■ Soccer
AC Milan beats Chelsea
Ukrainian striker Andriy Shevchenko curled in an 88th-minute freekick as AC Milan rallied to beat Chelsea 3-2 in a Champions World Series match in Philadelphia on Monday. First half goals from Eidur Gudjohnsen and strike partner Didier Drogba, making his first start for Chelsea, had given Jose Mourinho's English Premier League side a 2-1 halftime lead. However, Alessandro Costacurta equalized for the Italian champions after 76 minutes before Shevchenko's winner consigned Chelsea to their first defeat in three matches on their North American tour. Brazilian wingback Cafu scored Milan's opening goal in the first half. The Champions World Series features 11 friendly matches at eight venues across the US and Canada, involving club sides from England, Italy, Scotland, Portugal, Germany and Turkey.
■ Baseball
Clemens ejected from field
Houston Astros pitcher Roger Clemens spit sunflower seeds at an umpire while complaining about a close call in his son's baseball game and was ejected from the field, a newspaper reported on Monday. Clemens, 41, was a spectator at the game for boys aged 10 and under in Craig, Colorado, on Saturday when he got into an argument over a call that went against son Kacy's Katy Cowboys team and the umpire asked him to leave, the Craig Daily Press said. Clemens, known for his fiery temper and intimidating demeanour, spat sunflower seeds on the umpire's leg, the paper said. A supervisor at the game, Jim Carpenter, said he was asked to intervene and did so by siding with the umpire. "I supported the umpire's decision and he [Clemen] respectfully left," Carpenter said. Clemens, a six-times Cy Young Award winner with 322 career wins, retired from the New York Yankees last year, saying he wanted to spend more time with his family in Houston.
■ Athletics
Liu Xiang sends warning
Star Chinese hurdler Liu Xiang has sent an ominous warning to world champion Allen Johnson just days ahead of the Olympics, equally his own Asian record in the 110m hurdles. Liu is China's best gold medal hope on the track in Athens and is hitting form at the right time. He equalled his own Asian mark of 13.06 seconds at China's National Track and Field Grand Prix in Tianjin on Sunday, the China Daily reported yesterday. He previously set the record in Japan in May, when he claimed Johnson's scalp for the first time The 13.06 is just 0.01 seconds off Johnson's season best. Liu, 21, has come out of the shadows in the past two years, taking bronze in the indoor and outdoor world championships last year. His coach Sun Haiping said Liu would spend the days leading up to the Olympics working on his stamina and technical details.
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