British and US Open triumphs confirm her return to top form
By SEAN REUTHE – Squash Mad Correspondent

Egypt’s Nouran Gohar has returned to World No.2 in the PSA Women’s World Rankings.

Gohar reached a career-high ranking of World No.2 in January 2017 but a loss of form and motivation saw her drop out of the world’s top five, falling as low as No.8 in February of this year.

However, the 22-year-old has returned to her best in recent months and has climbed up the rankings after winning the British Open and last month’s U.S. Open. She lost out to World No.1 Raneem El Welily in the World Championship semi-finals last night.

El Welily’s opponent will be three-time World Champion Nour El Sherbini, who drops to World No.4, which is her lowest World Ranking since March 2016. El Sherbini is appearing at her first tournament of the season after suffering a knee injury, but she has been in dominant form this week in Cairo and will look to celebrate her 24th birthday with a fourth World Championship triumph as she

Egypt’s Nour El Tayeb stays at No.3 after her defeat to Gohar in the U.S. Open final saw her miss out on the chance to rise a place, while France’s Camille Serme drops to No.5.

New Zealand’s Joelle King, England’s Sarah-Jane Perry, America’s Amanda Sobhy, Wales’ Tesni Evans and Hong Kong’s Annie Au complete the top 10.

World Junior Champion Hania El Hammamy – who lost out to El Sherbini last night in the semi-finals – stays at No.11 ahead of India’s Joshna Chinappa, while Victoria Lust is on the rise to No.13 as her fellow Englishwoman Alison Waters moves the other way to No.14.

Egypt’s Salma Hany stays put at No.15, with Hong Kong’s Joey Chan rising a spot to a joint career-high No.16 ranking. Yathreb Adel moves down a spot to No.17 as Belgium’s Nele Gilis rises one place to No.18.

The final two spots are taken up by Olivia Blatchford Clyne and two-time World Junior Champion Rowan Elaraby. Elaraby rises 11 places after reaching her first PSA Platinum quarter-final last month at the U.S. Open.

PSA Women’s World Rankings Top 20 – November 2019.

Pictures courtesy of PSA 

IRVING, Texas – Seventeen-year-old sprint car racer Buddy Kofoid will receive the Brady Bacon Baton Award during the 10th annual Racers Reunion Banquet on Nov. 9 in Irving, Texas.

The Brady Bacon Baton Award is presented annually to a driver who Bacon, a two-time USAC National Sprint car champion, sees as a rising star in motorsports. The previous Brady Bacon Baton Award winners, Gio Sclezi and Jason McDougal, have each proven through their continued racing successes that Bacon indeed has a keen eye for identifying future talent.

Kofoid began his racing career at 5 years old in outlaw go-karts and first raced a 410 sprint car at 14 years of age. Kofoid spent his 2019 season racing winged sprint cars in the Midwest for Ed Neumeister and scored four wins, including an Ollie’s Bargain Outlet All Star Circuit of Champions win, and claimed the Fremont Speedway 410 track championship.

Kofoid recently made his debut in the Lucas Oil POWRi National Midget League with a trio of strong finishes driving a Toyota-powered midget for Keith Kunz Motorsports.

In addition to the award ceremony, the Racers Reunion banquet will feature presentations on the life of Carrol Shelby, the rough and tumble world of AMA Grand National motorcycle racing and the evolution of the sprint car.

Tickets may be purchased by visiting the banquet website at www.radiusnation.net.

LAS VEGAS – There’s usually a variety of emotions racing at Las Vegas with a potential NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series championship on the line.

Relaxed is usually not one of them, but that’s precisely how Jerry Savoie feels heading to one of his favorite tracks for this weekend’s Dodge NHRA Nationals Presented by Pennzoil at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

The former Pro Stock Motorcycle world champion feels perfectly at peace at the high-stakes race in the city of big lights, even if it does serve as the penultimate race in the NHRA Mello Yello Countdown to the Championship.

Savoie has always performed well in Las Vegas on his White Alligator Racing Suzuki and with a pair of playoff wins, the veteran – sitting 94 points behind leader Andrew Hines – plans to once again thrive at the facility.

“I don’t know what kind of feeling other people get when they get to Vegas, but the atmosphere there just relaxes me so much,” said Savoie, who has never won in Vegas despite his solid performances. “I just get to the track and let it fly. Mentally for me, Vegas is just a great race and I’ve been very lucky there. The bottom line is, the atmosphere there just relaxes me.

“It’s one of the best places to go and there’s just certain tracks that seem to favor certain riders.”

Las Vegas is the fifth of six races in the Countdown to the Championship, and the 15th of 16 races during a Pro Stock Motorcycle season that has quickly gained steam for Savoie.

