Speedskater Jeremy Wotherspoon of Canada set the world record for 500m and Erben Wennemars of the Netherlands tied the record for the 1,500m in the World Cup at Utah Olympic Oval on Friday.
Skating against Shani Davis of the US in the next-to-last pairing, Wennemars matched the mark of 1 minute, 42.32 seconds Davis set in Calgary, Alberta, on March 4. Davis finished in 1 minute, 42.92 seconds, taking third place behind Canada's Denny Morrison, who was timed in 1 minute, 42.79 seconds in the final pairing.
In the earlier 500m, Wotherspoon was timed in 34.03 seconds and broke the mark of 34.25 seconds set by South Korea's Lee Kang-seok during the world single distance championships at the Utah oval on March 9. It was the first World Cup race in 20 months for the three-time Olympian, who rested last season.
PHOTO: AP
Lee skated minutes after Wotherspoon in the final pairing, and nearly reclaimed the record. He set a South Korean national mark and improved on his previous world record, finishing in 34.20 seconds but falling short of Wotherspoon.
It was Wotherspoon's first World Cup since March last year. He spent part of his hiatus on a fishing boat in Norway and worked on his upper-body strength and balance to alleviate lingering back injuries.
In other races on the first day of the three-day event, China's Wang Beixing won the women's 500m and 1,000m in 37.32 seconds and 1 minute, 14.19 seconds, respectively.
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