■ Soccer
Arsenal to fight charges
Arsene Wenger has insisted that Arsenal will fight all of the 12 misconduct charges brought against them following the ugly scenes which disfigured their English Premiership clash at bitter rivals Manchester United last weekend. The Gunners also face a six-figure fine if found guilty of failing to control their players during the fracas at the 0-0 Old Trafford draw. Martin Keown, Lauren, Ray Parlour, Ashley Cole, Jens Lehmann and Patrick Vieira have been charged with a total of 11 separate counts, which could net them a total suspension count of 21 games.
■ Soccer
Jockey Club admits slip
In an embarrassing slip-up, Hong Kong's newly established soccer betting operation revealed yesterday it had mistakenly accepted bets on a European Cup match that was already underway. The long standing, nonprofit Hong Kong Jockey Club, which started accepting soccer bets from Aug. 1, said the mistake was due to the belated discovery of a change in kickoff time. The match in question, Wednesday's UEFA Cup tie between Spanish side Mallorca and Apeol Nicosia of Cyprus, was moved from 6:30pm GMT to 5pm GMT. Jockey Club spokesman Li Tak-nang said staff members first discovered the scheduling change on the Internet near the revised kick off time and took extra time to verify, a process that included checking UEFA's official Web site. As a result, the club didn't close the match to betting until 5:36pm GMT, Li said, by which time Mallorca had already scored one goal.
■ Basketball
NBA eyes China matches
The NBA is considering building on its surging popularity with Chinese fans by playing regular-season games in China, a league official said yesterday. While saying there was no definite plan for the shift yet, Marc Fischer, the NBA's Hong Kong-based managing director for Asia, said the league would use a set of preseason games planned for Beijing and Shanghai in Oct. 2004 to test facilities and travel arrangements for players. "The ones that we have next year will be a test to see whether we want to make it an annual event," said Fischer, who was in Beijing for a series of promotional events. "To be the first American sports league to hold regular games in China would be a historic event," he said. However, he added, "It's not that we will for sure."
■ Cricket
ECB faces sponsor threat
Mobile phone giant Vodafone has warned the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) that its ?3 million a year sponsorship of the game could be jeopardized if the England cricket team tour Zimbabwe next autumn. Lord MacLaurin, the chairman of the telecoms multinational, on Thursday described the prospect of an England team visiting Zimbabwe with the current regime of Robert Mugabe in power as "abhorrent," and said that his company would be doing all it could to dissuade such contact. Earlier this year, after much controversy, England pulled out of a World Cup fixture in Harare, but that was for safety reasons. Lord MacLaurin, 66, a former chairman of the ECB, is adamant that an England visit to Zimbabwe would be bad for cricket and for his company on moral grounds. He said: "We do not want to support a side that goes and plays in a country with the sort of regime that is reviled not just by this company but by many in the country."
■ Baseball
Yomiuri manager quits
Tatsunori Hara took responsibility yesterday for his team's dismal showing in Japanese baseball this year, stepping down as manager of the Yomiuri Giants. As the 45-year-old Hara told reporters at a press conference in Tokyo that he was resigning, Yomiuri owner Tsuneo Watanabe introduced former Giants pitcher Tsuneo Horiuchi as the new manager. "As manager, I had no choice but to take responsibility," said a teary eyed Hara. "This is a team that is revered by its fans and is expected to win. We had very talented players this season but I was unable to get them to where we needed to be." Hara said he would remain the team's manager for the remaining six games of the 2003 season. "I promise to show the Giants spirit for the remainder of the season," added Hara. "I'm sorry for the results we had this season but hope our fans will continue to support this great ballclub in the future." The Giants, who won the Japan Series last season in Hara's first year at the helm, have struggled this year in the absence of Hideki Matsui, who signed with the New York Yankees in the offseason.
■ Field Hockey
India reaches Asia final
Deepak Thakur scored a last minute goal yesterday as a resurgent India rallied over defending champions South Korea 4-2 to enter the finals of the Asia Cup men's field hockey tournament. The win, India's first over South Korea in five years, was carved on a four-minute blitz that saw the Indians scoring three goals to stun the Koreans. India's opponent in tomorrow's final will either be arch rival Pakistan or Japan, who were scheduled to play in the other semifinal late yesterday. The champion of the weeklong tournament will gain an automatic berth in the 2006 World Cup in Germany.
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