Lew Freedman

Tim Duncan, a Wake Forest freshman, played 10 scoreless minutes in the game.

The new champion of the Indianapolis 500 has an Alaska connection, someone that has been a true believer in him since he was a teenager. One of Alexander Rossi’s sponsors is Michael Gesser, owner of Alaskan Coffee Roasters in Fairbanks. Rossi, 24, was a surprise winner of the 100th running of the Indianapolis 500 Sunday at the … Continue reading This year’s Indy 500 winner brought to you (in part) by an Alaskan

INDIANAPOLIS – When Graham Rahal attended the U.S. Nationals drag racing championships, people he was hanging with compared it in scope to the Indianapolis 500. He tried to be polite, but inside he was howling. “I went, ‘Hold on,’ ” Rahal said. ” ‘It’s not the same.’ ” No it’s not. The Indianapolis 500 calls … Continue reading Indy 500 is always great spectacle, but 100th edition is bigger than ever

Big Bob was super-serious about WEIO, its history, its meaning to Alaska Natives, and was true to its traditions and did not want to see them edited.

Twice a runner-up, the veteran Iditarod musher, now 60, has seen massive changes in the 1,000-mile race to Nome -- especially the speed with which dog teams travel.

Saturday, at 77, Art Sherman became the oldest trainer to win the Run for the Roses when California Chrome burst free of the 19-horse pack of 3-year-olds coming off the last turn in the 1¼-mile race.

When old-time trainers break into the lineup for the Kentucky Derby, their gritty tales delight the public as thousand-watt lights shine on them for the first time in careers dating back to the Eisenhower Administration. This time that trainer is Art Sherman, who last worked a horse at Churchill Downs in 1955 and is back as the trainer of Derby favorite California Chrome.

Until the horses bolt from the starting gate Saturday in the Kentucky Derby, the Wednesday post-position draw and establishment of the official betting line is as close to substance as horse racing fans get this week. Oddsmaker Mike Battaglia, who has been establishing the Churchill Downs favorite for 40 years, anointed California Chrome as the 5-2 favorite.

Possibly the greatest major college basketball upset of all time was not the heralded Chaminade-Virginia game, but University of Alaska Anchorage's stunning defeat of the eventual national champion, Michigan, in the first round of a Utah tournament.

Mike Williams Jr. became an Iditarod musher on fairly short notice. His dad, who's run the race 15 times, asked him in 2010 if he wanted to do the race. The dogs were already trained. Why not?

As Michelle Phillips prepares for her fifth Iditarod, and what might be her last 1,000-mile trek across Alaska for a while, she is focused on improving upon her disappointing 24th-place finish of 2013.

The 41st Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race got under way Saturday, with 66 mushers leaving the ceremonial start line at Fourth Avenue, the first step in their trek to Nome

On a late November night in the private dining room of a California restaurant, friends and loved ones of Jumoke Horton, a gentle giant of 6-foot-8 and 300 pounds, whose only meanness showed when he chased down rebounds or blocked shots on a high school basketball court in Alaska or on a college court in California, gathered for three hours.

Scott Gomez, the player who twice brought the Stanley Cup home to Anchorage, has spoken hockey very well from his youngest days growing up in Alaska. Now he is learning to say puck, stick and goal in French.