■ Baseball
Canada, Cuba reach Athens
Canada and Cuba clinched spots in the 2004 Olympics in Athens with easy wins in a baseball qualifying tournament. Justin Morneau of the Minnesota Twins homered for Canada in an 11-1 rout of Mexico, which eliminated the defending champion US team Friday. Cuba beat Puerto Rico 10-0 earlier Sunday in the Americas Pre-Olympic tournament. Both games were shortened to seven innings because of the lopsided scores. Canada and Cuba will play Monday in the final. Morneau, who batted .226 with four homers and 16 RBIs in 106 at-bats for the Twins this season, hit a two-run homer in a four-run third inning. He has five home runs in the tournament. Ryan Radmanovich, Pierre LaForest and Stubby Clapp also homered for Canada, which has 17 homers in the tournament. Right-hander Mike Johnson gave up seven hits in seven innings, including a home run by Luis A. Garcia in the fourth. The US team will be at home next summer while other countries such as the Netherlands and Italy compete for an Olympic medal in Athens.
■ Soccer
Beckham book a hit in China
England captain David Beckham's autobiography has scored in soccer-crazy China where it has topped the bestsellers' list in many cities, the China Daily newspaper said yesterday. Hundreds of fans packed two of Beijing's largest book stores when David Beckham: My Side hit the shelves last week, the newspaper said.
Fans formed long queues to buy the hard-cover edition, which sold for 29.80 yuan (US$3.60), the newspaper said. "We had expected that sales would be good but it is selling better than we expected," the China Daily quoted City Press deputy editor-in-chief He Yuxing as saying. Beckham swept China off its feet when he made his Real Madrid debut in Beijing in August. He was signed from Manchester United for 35 million euros (US$40.40 million) in July.
■ Soccer
Man dead in stadium plunge
A 54-year-old Italian man plunged to his death at the San Siro stadium on Sunday in what police say was a suicide. Police said witnesses had described how the man jumped from the external area of the second tier of the 80,000 capacity stadium and landed in the area between the entrance to the stadium and the stands. The incident took place during the first half of the match between Inter Milan and Ancona and the game was not halted. The man died at the scene despite attempts to save him. Reports did not say which team the man supported.
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