■Tennis
Taiwanese takes gold
Chinese Taipei's Lu Yen-hsiun (盧彥勳) defeated his Slovakian opponent in the men's singles tennis championship match yesterday to win gold at the 22nd World University Games being held in Daegu, South Korea. Chuang Chia-jung (莊佳容) and Chan Chin-wei (詹謹瑋) also triumphed on the tennis court, taking gold in the women's doubles. Chinese Taipei has so far won three gold, two silver and five bronze medals at the games, which opened Aug. 21.
■ Soccer
Thais get tough on betting
Thai police have issued an appeal to newspapers to refrain from publishing the odds of European football matches in a bid to curtail rampant betting by local punters, a news report said Fri Somboonsap called on the journalists to stop running suggested betting odds for football matches because they could be handy for gamblers. He was quoted by The Nation newspaper as saying the editors should help increase public awareness about the negative side of gambling. Thani was appointed head of the police department's illegal gambling suppression unit with a mandate to get tough with football betting.
■ Soccer
Italy's top division to start
The president of the Italian soccer league said on Thursday that Italy's top division season would start on time this weekend, but the fate of the second division's schedule remained unclear. Presidents of nearly all the second-division Serie B clubs announced last week that they would boycott the season's start in response to a move by the Italian Soccer Federation to increase Serie B by four teams. Several Serie A presidents had suggested they will join the Serie B boycott in a show of unity. But a day before a key league meeting to try to resolve the issue, league president Adriano Galliani said Serie A would start on time. "Tomorrow there's the league assembly, but the championship of Serie A will begin," the ANSA news agency quoted him as saying.
■ Golf
Mickelson turns to baseball
Now that the majors are over, Phil Mickelson wants a shot at the minors -- in baseball. Mickelson was scheduled to have a tryout yesterday with Toledo, the Triple-A affiliate of Major League Baseball's Detroit Tigers, with hopes of pitching for the Mud Hens this weekend. "This is a lifetime dream of mine, and I'm extremely grateful to the Toledo organization for giving me the chance to live it," Mickelson said in a statement. Mickelson, whose 21 victories on the PGA Tour are the most of any player in the modern era to have never won a major, threw to six players from the Akron Aeros, a Double-A team, last weekend during the NEC Invitational. He offered US$300 to anyone who could hit a homer off him, and the best anyone could do was a fly to the warning track. Mickelson, who throws right-handed, says he often plays catch to loosen his rotator cuff. He has worked recently with former Texas Rangers pitching coach Tom House.
■ Golf
Jacquelin fires into lead
Raphael Jacquelin fired a sizzling opening round 10-under-62 for his second straight tournament on Thursday, giving the Frenchman a two stroke lead after the first day of the BMW Open. Jacquelin strung together 10 birdies in his flawless round, duplicating his 62 to open the Nordic Open three weeks ago before skipping the last two events.
Agencies
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