■ Soccer
Makelele completes move
Chelsea have completed the 24 million euro (US$26.2 million) transfer of French midfielder Claude Makelele from Real Madrid, the English Premiership side said yesterday on the club's Web site. The move appeared threatened on Sunday when the player's agent said the deal might not go ahead because Real were refusing to give the player his slice of the transfer fee. Real sporting director Jorge Valdano said from Madrid that Makelele had relinquished his claims to his 15 percent cut. Chelsea said the player signed under 12 hours before the Champions League qualifying deadline.
■ Soccer
Beckham admits to fight
David Beckham has said he tried to attack Alex Ferguson after the Manchester United manager kicked a boot at him in the dressing room following an FA Cup defeat last February. "I went for the gaffer," Beckham wrote in his autobiography serialized in the Sun newspaper yesterday. "I don't know if I've ever lost control like that in my life before." The England captain said he had to be restrained by team mates after Ferguson blamed him for Arsenal's second goal in United's 2-0 defeat at Old Trafford. "A couple of the lads stood up," Beckham wrote. "Suddenly it was like some mad scene out of a gangster movie with them holding me back as I tried to get to the gaffer."
■ Soccer
Rangers go top
Rangers won its fourth straight game to go top of the Scottish Premier League on Sunday, beating Dundee United 3-1 with goals from Nuno Capucho, Shota Arveladze and Mikel Arteta. Defending champion Rangers has a perfect record and a two point buffer over archrival Celtic, who beat Livingston 5-1 on Saturday off a hat trick from Henrik Larsson.
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