He didn’t run a full schedule during the season, but he started to build momentum as the regular season came to a close. Savoie won at Indy and then he opened the playoffs with a win, which changed the course of his year. His goal immediately shifted to trying to win another title and his victory in Dallas kept those hopes alive.

Back-to-back first-round losses in St. Louis and Charlotte hurt, but rebounding in Dallas ensured that everything is still in play heading to Las Vegas.

“I’m pretty fired up right now and I don’t care who gets in the way, I’m going to try to beat them,” said Savoie, who has 12 career wins. “I wasn’t expecting any of this to happen and we’re just peaking at the right time. Engine-wise, performance-wise, I think we’re in good shape and I think we have what it takes to go out there and be competitive.

“Hopefully we can continue to do well and keep things interesting down the stretch.”

Savoie knows he’ll need something big to stay close to Hines, who has a remarkable eight wins this season. But Savoie’s teammate, Karen Stoffer, is also within striking distance, sitting 81 points behind Hines. The two longtime standouts have thrived racing on the same team for the first time and it could lead to even more good results to finish the year.

Savoie also has to deal with the likes of Eddie Krawiec, Arana Jr. and defending world champ Matt Smith, but he and Stoffer have proven to be a formidable duo at the perfect time.

“We came back and did really well in Dallas, and that was big,” Savoie said. “Mentally and physically, I feel great. I feel like I’ve been blessed in so many ways. Andrew is still far ahead of us, but we still have a chance to win. Karen is a great rider and we have some great people behind us. It’s been a great combination.

“Karen is very intelligent and very family-oriented and it all just came together really well. We’re just going to keep working on what we have.”

THOMASVILLE, N.C. – Rick Ware Racing has added Texas-based Fort Worth Screen Printing as an associate partner on the No. 51 at Texas Motor Speedway this weekend.

Josh Bilicki will pilot the No. 51 Rick Ware Racing entry on Nov. 3 in the AAA Texas 500.

Fort Wort Screen Printing provides textile screen printing services to promotional products distributors, marketing firms, advertising agencies and end users throughout the United States.

Based out of Forth Worth, Texas, the team uses state-of-the-art equipment and automated production cycles to get the job done on time and correctly.

“Fort Worth Screen and our team are excited to be a part of Rick Ware Racing,” said FWSP CEO Jon Garrett. “As a longtime race fan and past participant in auto racing, I am especially excited about the Texas weekend.”

“We are excited to have Fort Worth Screen Printing on board the Rick Ware Racing entries this weekend at Texas Motor Speedway,” added team owner Rick Ware. “Jon and his team have been great supporters of RWR all year long, and provide quality products and apparel.”

Often faced with long odds and obstacles that appeared insurmountable, Matt Di­Benedetto has persevered in his pursuit of becoming a top-tier NASCAR racer.

“There have been many times I’ve questioned and been left wondering why we’ve devoted our entire life and sacrificed everything to get to a point where it seemed it had failed,” DiBenedetto said in an exclusive interview with SPEED SPORT. “But I was relentless. I was raised that way and I’ve been taught to always pick yourself back up and always push forward.

“Even though the odds have been stacked against me — it’s been a crazy journey — I’ve always been insanely persistent and mentally tough to go out there and do what I know I can do. I always pushed through even when I thought things would fail and I thought my career was over a hundred separate times.”

DiBenedetto’s career is definitely far from over. In fact, it appears as if the 28-year-old racer’s best years are ahead of him, as he will drive the No. 21 Ford for Wood Brothers Racing next season after being shuffled aside to make room for Christopher Bell at Leavine Family Racing.

DiBenedetto’s interest in racing actually began by watching NASCAR on television.

“It’s funny because no one in my family was involved in racing. They hadn’t even watched NASCAR a day in their life,” he noted. “I was 5 years old and my parents were flipping through the TV channels. They happened to pass by NASCAR and I made them go back to it. My dad was like, ‘What do you want to watch that for?’ I just loved it and I loved Jeff Burton’s No. 99 Exide Batteries car.

“At the same time, I was riding dirt bikes and four-wheelers and was just wide open on everything I got on, so my parents figured out quickly that motorsports, or anything with an engine, was my passion.”

That passion became even more intense after a visit to a local race track.

“I was playing Little League baseball and at one of our trophy ceremonies, my dad was the coach, he introduced me by saying, ‘This is my little Jeff Gordon. He plays baseball, but he loves racing,’” recalled DiBenedetto, who grew up in Grass Valley, Calif. “Ironically, one of our friends that I played baseball with raced out at Cycleland Speedway, the outlaw-kart track where Kyle Larson and I both grew up racing. They were like, ‘Hey, we race out at the local dirt track. Why don’t you come check it out?’

“We went out and watched, and my parents were like, ‘Is this something you want to do?’ I was like, ‘Well, obviously.’ Then for my seventh birthday is when I got a kart and we started racing.”

