Scott Pruett ties record in Daytona 24-hour race

Scott Pruett tied Hurley Haywood’s record of five Rolex 24 at Daytona victories, helping Chip Ganassi Racing return to Victory Lane in the prestigious sports car race at Daytona Beach, Fla.

A slight lineup change and a dominating performance in the twice-around-the-clock race earned the No. 01 team another celebratory Rolex watch.

Three-time defending Grand-Am champions Pruett and Memo Rojas, along with NASCAR driver Juan Pablo Montoya and IndyCar driver Charlie Kimball teamed to beat the VelocityWW team by almost 22 seconds.

Montoya won two previous Rolexes with the No. 01. He spent the last three seasons on Ganassi’s No. 02 “star car” before being moved back to the winning team.

He closed the win for Ganassi by wresting the lead from defending race winner AJ Allmendinger in the final hour.

WINTER SPORTS

Hirscher, Kostelic are World Cup winners

Marcel Hirscher won a World Cup slalom for the 10th time in his career, drawing roars from a home crowd at Kitzbuehel, Austria.

Hirscher became the first Austrian since Klaus Kroell in 2009 to win a race at the Hahnenkamm event, one of the classic stops on the men’s World Cup calendar.

Ivica Kostelic of Croatia won the combined, which adds the slalom results to those from Saturday’s downhill.

Overall World Cup leader Tina Maze rebounded from a close loss with an emphatic slalom victory before her home fans at Maribor, Slovenia. Maze has now won in four disciplines this season.

Maze, who lost Saturday’s giant slalom by 0.08 of a second to Lindsey Vonn, led after the opening run and finished her two runs in 1 minute 33.68 seconds down the Radvanje course.

ETC.

Football’s physical toll concerns Obama

President Obama is a big football fan with two daughters, but if he had a son, he says he’d “have to think long and hard” before letting him play because of the physical toll the game takes.

“I think that those of us who love the sport are going to have to wrestle with the fact that it will probably change gradually to try to reduce some of the violence,” Obama told the New Republic.

“In some cases, that may make it a little bit less exciting, but it will be a whole lot better for the players, and those of us who are fans maybe won’t have to examine our consciences quite as much.”

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Virginia Tech cornerback Antone Exum has a torn ligament in his right knee and could miss the start of the 2013 season.

The school announced that Exum tore his anterior cruciate ligament, though it did not say how, and was expected to miss six to nine months.

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Lionel Messi scored four goals to become the youngest player to pass the 200 mark in the Spanish league and set a La Liga record with goals in 11 consecutive games, leading Barcelona to a 5-1 rout of Osasuna.

With his 22nd hat trick for Barcelona and fifth game of four goals or more, Messi increased his La Liga total to 202 goals in 235 games.