Italy's Francesco Casagrande won the fifth stage of the Tour de Suisse Saturday and snatched the leader's yellow jersey from second-place Alexander Vinokourov of Kazakhstan.
Mountain specialist Casagrande -- the 1999 tour winner -- completed Saturday's grueling 178km route in 5 hours 9 minutes 34 seconds. Vinokourov was 39 seconds behind the Italian, with Switzerland's Alexandre Moos third-placed, 47 seconds behind the winner.
Casagrande also was victorious in Thursday's third stage.
The podium in the eastern mountain town of La Punt was a mirror image of the race standings after five stages. Vinokourov lost his four-stage six-second lead to Casagrande, who now has an overall time of 22 hours 51 minutes. Vinokourov stands 37 seconds behind and Moos, 47.
During Saturday's stage, the riders scaled the 2,066m San Bernardino Pass midway through the route, before dropping into the valleys of the Graubuenden region.
Tour of Catalonia
Jose Antonio Pecharroman of Spain virtually secured his overall victory in the Tour of Catalonia Saturday, snatching the overall leadership from Roberto Heras and beating the world's time trial champion in the race's penultimate leg, a 13.1km time trial.
Riding for the Paternina team, Pecharroman covered the race's sixth leg in 21 minutes and 49 seconds -- making an average speed of 36km an hour.
Heras, the defending champion riding for the US Postal team, finished 52 seconds later.
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