■ Football
Raiders `win' first draft pick
The Oakland Raiders found a silver lining to their miserable 2-14 season after the NFL announced on Tuesday they would get first pick in this year's draft. The Raiders finished with the worst record in the NFL and will get the marquee selection in April's draft of collegiate players. Among the players likely to be on the Raiders' radar will be Notre Dame quarterback Brady Quinn, Louisiana State quarterback JaMarcus Russell and Georgia Tech receiver Calvin Johnson. The Detroit Lions (3-13) will pick second and either the Cleveland Browns or Tampa Bay Buccaneers third.
■ Tennis
Goldstein defeats Luczak
US player Paul Goldstein became the first competitor to go through to the knockout phase of the Adelaide International tournament with a 7-6 (8), 6-1 round-robin victory over Australian Peter Luczak yesterday. Luczak broke Goldstein's service for a 2-0 lead, but immediately gave it back by dropping serve and did not earn another break point for rest of the match. Goldstein won the tie-breaker 10-8 and then raced away with the second set, wrapping up the victory in just over 90 minutes. Third-seeded Radek Stepanek scored a 4-6, 6-2, 6-2 win over Russian Evgeny Korolev and Arnaud Clement of France beat Germany's Benjamin Becker 7-5, 6-1 in other matches.
■ Mountaineering
Aussies top Antarctic peak
Four Australian climbers have reached the top of Antarctica's highest mountain, becoming the first to conquer the 4,892m peak after trekking from sea level across the frozen continent. The team, led by Mount Everest veteran Duncan Chessell, 36, reached Vinson Massif's peak on Tuesday after setting out to cross a 300km expanse of ice early last month. "It was great to finally get up on top of the peak and look back over the 300-odd kilometers that we have trekked in from," Chessell told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio yesterday. "Looking across at the ice cap to our south, which stretches about 1,100km to the South Pole was quite a unique and surreal experience," he said.
■ Soccer
Diego voted Bundesliga best
Brazilian playmaker Diego was voted the best player during the first half of the Bundesliga season in a magazine's poll of 270 teammates and league rivals. Kicker said on Tuesday 49.6 percent had voted Werder Bremen's Diego, 21, as the best performer of the first half, well ahead of his teammates Miroslav Klose in second (32.7 percent) and Torsten Frings (4.1 percent), who was third. Klose, a striker, and Hertha Berlin's Marko Pantelic are the league's top scorers with 10 goals each. Diego, an attacking midfielder, is fourth with eight goals. Bremen, who have benefited greatly from Diego's move to Germany this season from Porto, lead the Bundesliga with 47 goals in 17 matches.
■ Football
Cardinals win Orange Bowl
For much of the US college Orange Bowl game, the high-powered Louisville Cardinals were stalled in neutral. They blew a field goal, lost two fumbles and dropped a potential touchdown pass. But despite the rash of mistakes, there was no stopping the Cardinals from winning their first major bowl game in 15 years. Anthony Allen scored two touchdowns, one on a trick play, and Brian Brohm threw for 311 yards to lead Louisville past Wake Forest 24-13 on Tuesday night.
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
Rafael Nadal on Wednesday said the upcoming French Open would be the moment to “give everything and die” on the court after his comeback from injury in Barcelona was curtailed by Alex de Minaur. The 22-time Grand Slam title winner, back playing this week after three months on the sidelines, battled well, but eventually crumbled 7-5, 6-1 against the world No. 11 from Australia in the second round. Nadal, 37, who missed virtually all of last season, is hoping to compete at the French Open next month where he is the record 14-time champion. The Spaniard said the clash with De Minaur was
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