■ BASKETBALL
Oden out for season
Greg Oden, the top pick in this year's NBA draft, will likely miss his first season with the Portland Trail Blazers after surgery on his right knee on Thursday. Doctors found cartilage damage during an exploratory procedure, and team physician Don Roberts performed microfracture surgery to repair the damage. "There are things about this that are positive for Greg. First of all, he is young. The area where the damage was is small and the rest of his knee looked normal," Roberts said in a statement. "All those are good signs for a complete recovery from microfracture surgery."
■ CRICKET
Dravid quits captaincy
Prolific middle-order batsman Rahul Dravid has offered to step down as captain of India's cricket team, a report said yesterday. Dravid, 34, told the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) that he should not be considered for the captaincy for the Test series in Australia in December, the Press Trust of India news agency said. He met BCCI president Sharad Pawar on Thursday and expressed his desire to quit the captaincy, saying he wanted to concentrate on his batting. He pledged to support his successor. Dravid has scored 9,492 runs in 112 Tests and 10,534 runs in 327 one day internationals.
■ CYCLING
Petacchi wins 12th stage
Italian cyclist Alessandro Petacchi won his second straight stage of the Spanish Vuelta on Thursday, and Denis Menchov retained the overall lead. Petacchi, who rides for Team Milram, won the 176km 12th leg in 3 hours, 41 minutes, 1 second, with Lampre-Fondital's Daniele Bennati of Italy second and AG2R Prevoyance rider Aliaksandr Usov of Belarus third, both with the same time. "It's my second straight and this one is for the whole team, because nobody else helped us shorten this leg," Petacchi said. "We did it ourselves ... and we had to work hard for it."
■ SOCCER
Irish probe plane bust-up
Northern Ireland's soccer association said on Thursday it was investigating a reported fight between its own players following Wednesday's 2-1 defeat in their Group F Euro 2008 qualifier against Iceland. Local media said two players had exchanged blows as they boarded their flight from Reykjavik on Thursday morning and that other squad members had intervened to break them up. The Irish Football Association (IFA) declined to comment beyond saying it was aware of the situation and would investigate.
■ SOCCER
Scolari in left jab furor
Another bad result and an ill-considered left jab could spell the end of Portugal's romance with coach Luiz Felipe Scolari. Tempers flared after the Portuguese were held to a 1-1 draw by Serbia on Wednesday in a European Championship qualifier, the team's second straight draw in Lisbon. When Portugal winger Ricardo Quaresma and Serbia's Ivica Dragutinovic squared up to each other after the final whistle, Scolari intervened. TV pictures showed the Serb slapping away the Brazilian's arm. In reply, Scolari aimed a left-handed punch at Dragutinovic. Scolari said he didn't make contact. Dragutinovic said the punch brushed his cheek. "I don't know what the pictures show but I didn't touch him, I didn't even bump up against him," Scolari said.
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