The US and Argentina won their doubles on Saturday and are on the brink of joining Australia in the Davis Cup semifinals.
Russia's bid was stalled in Pau when Arnaud Clement and Michael Llodra won a five-setter for France.
By 2-1 scorelines, the US led Chile in California, Argentina moved ahead of defending champion Croatia in Zagreb, and Russia remained on top of France.
Australia secured an unassailable 3-0 lead over Belarus when Wayne Arthurs and Paul Hanley outlasted Max Mirnyi and Vladimir Voltchkov 3-6, 6-4, 5-7, 6-3, 7-5 on hard courts in Melbourne.
Australia, which won its 28th and last championship in 2003, will meet the Croatia-Argentina winner in September's semis, their fifth in eight years.
In Zagreb, David Nalbandian and Jose Acasuso defeated Croatia's Ivan Ljubicic and Marin Cilic 6-4, 6-2, 3-6, 6-4 after both teams made late replacements.
Acasuso was in for Agustin Calleri, who played singles on Friday, while Cilic, the world's top-ranked junior, came in again for Mario Ancic, who was still hampered by a back injury from midweek practice. Cilic took Ancic's spot in Friday's singles, and the 17-year-old won only four games against third-ranked Nalbandian.
Nalbandian will have a chance to clinch Argentina's fourth semi-finals berth in five years against Ljubicic in today's first reverse singles.
But Ljubicic, Croatia's player-captain, hopes the tie will be decided in the fifth rubber, by Ancic off his sickbed.
France kept alive its home tie in Pau when Clement and Llodra squandered a two-sets-to-nil lead to first-time Russian pairing Dmitry Tursunov and Mikhail Youzhny, and eventually prevailed 6-3, 6-3, 6-7 (3), 5-7, 6-2 in 3 hours, 54 minutes.
Italy's Francesca Schiavone advanced to her second final of the year when Svetlana Kuznetsova retired from the Bausch & Lomb Championships with a groin injury on Saturday.
Schiavone was leading their semifinal 7-6 (2), 3-2 when Kuznetsova called it quits.
In today's final, third-seeded Schiavone will face top-seeded Nadia Petrova after the Russian downed Lucie Safarova of the Czech Republic 6-3, 6-2.
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