Pit-area veterans were so impressed by DiBenedetto’s talent that they soon began encouraging him and his family to pursue a career in racing.

“We started winning right off the bat and won the championship my first year. My parents took it like, ‘Oh, this is just what he’s good at.’ There was no racing blood or history in my family, so we were just doing it for fun,” DiBenedetto explained. “Then we kept moving up through the classes and we got to where we were racing, and winning, against adults and I was 11 years old or so.

“A lot of people were saying, ‘Man, you need to pursue this. You guys need to consider moving across country because this is his natural talent.’ That’s when we started looking at it and began chasing this dream that we knew would be extremely difficult, but we really didn’t know what we’d be up against.”

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Take a gander through past winners of Major League Soccer's MVP award and you will spy some of the league's legends. There's inaugural winner Carlos Valderrama to Preki to Robbie Keane to Sebastian Giovinco to David Villa and that Landon Donovan fellow, after whom the award is now named.

Yet the triumvirate comprising the finalists for this year's edition might be the most star-studded ever. There's last year's winner, Josef Martinez of Atlanta United, as well as the LA Galaxy's Zlatan Ibrahimovic, a man as lethal with his words as he is with his feet. Then there is this season's record-breaker for goals, Carlos Vela of LAFC.

Vela is the presumptive winner given the campaign he's had, but both Ibrahimovic and Martinez were stellar this season as well. Here's the case, for and against, each of this year's finalists.

Carlos Vela, FW, LAFC

Why he'll win: Where to begin? Vela had the greatest statistical season for a forward in MLS history. His 34 regular season goals broke Martinez's record of 31 from last year and his combined total of 49 goals and assists absolutely shattered Sebastian Giovinco's mark of 38 from 2015.

Ultimately, Vela's playmaking skills are what set him apart from his competition. His 94 chances created were more than double what either Ibrahimovic or Martinez produced. Granted, Vela's responsibilities are more varied in LAFC's setup, as opposed to the more central roles of Ibrahimovic and Martinez, but it also points to the magnitude of his contribution.

Vela wasn't just toiling for some also-ran either, as LAFC won the Supporters' Shield with a record 72 points and he was utterly consistent as the leader of that charge, scoring in 25 of the 34 regular season games. He also wasn't getting fat at home, as 16 of his 34 goals came on the road.

The best player on the best team in a record-breaking season is the kind of recipe that usually results in the MVP award, and that should be the case this time as well.

Why he won't: Any argument against Vela rises to Miss Manners levels of nitpicking. Yeah, his goal numbers were inflated by converting nine penalties and since the voting took place, LAFC has been bounced from the playoffs by the Seattle Sounders, reviving the argument that Vela doesn't show up in the biggest games. But Vela's season was so out of this world that it would be a travesty if he didn't win.

Zlatan Ibrahimovic, FW, LA Galaxy

Why he'll win: If one feels so inclined, you can (try to) make the claim that while Vela is the Most Outstanding Player in 2019, Ibrahimovic is the Most Valuable. While LAFC was a runaway leader in the race for the Supporters' Shield, the LA Galaxy had to huff and puff its way over the finish line. Without Ibrahimovic's 30 regular season goals, the Galaxy and its sieve-like defense likely wouldn't have made the postseason.

Ibrahimovic was also involved in more total game-winning goals (9) and game-winning assists (3) than Vela (six and five, respectively). Given that the Galaxy won 16 games compared to LAFC's 21, it can be argued that Ibrahimovic had a greater impact on his team.

Why he won't: Yes, that's trying way too hard in the face of the Vela Train. And an argument can be made that a Zlatan-less Galaxy would have been tactically more flexible and had more balance. The reality is that while the Lion feasted in 2019, Vela was this year's King of the Jungle.

Josef Martinez, F, Atlanta United

Why he'll win: In some respects, Martinez's 27-goal haul in 2019 was more impressive than his record-breaking 31 in 2018. Last year, Atlanta United was a well-oiled machine under manager Tata Martino. With a new head coach this year in Frank de Boer, the Five Stripes took a while to get going and yet Martinez still was spectacular, scoring in a record 15 consecutive league appearances. In the six league games that Martinez missed, Atlanta went 1-3-2 compared to Vela (1-1-1) and Ibrahimovic (2-3-0). The difference between goals and expected goals was a better in 2019 (3.08) than in 2018 (-0.55), pointing to a greater sharpness in front of goal.

Why he won't: Martinez had an impressive season, one that was a fitting follow-up to last year's MVP campaign. In fact, it would have been award-worthy in just about any other campaign besides the last two. But in the context of 2019, like Ibrahimovic, Martinez's performances suffer by comparison to Vela. There is simply no denying the virtuosity with which the one-time Arsenal man played this season.