Wayne Rooney broke his 10-match scoring drought in style with a hat-trick as Manchester United triumphed 4-0 at Bolton Wanderers on Saturday to stay ahead of champions Chelsea at the top of the English Premiership.
The England striker scored the first two and after Cristiano Ronaldo had made it 3-0 on 82 minutes, sealed the win with the fourth to ensure United stayed top on goal difference.
United boss Sir Alex Ferguson said he knew Rooney would come good.
"It was going to happen sooner or later," Ferguson said. "I spoke to Wayne beforehand and just told him to relax and keep concentrating."
"Once he got the first one, you could see the confidence coming back and after that, I was just hoping the ball would go to him all the time," he said.
Chelsea kept the pressure on with a 2-0 win at Sheffield United, with Frank Lampard and Michael Ballack scoring the goals.
Danny Webber missed a penalty for United (17) and Chelsea made them pay with Lampard putting the Blues ahead just before half-time with a long-range free-kick and Ballack scored his second goal in as many games just after the break.
Chelsea coach Jose Mourinho paid tribute to his third-choice goalkeeper Hilario, whose penalty save kept Chelsea on even terms early on.
"Hilario is amazing," Mourinho said. "He is cool and comfortable in goal and I think the penalty save was a three-point save. If Hilario doesn't save it maybe we are in trouble."
Arsenal couldn't make it six wins out of six in the league as they were held to a 1-1 draw at home by Everton.
And they had to come from behind to salvage a point as Tim Chaill put Everton ahead early on, only for Robin van Persie to equalize midway through the second half.
Liverpool ended a poor run with a 3-1 win over Aston Villa, with Dirk Kuyt, Peter Crouch and Luis Garcia all scoring.
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