■ Golf
Duo tee up record attempt
Spain's Gonzalo Fernandez-Castano and Emanuele Canonica of Italy will attempt to break the world driving-distance record of 808m ahead of next week's Mallorca Classic. Briton Paul Slater, the record holder, will also be present when the South runway of the Son Sant Joan airport in Palma is closed for two hours on Tuesday. Slater, 35, a teaching professional from Bolton, set the record in April on the runway of an old airport in Wroughton, England, surpassing his previous mark of 658.3m.
■ Soccer
English FA suspends agent
England's Football Association suspended agent Charles Mambo on Friday from all soccer-related activity. The FA, citing legal reasons, would not say why Mambo was suspended. However, the FA and Premier League have been cracking down on agents implicated in probes into illegal payments in player transfers. Mambo was suspended after the FA received the results of a test to determine "good character and reputation." That test includes consideration of an agent's criminal record and financial history.
■ Rugby Union
Fijian ace returning to Agen
Fiji winger Rupeni Caucaunibuca, who has been absent from his club Agen for four months, will return to France this weekend, the club said on Friday. Caucaunibuca, the top try scorer in France for the last two seasons with 33 in total, had been expected to resume his career in France in time for the new league season. But he was delayed by having to play internationals matches. Then he was forced to stay in Fiji after falling seriously ill and was hospitalized. Reports suggested that he lost 12 kilos in the process. After recovering, Caucaunibuca's expected return to Europe was delayed further when his wife became sick after giving birth to the couple's second child last month.
■ Snowboarding
Grabner and Kober triumph
Austria's Siegfried Grabner and Germany's Amelie Kober won the snowboarding season's opening races in the parallel giant slalom World Cup on Friday. Grabner beat Switzerland's Simon Schoch in the final to secure the victory in the men's events while Olympic silver medalist Kober defeated Marion Kreiner of Austria in the women's final. Thursday's win gave Grabner an early overall standings leadership of 1000 points, followed by Simon Schoch, who has 800. Marc Iselin, Schoch's compatriot, is third with 600 points. On the women's side, Kober held the standings lead with 1000 points while Kreiner has 800. Heidi Neururer of Austria is third with 600 points. The Dutch meet was the first of 31 events to be held across 12 countries.
■ Golf
Woods opts out of Classic
Tiger Woods has decided not to enter the Funai Classic at Disney. Woods missed the cut at Disney last year, so this is the third straight US PGA Tour event to which he will not return the year after missing the cut. The others were the 1997 Canadian Open and last year's Byron Nelson Championship. That streak is sure to end next year at the US Open, where he missed the cut at Winged Foot for the first time in a major. Woods has won six consecutive starts on the PGA Tour, and it will be at least two weeks before he tries for No. 7. He likely will not play again until the season-ending Tour Championship that starts on Nov. 2 at East Lake, although Woods has not said for sure he is playing.
■ Soccer
Sun vows not to shave
China international Sun Jihai has said he will not shave until he returns to the first team at Premiership club Manchester City, he told Sky Sports on Friday. The 29-year defender said: "One day I was a little bit lazy and didn't shave the beard and she [his wife] said `that's okay you look good, maybe you can change your image.'""I tried it and I want to keep the beard until I play my first game. I don't think it's good for me. After I play the first game I will cut it off, and my hair as well to make me more handsome."
■ Basketball
Nets suffer injury blows
New Jersey Nets guard Eddie House has a torn meniscus and will have arthroscopic surgery on the troublesome left knee, the NBA team said on Friday. House, a free agent signed by the Nets on Aug. 17, will have the operation tomorrow. House averaged a career-high 9.8 points in 81 games for the Phoenix Suns last season. Entering his seventh season, he has averaged 7.3 points in 378 games. Also on Friday, the Nets announced that forward Darvin Ham has a strained right calf. Ham, who suffered the injury in a preseason game at Indiana on Wednesday, will be out indefinitely.
■ Badminton
Lin Dan makes Japan final
World champion Lin Dan of China defeated Denmark's Peter Gade yesterday to advance to the final of the Japan Open badminton tournament. Top-seeded Lin posted a 21-12, 21-14 win over third-seeded European champion Gade in a match that lasted just 33 minutes at Tokyo's Metropolitan Gymnasium. Lin will face Indonesia's Taufik Hidayat in today's final. Hidayat downed second-seeded Lee Chong Wei of Malaysia 21-17, 21-13. In the women's semi-finals, China's Zhang Ning defeated compatriot Zhu Lin 21-18, 21-16 to set up a final with Xie Xingfang of China, who posted a 21-16, 21-16 win over Hong Kong's Wang Chen.
■ NFL
Rolle fined for facemask pull
The NFL fined Arizona cornerback Antrel Rolle US$12,500 on Friday for his facemask foul against Larry Johnson of Kansas City on Sunday. Johnson caught a short pass from Damon Huard and turned it into a 78-yard gain to the Arizona 9-yard line with 2:31 left in the fourth quarter. Johnson would have likely made it to the end zone if Rolle had not grabbed him by the facemask and twisted his head backward. At first it appeared that Johnson had suffered a serious injury.
He was down on the field for a few minutes before getting to his feet and wobbling to the sidelines. The injury was diagnosed as a neck strain and Johnson, the reigning AFC rushing champion, is listed as probable for this weekend's game at Pittsburgh. It marked the second time this season that Rolle, a first-round pick last year, has been fined by the league for an excessive hit. In a Sept. 17 game at Seattle, Rolle was fined US$5,000 for an illegal tackle on running back Shaun Alexander, although he was not penalized on the play.
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