■ Skiing
Knauss gets 18-month ban
Austria's Hans Knauss was banned for 18 months by the International Ski Federation on Tuesday after testing positive for the banned steroid nandrolone. Knauss had faced a possible two-year ban, but the FIS doping panel ruled he did not act intentionally. "The athlete did not exercise adequate caution by deliberately choosing to use supplements different from the ones recommended by his association," the FIS said. Knauss had been provisionally suspended after testing positive at a World Cup downhill at Lake Louise, Canada, on Nov. 27, 2004. His suspension was backdated to then and will run until May 26, 2006. Knauss' fourth-place result from the Lake Louise downhill was also nullified. The 18-month ban, which would cover the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, could end the 33-year-old skier's career.
■ Surfing
Mavericks await surfers
The world's top surfers made their way to Northern California, preparing to challenge what is billed as the "Most Dangerous Wave on the Planet," the vicious surf break at Mavericks, near Half Moon Bay, California. Each winter, top surfers from Brazil, Australia, Hawaii and the US descend on the once-secret surf spot 800m off the coast -- if the waves are big enough for the contest to be called into action. "Big enough" at Mavericks means waves that care 50m or higher. "Our surf forecaster is predicting 9m-to-10.5m faces," said contest spokesman Keir Beadling. "That's big, bordering on epic." The contestants include Carlos Burle, Brazil's most famous big-wave rider, and Australian standouts Tony Ray and Ross Clarke-Jones. The waves at Mavericks are the product of swells that are suddenly thrust upward by a rapidly rising sea floor.
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