■ SQUASH
England claim world title
England came from behind to defeat Australia 2-1 to capture their second successive World Men's Team Squash Championship title on Wednesday. This was England's sixth title after wins in 1976, 1979, 1995, 1997 and 2005. England were on the back foot after Nick Mathew lost to Australia's No. 1 player David Palmer 9-11, 9-11, 11-7, 11-2, 4-11, but James Willstrop levelled the final defeating Stewart Boswell 11-8, 11-7, 11-10 (2-0). That left it all down to Peter Barker who came good for the defending champions with a 11-6, 11-3, 11-8 win over Cameron Pilley.
■ FORMULA ONE
Rosberg extends contract
Nico Rosberg will drive for the Williams Formula One team through the 2009 season. Rosberg was already confirmed for next season and extended the contract for another year after talks with team chief Frank Williams. "I first tested for Williams when I was 17, so our relationship is now five years old and I'm happy to maintain this relationship and have the chance to help push the team further toward the front of the grid," Rosberg said in an interview posted on the Williams Web site on Wednesday.
■ GYMNASTICS
Gold medalist Ponor retires
Triple Olympic champion Catalina Ponor has decided to retire for health reasons, a Romanian Gymnastics Federation (FRG) official said on Wednesday. "Ponor has failed to overcome her back problems, so she has decided to put an end to her activity as an athlete," FRG president Adrian Stoica told reporters. Now 20, she led Romania to the team title at the 2004 Olympics in Athens and also won individual gold medals in the balance beam and floor exercises. She also won five European championship gold medals from 2004 to last year. Ponor had previously retired last year but changed her mind several months later and went on to compete at this year's world championships in Germany, with the aim of going through to next year's Olympic Games.
■ SOCCER
Indonesian teams excluded
Indonesian teams have been excluded from next year's AFC Champions League, dealing another blow to a sport in crisis in the world's fourth most populous country. The Asian Football Confederation cited the late completion of Indonesia's domestic league and cup competitions as the reason, with the slots instead going to Thai Premier League runners-up Krung Thai Bank and Vietnam Cup holders Nam Dinh. The Indonesian league season kicked off in February but was halted from May to August for the Asian Cup and again in September for Ramadan, making for a backlog of matches.
■ CRICKET
Promote Clarke, Warne says
Michael Clarke should be groomed to take over from Ricky Ponting as Australia's next cricket captain, retired spinner Shane Warne said. Warne said the Australian selectors should ditch Adam Gilchrist as vice-captain and give the job to Clarke to help prepare him to eventually take over from Ponting. "To me the next logical step is to groom him. I believe the best way to do this would be to elevate him to the vice-captaincy in all forms of the game," Warne wrote in his weekly column for Sydney's Daily Telegraph on Thursday. "Gilly has done a wonderful job but won't be around for too much longer in all forms of the game. I reckon he will hang the gloves up and decide to play only one form, probably Test matches.
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