■ Soccer
Ferguson has heart scare
PHOTO: AP
Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson underwent hospital treatment on Thursday for a minor heart irregularity, the soccer club said. It said Ferguson, 61, underwent a routine procedure at a Manchester hospital and was expected back at work yesterday. A routine checkup several months ago revealed "a minor heart irregularity," a club statement said. The procedure went well, it said, and Ferguson was resting at home and due at the club's Carrington training ground Friday in preparation for today's Premier League match with Aston Villa. "The treatment revealed he has no underlying heart problem," the statement said.
■ Soccer
Aussies blast playoff path
Australia coach Frank Farina has criticized FIFA over the qualifying draw for the 2006 World Cup. Soccer's world governing body announced on Thursday that the top team in the Oceania qualifying group, which Australia are favorites to win, will play the fifth-placed South American side for a place in the World Cup finals. FIFA also said a second playoff would take place between qualifiers from the Asian and the CONCACAF zones. Farina told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that the draw was unfairly stacked against Oceania and the playoff match-ups should have been randomly drawn. "We were hoping that it would just be a fair draw like all the other groups, that it would be taken out of a pot, or a hat as we call it in Australia," Farina said.
■ Football
Black players get hate mail
US authorities are investigating a series of hate mail letters sent to black NFL players and other prominent African Americans, according to a report on Thursday. The league sent a memo to NFL players last week warning that threats of violence in the letters have escalated and the sender is usually identified as "All Whites (or Caucasians), Angry white women," according to Florida's Palm Beach Post, which said it obtained a copy of the memo. Postmarks show the letters originated in Erie, Pennsylvania, Cleveland, Ohio and Youngstown, Ohio. "There have been 11 or 12 letters directed to prominent individuals throughout the United States over the past two years," special agent Robert Hawk of the Cleveland office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation said, according to the newspaper.
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
Rafael Nadal on Wednesday said the upcoming French Open would be the moment to “give everything and die” on the court after his comeback from injury in Barcelona was curtailed by Alex de Minaur. The 22-time Grand Slam title winner, back playing this week after three months on the sidelines, battled well, but eventually crumbled 7-5, 6-1 against the world No. 11 from Australia in the second round. Nadal, 37, who missed virtually all of last season, is hoping to compete at the French Open next month where he is the record 14-time champion. The Spaniard said the clash with De Minaur was
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