■ Speed Skating
Nachbar wins 1,500m
Germany's Arian Nachbar scored a surprise victory in Friday's 1,500m final at the European short-track speed skating championships at Turin, Italy's Palavela -- the first test event for the 2006 Winter Olympics in northern Italy. Nachbar won the men's event ahead of favorite Fabio Carta of Italy. Nicola Franceschina, also an Italian, was third. Evgenia Radanova of Bulgaria took the women's final, edging Italy's Marta Capurso and Russia's Nina Evteeva. Palavela, which recently has been renovated, will host skating events during the Olympic games Feb. 10-26. Shannon Rempel, in photo above, of Canada, waves to the crowd after placing second in the women's 1,000m event during World Cup speed skating in Calgary, Friday.
■ Boxing
Cruz beats Thompson
Undefeated Jose Luis Cruz stopped fellow American Vincent Thompson in the eighth round of their scheduled 10-round super welterweight fight Friday night at the Agua Calientes Casino in Rancho Mirage, California. The 25-year-old Cruz, 33-0-2 with 28 knockouts, ended the fight at 1:42 of the eighth round with a barrage of body shots that put Thompson to one knee on the canvas and prompted the referee to stop the bout. Cruz, ranked No. 13 by the World Boxing Council as a welterweight, won every round of all three judges' scorecards and led 70-63 when the bout was stopped. The 36-year-old Thompson, fighting for only the second time in the past seven years, dropped to 22-5.
■ Cricket
Haque remains tough
Bangladeshi spinner Enamul Haque continued his dominating form yesterday to take three wickets for 21 runs and help dismiss Zimbabwe for a 1st innings total of 298 on the second day of the second cricket test in Dhaka, Bangladesh. With his four wicket haul on the opening day, Haque returned 1st innings figures of figures of 7-95. Resuming at the overnight score of 244-6, Zimbabwe skipper Tatenda Taibu posted an unbeaten 85 runs before running out of partners.
■ Athletics
Angelo Taylor pinched
Two-time Olympic champion sprinter Angelo Taylor was arrested when a police officer allegedly found him having sex with a 15-year-old girl in a parked car. Taylor, 26, of Decatur, Georgia was charged Thursday with one count each of child molestation and enticing a child for indecent purposes. He posted US$2,000 bond at the jail, DeKalb County police spokesman Dale Davis said Friday. Taylor won gold medals in the 400m hurdles and 1,600m relay events at the 2000 Sydney Games.
■ Cycling
Armstrong dumps Qatar
Six-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong has pulled out of the Tour of Qatar, citing family reasons. The Qatar race is scheduled for Jan. 31-Feb. 4. "This is quite unfortunate since we were looking forward to seeing him race here for the first time," the president of the Qatar Cycling Federation, Sheik Khaled bin Ali Al Thani, said Friday.
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