Werder Bremen beat Hamburg 2-1 to jump to the top of the German league table on Saturday.
Bremen have 33 points to Bayern's 31 but Bayern had a game in hand. Hamburg are third with 30.
Against a Hamburg side who are serious title challengers, Bremen held on with a winner from Finnish defender Petri Pasanen midway through the second half.
Ivory Coast's Boubacar Sanogo put Bremen ahead on the quarter-hour after good work by Jurica Vranjes though Hamburg's Rafael van der Vaart equalized on 61 minutes with a superb 25m lob.
Then came Pasanen's winner though it was helped into the net by Hamburg defender Vincent Kompany, meaning Werder took top spot for the first time this season.
Bremen continued their good form from mid September, leaving them unbeaten in their last 10 league outings, even though they were without key players Torsten Frings and Tim Borowski.
Bremen coach Thomas Schaaf said afterwards: "We have managed to get through a difficult week very well," adding his team had been top of their game for several weeks now.
Hamburg coach Huub Stevens also congratulated Bremen.
"The best team won -- the freshest team physically too," said Stevens, whose team beat Rennes in the UEFA Cup 48 hours earlier.
Bayern meanwhile have not been at their best recently and could only manage a 1-1 draw against Portuguese side Braga in the UEFA Cup on Thursday.
Captain and keeper Oliver Kahn said he regretted a "lack of passion" shown by his teammates.
However Bayer Leverkusen have been gaining victory after victory lately and are approaching the leading trio. Leverkusen beat Hertha Berlin 3-0, leaving them six points behind the leaders.
At the other end of the table, Energie Cottbus beat Karlsruhe 2-0 to leave Duisburg bottom.
Taiwanese world No. 1 women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei on Saturday overcame a first-set loss to win her opening match at the Madrid Open. Top seeds Hsieh and partner Elise Mertens of Belgium, with whom she last month won her fourth Indian Wells women’s doubles title, bounced back from a rocky first set to beat Asia Muhammad of the US and Aldila Sutjiadi of Indonesia 2-6, 6-4, 10-2. Hsieh and Mertens were next to face Heather Watson of the UK and Xu Yifan of China in the round of 16. Thirty-eight-year-old Hsieh last month reclaimed her world No. 1 spot after her Indian
EYES ON THE PRIZE: Armed with three solid men’s singles shuttlers and doubles Olympic champions, Taiwan aim to make their first Thomas Cup semi-final, Chou Tien-chen said Taiwanese badminton star Tai Tzu-ying yesterday quickly dispatched Malaysia’s Goh Jin Wei in straight sets, while her male counterpart Chou Tien-chen beat Germany’s Kai Schaefer, as Taiwan’s women’s and men’s teams won their Group B opening rounds of the TotalEnergies BWF Thomas and Uber Cup Finals in Chengdu, China. World No. 5 Tai beat Goh 21-19, 22-20 in a speedy 33 minutes, her fourth straight victory over the world No. 24 shuttler since they first faced each other in the quarter-finals of the 2018 Malaysia Open, where Tai went on to win the women’s singles title. Malaysia followed up Tai’s opening victory
Chen Yi-tung (陳奕通) secured a historic Olympic berth on Sunday by winning the senior men’s foil event at the 2024 Asia Oceania Zonal Olympic Fencing Qualifiers in United Arab Emirates. Chen defeated Samuel Elijah of Singapore 15-4 in the final in Dubai to secure the only wild card in the event, making him the first male Olympian fencer from Taiwan in 36 years and only the sixth Taiwanese fencer to ever qualify for the quadrennial event. The last appearance by a Taiwanese male fencer at the Olympics was in 1988, when Wang San-tsai (王三財) and Cheng Ming-hsiang (鄭明祥) competed in Seoul. The
Rafael Nadal on Tuesday lost in straight sets to 31st-ranked Jiri Lehecka in the fourth round at the Madrid Open, while Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei advanced to the semi-finals in the women’s doubles. Nadal said that he was feeling good about his progress following his latest injury layoff. Nadal called it a “positive week” in every way and said his body held up well. “I was able to play four matches, a couple of tough matches,” Nadal said. “So very positive, winning three matches, playing four matches at the high level of tennis. I enjoyed a lot playing at home. I leave here with