■ United Kingdom
Del Horno returns home
Chelsea agreed on Friday to sell defender Asier Del Horno to Spanish club Valencia. The English champion said Del Horno had traveled to Spain to negotiate personal terms. The fee was not disclosed. Del Horno joined Chelsea in June last year from Atletico Bilbao and played 34 games for the London club. The 25-year-old left-back was named in Spain's World Cup squad, but withdrew with a leg injury. Chelsea has been linked with a move for Arsenal's Ashley Cole and Real Madrid's Roberto Carlos as replacements.
■ United Kingdom
Bent tries finger sandwich
Charlton striker Darren Bent is training with a protective splint after his cutting his left hand in a kitchen accident. The 22-year-old England international was chopping onions on Wednesday when he severed a tendon in his index finger. However, he's continuing to train wearing a protective cast and manager Iain Dowie said Bent would be ready for Charlton's first game against West Ham on Aug. 19. "Yes, he has cut his finger, yes it is deep but it is healing well and there is no question he will miss the start of the season," Dowie told the club's Web site on Friday. "I can't believe what I've done," Bent said. "I was in so much shock afterward I couldn't tell you what sandwich it was."
■ Brazil
Player found dead
A soccer player from a second-division club in the northeast was found dead at his hotel room after apparently suffering a stroke. Helder, a 27-year-old midfielder from America de Natal, was found dead on Thursday night by a teammate who went looking for him at hotel he was temporarily living in, the club said. "I was worried because he didn't show up at the club and I couldn't contact him," teammate Paulinho Kobayashi told the local Tribuna do Norte newspaper. "It looked like he was sleeping when we found him." Doctors said it was likely Helder suffered a stroke, but the official cause of death wasn't yet known.
■ Trinidad & Tobago
Yorke may play on
Former Manchester United striker Dwight Yorke could continue playing at international level after enjoying his first World Cup experience with Trinidad and Tobago. The Caribbean side, the smallest nation ever to feature at a World Cup finals, were knocked out in the first round in Germany but took a point off Sweden before heading home. Now skipper Yorke has hinted he may play on despite his rapidly approaching 35th birthday. "I try to always keep myself as fit as possible and who knows how long this could keep me going as a player," Yorke told reporters here. "I've had a long spell and I have enjoyed every moment of it. Leading my country to the World Cup has undoubtedly been the proudest moment for me. There's not much more a player can ask for especially at my age and seeing what we were able to achieve."
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