■ Cycling
Ballan wins Tour of Flanders
Alessandro Ballan of Italy beat Leif Hoste of Belgium in a sprint to the finish line to win the Tour of Flanders classic on Sunday. Ballan and Hoste broke away with 16km to go and kept out of reach of the chasing favorites. Luca Paolini of Italy was third, beating Karsten Kroon of the Netherlands and Vladimir Gusev of Russia. The race was the second major classic of the season. Lampre rider Ballan covered 259km in 6 hours, 10 minutes, 15 seconds. It was the 27-year-old's second victory in less than a week after winning the Three Days of De Panne but only the fifth win of his career.
■ Baseball
Matsui put on disabled list
The New York Yankees put Hideki Matsui on the 15-day disabled list on Sunday, a day after he strained his left hamstring. New York planned to recall Kevin Thompson from Triple-A Scranton of the International League. "When you play baseball this long, these things happen. There's nothing you can do about it," Matsui said through a translator. Matsui was sidelined from May 11 to Sept. 12 last year with a broken left wrist. New York is short on outfielders. Center fielder Johnny Damon hasn't started since last Monday's opener because of a strained right calf but did enter in the late innings on the weekend.
■ Champ Cars
Will Power wins race
Team Australia's Will Power became the first Australian to win a Champ Car World Series race on Sunday with a triumph in the Vegas Grand Prix. Power started from pole and dominated throughout to take the flag ahead of Dutch rookie Robert Doornbos and Canadian Champ Car veteran Paul Tracy. Three-time defending champion Sebastien Bourdais of France capped a frustrating opening weekend by failing to finish, along with his Newman-Haas teammate Graham Rahal. Bourdais, who started from the last row of the grid after brushing the wall in qualifying on Saturday, crashed after 30 laps of the 68-lap race on the temporary circuit through the streets of Las Vegas.
■ Baseball
Orioles catcher on sick list
Baltimore Orioles catcher Ramon Hernandez was put on the 15-day disabled list on Sunday because of a strained left oblique, and left-hander Kurt Birkins was recalled from Triple-A Norfolk. Hernandez was scratched from last Monday's opener, and the DL move was made retroactive to March 31, one day after his last spring training game. He is eligible to be activated on Sunday. "Before he starts swinging the bat, we want that soreness to be gone. And he still has a little spot there," Orioles manager Sam Perlozzo said. Hernandez will rehab along with left fielder Jay Payton (strained right hamstring) at the Orioles' complex in Sarasota, Florida.
■ Rugby League
Toddler downs tough guy
Hulking South Sydney Rabbitohs forward David Kidwell suffered a season-ending injury on Sunday when he tripped over his two-year-old daughter. Kidwell sustained suspected torn knee ligaments after falling as he tried to avoid crushing his daughter during a game at a barbecue. "Playing 10 years of first grade and no knee problems and something like this happens at home," Kidwell said yesterday. "That's definitely my season. I'm pretty shattered." The New Zealander has a reputation as one of the toughest forwards in Australia's National Rugby League, making an infamous tackle on Australia forward Willie Mason during last year's Tri-Nations series.
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