■ Rugby
Bali victims to be honored
Australian players will wear a specially embroidered jersey for the opening game of the Rugby World Cup to honor the victims of the Bali bombings, the Australian Rugby Union said Wednesday. "The Wallabies jersey will carry a sprig of wattle embroidered into the jersey as a mark of recognition for the Bali victims," said ARU head John O'Neill at a media conference to mark 30 days to go until the tournament starts on Oct. 10. The opening match against Argentina at Sydney's former Olympic stadium on Oct. 10 takes place two days before the first anniversary of the bombings that killed 202 people, including 88 Australians.
■ Soccer
Violence injures the game
Argentina's governing body of soccer said Tuesday it will suspend play in the country's professional leagues this weekend because of fan violence. The decision was announced by the Argentine Football Association after a special meeting of its directors to review security policies at league games. The announcement came one day after a Buenos Aires judge issued an order prohibiting Argentine police from participating in security details at matches in the Argentine capital.
■ Boxing
Harrison gets quick win
Audley Harrison, the 2000 Olympic super heavyweight gold medalist from Britain, knocked out Quinn Navarre 32 seconds into the third round of their scheduled eight-round bout Tuesday night. Harrison, who weighed 113.4kg, dropped Navarre with a right jab-straight left combination to the head. Navarre never answered referee Jorge Alonso's count. "Once I put him in the corner, I felt I could hurt him with the left," Harrison 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