Local sports: Lee, Kournikova start well
Russia's Anna Kournikova and doubles partner Janet Lee of Taiwan claimed victory yesterday on the first day of the Kiwi Open. Kournikova and Lee struggled at the outset, dropping the first set before rallying to overpower their opponents, sisters Adriana and Antonella Serra Zanetti of Italy, 4-6, 6-2, 6-1. Kournikova and Lee are the second seeds in the doubles component of the US$140,000 tournament at Shanghai's Xianxia Tennis Center. Kournikova is also seeded fourth in singles.
Local ladies gain a first
PHOTO: AP
The 2002 Ilan International Collegiate Invitational Regatta ended yesterday, with a women's team from National Taiwan Normal University winning a gold in one category, the best performance ever turned by a local team in the competition. The NTNU team seized gold in the four-person, two-oar category, with Hamburg University and Taipei Municipal College of Physical Education taking silver and bronze, respectively. Australia's University of Melbourne and University of Queensland, and New Zealand's University of Otaga also managed to grab golds in other events.
Soccer: Van der Vaart blows knee
Dutch champions Ajax expect midfielder Rafael van der Vaart to be out of action for about six weeks after picking up a knee injury in the Netherlands' European Championship qualifier against Belarus, the club said yesterday. Teenage prospect van der Vaart, who will receive a full diagnosis later this week, injured a ligament in his left knee in the second half of the game on Saturday which the Dutch won 3-0. Van der Vaart missed most of the second half of last season due to two cartilage operations.
Cricket: England, India draw
The thrilling, seesawing England-India test series ended tied at 1-1 yesterday, a huge anticlimax after the fourth and decisive match at The Oval was abandoned due to rain. The first session was completely washed out and, with heavy rain still falling and surface water over large areas of the playing surface, umpires Asoka de Silva and David Orchard called the match off at lunch. England was set to resume on 114 without loss and a lead of 121.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier