■ Boxing
Castillejo stripped of title
The World Boxing Council stripped Javier Castillejo of his super welterweight title on Wednesday for refusing to fight challenger Ricardo Mayorga. Jose Sulaiman, president of the Mexico City-based WBC, said the organization considered a fight with Mayorga a requirement for Castillejo's keeping the super welterweight belt. But Castillejo refused to defend his title this summer against Mayorga. Instead, Castillejo signed a contract to fight two-time world junior middleweight champion Fernando Vargas in August. The WBC will now order the two highest available challengers to fight for the vacant championship.
■ Super 12
Latham named best player
Queensland Reds fullback Chris Latham won the Super 12 rugby union Australian player of the year award on Wednesday for the fourth time. The Australian test player received 11 votes to finish one ahead of the ACT Brumbies' George Smith in polling for the best player from Australia's three franchises. It was the third year in a row that Latham won the award. He first claimed it in 2000. New South Wales Waratahs winger Peter Hewat, the top point-scorer in Super 12 this year, was named Australian rookie of the series and people's choice player of the year. Ewen McKenzie, who guided the Waratahs to their first Super 12 final, where they lost to the Canterbury Crusaders, was named coach of the year.
■ Soccer
Ramirez scores in MLS
World Cup veteran Ramon Ramirez scored his first goal in Major League Soccer to give Chivas USA a 1-1 tie with the Kansas City Wizards on Wednesday night in Carson, California. Chivas USA (1-8-2) broke a four-game losing streak in the first game for interim coach Javier Ledesma, who replaced Thomas Rongen on Monday. Ramirez, who played in two World Cups and 121 games for Mexico, scored in the 38th minute on a 28-yard free kick between diving goalkeeper Bo Oshoniyi and the right post. The Wizards (4-2-4) took a 1-0 lead in the 30th minute when Jose Burciaga Jr. curved a 25-yard shot that ricocheted off the inside of the right goalpost. Chivas USA had the best chance to break the tie in the 57th minute. But Oshoniyi used his right hand to deflect Ezra Hendrickson's 12-yard header over the crossbar. Kansas City played without forward Josh Wolff and midfielder Kerry Zavagnin, who are training with the US national team for Saturday's World Cup qualifier against Costa Rica. The attendance of 7,558 was the smallest for an MLS game at the Home Depot Center since the stadium opened in 2003.
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