■ GOLF
Norman, Evert get engaged
Golfer Greg Norman and former tennis star Chris Evert on Friday announced their engagement. Evert revealed the couple, both aged 52, were engaged on Sunday. The former tennis ace showed off an engagement ring but said no plans had been finalized for a wedding. Norman and his first wife Laura announced in June that they had reached an agreement on dividing an estimated US$500 million fortune amassed by the former world number one during his golf and business career. Evert has been married twice, to tennis player John Lloyd and skier Andy Mill.
■ SOCCER
FA hand Ferguson a ban
Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson has been banned from the touchline for two matches by the English Football Association. He was also fined £5,000 (US$10,097) for using abusive and/or insulting words toward referee Mark Clattenburg during last month's 1-0 defeat at Bolton. Ferguson will now have to sit in the stands for the matches at West Ham on Dec. 29 and at home to Birmingham on Jan. 1. Ferguson was sent off by Clattenburg at Bolton after speaking with the referee at half-time.
■ SOCCER
Cottbus crush Hannover
Dimitar Rangelow scored twice and Energie Cottbus recorded their most lopsided victory against a Bundesliga opponent on Friday, routing Hannover 96 5-1. The East German club climbed out of last place and escaped the relegation zone for at least two days with the upset of fifth-placed Hannover. Christian Bassila headed in an 11th-minute corner to give Cottbus the lead in front and Rangelow scored in the 44th and 70th minutes. Dennis Soerensen and Daniel Ziebig added goals in 30th and 65th minutes. Thomas Kleine scored a 68th-minute consolation goal for Hannover.
■ SOCCER
Corruption trial begins
Seventeen Polish players and officials went on trial on Friday in an alleged massive match-fixing scandal after the arrest of 100 suspects. The defendants are linked to the Arka Gdynia second division club and face charges of offering and accepting bribes and membership of an organized criminal group. The alleged ringleader, identified only as Ryszard F. under Polish privacy laws, faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted by a provincial court in the city of Wroclaw. He was detained last year on charges of fixing first and second-league matches from 2000 to last year and accepting an equivalent of US$130,000. He has confessed to accepting a bribe once and witnessing one other such case. The other suspects face up to five years imprisonment. Many of them are also suspects in investigations of match-rigging by other soccer clubs. Prosecutors said over 400 domestic matches were fixed.
■ SOCCER
Offer spares Sky Blues
Coventry avoided going into administration and a mandatory 10-point deduction on Friday when a consortium headed by former Manchester City player Ray Ranson made an offer to take over the club. SISU Capital, which is led by Ranson, has agreed to buy 71.4 percent of shares in the League Championship club, including stakes owned by former chairman Geoffrey Robinson and Derek Higgs. SISU has to secure an agreement for 90 percent of the shares for the takeover to go through, and the club board is recommending the offer is accepted. Coventry are about £38 million (US$76.8 million) in debt.
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