■ Rugby
South Africa wins Sevens
Captain Marc de Marigny scored eight minutes into sudden-death, extra time Sunday to give South Africa a thrilling 24-19 win over Argentina and the Singapore Sevens title. "It was a lucky bounce of the ball, it could have gone either way," said South Africa coach Paul Treu, of de Marigny's try. "It was just tense in the last five minutes." With scores tied at 19-19, and the ball in South Africa's hands from four meters out, de Marigny took possession, slipped inside the Pumas' last man for the final score before his teammates surrounded him.
■ Tennis
Roddick handed title
Andy Roddick was handed the Nasdaq-100 Open title on Sunday after a back injury forced Guillermo Coria to retire with the score at 6-7 6-3 6-1 to the American in the best of five-set final. "Even when Guillermo's hurt he's still faster than 95 percent of the players on the tour," said Roddick. "It's tough to play when you're injured, especially in a big tournament like this. It's a great effort." Argentine Coria sustained the injury at 4-4 in the first set when he felt a sharp pain in his lower back after a rally.
■ Soccer
Beckham denies affair
England soccer captain David Beckham has denied newspaper allegations that he had an affair with his former personal assistant but failed yesterday to stop media speculation about the state of his marriage. British tabloids were full of intimate details of the alleged affair between Beckham, 28, and 26-year-old Rebecca Loos following Sunday's original News of the World story, including a series of explicit text messages the paper said was sent between the couple. The Real Madrid midfielder issued a statement describing the story as "ludicrous."
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