Casey Stoner of Australia extended his overall world championship lead after claiming his fifth victory of the season at the 500cc British MotoGP yesterday.
Italian title rival and former world champion Valentino Rossi could not match the 21-year-old Ducati rider's speed on the slippery Donington circuit and finished in fourth place.
Stoner, 14 points clear before the weekend, now has 165 points to Rossi's 139.
PHOTO: EPA
Rossi's Yamaha team mate Colin Edwards was second, 11.768 seconds behind Stoner, with Australian Chris Vermeulen third for Suzuki.
Texan Edwards had started on pole position and Stoner's success maintained a season-long jinx for any rider starting in the top slot, with the last winner from pole dating back to Japan last September.
Last year's winner Dani Pedrosa of Spain finished eighth despite leading for the first four laps before Edwards took the lead which he held until mid-race when he took a bend too wide and was overtaken by Stoner.
Italy's Andrea Dovizioso won yesterday's 250cc Grand Prix at Donington to revive his title hopes after Spain's overall leader Jorge Lorenzo crashed.
The Honda rider was gifted the victory when San Marino's Alex de Angelis, leading from pole position in a race that started with a downpour, fell with two laps remaining.
De Angelis picked up his Aprilia and rejoined the race to take a distant second place, 22 seconds behind, with Japan's Hiroshi Aoyama third for KTM.
Champion Lorenzo, winner of five of the seven previous races, was running second when he was flipped off his Aprilia after 10 of the 27 laps.
The 20-year-old landed on his back on the asphalt before sliding into the gravel. He trudged off in disgust after his first retirement of the year.
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
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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