■ Soccer
Turkey sells out tickets
Turkey sells out of tickets for Turkey-England match
Next month's crucial European championship qualifier between Turkey and England at Istanbul's Sukru Saracoglu Stadium has been sold out, organizers said Friday, two weeks before the Oct. 11 Group 7 game. The sellout was widely anticipated as the match determines which team will advance directly to next year's Euro 2004 finals. England leads the group standings with 19 points from seven games, followed by Turkey with 18. The Anatolia news agency reported Friday that the 42,000 seats were sold out at a total revenue of 2.5 trillion Turkish lira (US$1.8 million). England has turned down its ticket allotment for the game and has warned fans not to travel to Turkey because of a history of crowd trouble between fans from the two countries. Turkish officials have promised tight security and have said English fans would not be allowed in the stadium even if they have tickets.
■ Cricket
Play gets washed out
Rain continued to hit New Zealand's tour opener Saturday as play was washed out on the second day of a three-day match against the Board President's XI, cricket officials confirmed. Early morning showers left the outfield soggy in southern city of Visakhapatnam, the Andhra Pradesh Cricket Association said. The first day's play on Friday was restricted to 10.2 overs. The Indian Board President's team scored 23 without loss in 46 minutes of batting. Heavy rain has been lashing the coastal city of Visakhapatnam since Wednesday. New Zealand will play two tests and a one-day international series that also features world champion Australia during its eight-week tour of India.
■ Gymnastics
Russia wins group title
Russia defended its title Friday in the group competition at the World Rhythmic Gymnastics Championships to lead eight countries in qualifying for the Olympic Games next year. Russia scored a total of .50.325 points in the two exercises: five ribbons and three hoops and two balls. Bulgaria took second with 50.175 points. Italy and Belarus tied for third with 46.450 each. The top eight teams qualiyfing for the group competition at the Olympics. Two more wild card teams will be chosen. Russia took the gold in groups ahead of Greece and Ukraine. The individual all-around finals are today.
■ Cycling
Simeoni wins 19th stage
Filippo Simeoni won the 19th stage of the Tour of Spain on Friday while Isidro Nozal's overall lead dwindled to just under two minutes. Simeoni, riding for the Domina Vacanze team, edged Denmark's Klaus Moller in a final stretch sprint, finishing the 164km leg between La Vega de Alcobendas and Collado Villalba in three hours, 51 minutes and 18 seconds. The pack, led by Cristian Moreni of Italy, finished 16 seconds back. Heras, riding for the US Postal Team, sliced more than a minute off Nozal's lead, climbing to second place overall and ending the day 1:55 minutes behind the Spaniard. Nozal finished 31st, 1:30 behind Simeoni, but that was still enough for the Spaniard to hold on to the yellow jersey for the 15th straight day.
■ Tennis
Massu upsets Montanes
Top seed Nicolas Massu of Chile, ranked 28th in the world, defeated Albert Montanes of Spain 6-4, 1-6, 6-4 Friday in the US$380,000 Campionati Internazionali di Sicilia, the final ATP event on clay this year. No other quarterfinal matches were completed because of rain. In the day's second match, No. 8 seed Luis Horna of Peru led Spain's Oscar Hernandez two games to one in the first set when the downpour began. That match will resume Saturday morning. Other quarterfinals to be played on Saturday include No. 6 seed Alberto Martin of Spain against Argentine Franco Squillari; No. 5 seed Paul-Henri Mathieu of France against Argentine Diego Varonelli. In the final match Thursday, Argentine qualifier Diego Veronelli, playing for the first time since his upset of No. 2 seed Russian Nikolay Davydenko, needed little more than an hour to take apart Romania's Victor Hanescu, 6-4, 6-2. Veronelli is ranked 232 in the world.
■ Basketball
Nuggets accept Japanese
Japanese guard Yuta Tabuse has joined the NBA after signing with the Denver Nuggets, the team announced Friday. Tabuse, from Yokohama, played for Division II BYU-Hawaii from 2000-2002 before joining the Toyota Alvark of the Japan Basketball League last season. According to NBA Japan public relations director Ryuta Uchino, Tabuse is the first Japanese player to take part in an NBA training camp. Japan's Yasutaka Okayama was drafted by the Golden State Warriors in 1981, but didn't join the team. In a statement Friday, Nuggets GM Kiki Vandeweghe described Tabuse as an exciting young player. "He can really play at a fast pace and knows how to get the ball into the hands of the right people," Vandeweghe said. The 1.75m Tabuse also played in six games in the Rocky Mountain Revue for the Dallas Mavericks last summer, averaging 4.5 points, 1.7 rebounds and 1.0 assists in 13 minutes.
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