winner who shot a 74, and British Open champion Darren Clarke, who finished with a 77.

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The Italian club Virtus Bologna says “unexpected engagements” have made it impossible to sign Lakers star Kobe Bryant this month, but both sides will keep working toward a deal in November.

Bologna President Claudio Sabatini told the Associated Press this month he had reached a tentative deal with Bryant’s agent on a 10-game contract worth more than $3 million.

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The deal to sell the Philadelphia 76ers to a group led by New York-based leveraged buyout specialist Joshua Harris was completed. The sale ends Comcast-Spectacor’s 15-year run of ownership.

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The rivalry in the pool at the Pan American Games was a washout as the United States won four of five gold medals to leave Brazil in its wake in Guadalajara.

Julia Smit, Arthur Frayler, Sean Mahoney and the women’s 800-meter freestyle relay team all won races to give the Americans 12 gold medals through four days of swimming.

Brazil, the biggest U.S. challenger for pool supremacy with six gold, failed to win a race for the first time at this year’s games.