Disco-dancing Norwegian Petter Solberg was walking on air on Sunday after becoming his country's first world rally champion.
One year on from celebrating his first world rally championship success in Britain, the Subaru driver blasted through the Welsh forests to repeat the feat and claim his first title.
It was a remarkable performance from a driver who started the season-ending rally one point behind Citroen's championship leader Sebastien Loeb.
His romp to victory capped a dream season for a man who could easily have been ruled out of the championship altogether last month when he almost careered off a cliff in Corsica while preparing for a race that he ended up winning.
He was saved by a telegraph pole then and that luck continued in Britain as he suffered a high-speed blowout and a jarring impact with a pothole.
Solberg, who once won a dancing competition as a youngster, donned a horned Viking helmet and brandished a flag after clinching the title.
"I can't get [take] it in yet, it's too much at a time," he gasped at a news conference later. "You know, I haven't done much in my life really.
"I have been driving cars since I was six years old. I haven't done anything else. And now I'm world champion."
Solberg grew up driving around the field on his parents' farm near Oslo and, too young to compete in rallies, took his first title as a 13-year-old -- winning the Norwegian radio-controlled car championship.
He joined Subaru in 2000 and his partnership with four-times world champion Tommi Makinen flourished.
The Norwegian, who turns 29 on Nov. 18, can now celebrate down on his farm with the fans.
Last year 2,500 turned up to party after his first success.
He can expect many more this time.
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