■ Local
McCauley joins Giant
Gordon McCauley, one of New Zealand's top cyclists, has joined a professional team sponsored by Taiwan bicycle maker Giant. McCauley, who signed a contract with the Giant Asia team on Friday, will be teaming up with young local stars Peng Kui-hsiang (彭貴祥) and Lai Kuan-hua (賴冠華), among others. McCauley left for Southern Europe on Sunday to take part in the Adriatic Cup as a Giant Asia member. McCauley, 31, has been with various commercial cycling teams for three years and holds an impressive International Cycling Union score of 152. Since first winning an important race in New Zealand, he has joined various teams in the UK and continental Europe. He won eight professional races last year.
■ Asia
Kim hat trick seals victory
Kim Do-hoon scored three goals Sunday as two-time K-League champion Seongnam Ilhwa of South Korea crushed Thailand's Osotspa 6-0 in Group B of the Asian Champions League. Uzbekistan's Pakhtakor also got a big win in Tashkent, beating Nisa of Turkmenistan 3-0 in Group D. The winners of each of the four groups, which each have four teams, will advance to the semifinals. Each group is being played at one venue. Park Nam-yul and Sasa Drakulic also scored for Seongnam, which scored three goals in each half in the northeastern Chinese city of Dalian. In the other Group B match, Japan's Shimizu S-Pulse drew 0-0 with local side Dalian Shide.
In other matches, Pirouzi of Iran beat Al Talaba of Iraq 1-0 in Group D; Iran's Esteghlal topped Al Saad of Qatar 2-1 in Group C in Al Ain, United Arab Emirates; and Al Ain of the United Arab Emirates beat Saudi club Al Hilal 1-0, also in Group C.
■ Cricket
India makes semifinals
Sachin Tendulkar smashed a majestic 97 yesterday to help India book its place in the World Cup semifinals with a 183-run win over Sri Lanka -- - then gave the bowlers credit for a job well done. "That was a great batting track so for the bowlers to get that much bounce, movement and pace from it was just extraordinary," said Tendulkar after the victory at the Wanderers where Javagal Srinath and Ashish Nehra both returned identical figures of 4-35. "Now we are in the semi-final we just have to keep going." India, put into bat by a half-fit Sri Lanka skipper Sanath Jayasuriya, made the most of perfect conditions to make 292-6 off 50 overs. "I am terribly disappointed not to have reached a 100 but the main thing is that the team won. We are in the semifinal and that is very exciting," Tendulkar said.
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