■ Soccer
Beckham fit for England
David Beckham expects to be fit for England's decisive Euro 2004 qualifier against Turkey next week after coming through Real Madrid's 2-1 league victory over Espanyol on Sunday unscathed. "There'll be no problem playing for my country," said Beckham, who missed Real's Champions League win over Porto this week because of a foot injury. "There was no reaction to the injury, although it's true my foot does hurt a bit." Beckham had rated himself as doubtful for the Group 7 clash with Turkey next Saturday after suffering the injury in a 2-0 defeat by Valencia last weekend. He played all but the last few minutes against Espanyol, though, and was satisfied with his fitness, despite suffering a slight injury early on. England could still be without one of their key players for the Turkey game, after Liverpool striker Michael Owen suffered a shin injury in his side's 2-1 defeat by Arsenal on Saturday. Owen has been given only an even chance of recovering in time for the game, which will decide whether England or Turkey win Group Seven and qualify automatically for the European Championship in Portugal next year.
■ Golf
Alfredsson ends drought
Helen Alfredsson ended a lengthy drought Sunday as Pat Hurst double-bogeyed the 18th hole, giving the Swede the Longs Drugs Challenge title and her first win on the LPGA Tour in five years. Hurst took a one-shot lead to the final hole but four-putted from 80 feet. She missed a 2 1/2-footer for bogey that would have forced a playoff. "I don't know what happened," Hurst said. "I played it to go a little right because it feels like everything would feed right. It looked like everything was going to the right, and if you go up and look at it, it looks like it feeds that way. But it didn't."
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