■BIATHLON
Bjoerndalen wins again
Five-time Olympic biathlon champion Ole Einar Bjoerndalen got his fifth win of the World Cup season in Anterselva, Italy, on Sunday. The Norwegian won a 15km mass start race in 36 minutes, 26.99 seconds, with one missed shot. Bjoern Ferry of Sweden finished second, 20.5 seconds behind, also with one miss, and Michael Greis of Germany was third, 26.3 back with two misses. In the women's 12.5km race, Andrea Henkel of Germany recorded her second victory in two days. Henkel won in 36:07.37 with one miss. Anna Carin Olofsson of Sweden finished 16.1 seconds behind with no misses and World Cup leader Kati Wilhelm of Germany was third, 28.8 back with two misses. Olofsson also said she was pregnant, but will still compete at the world championships in Ostersund, Sweden, next month.
■ BOBSLED
Minins crowned champion
Janis Minins of Latvia clinched his first World Cup victory in Cesana Pariol, Italy, on Sunday in the four-man bobsled, a win that also gave him the title of European champion. Minins and his team of Daumants Dreiskens, Oskars Melbardis and Intars Dambis completed the two runs with a combined time of 1 minute, 50.6 seconds. Martin Galliker of Switzerland finished 0.17 seconds back after taking the lead following the first heat. Germany's Andre Lange was third, 0.31 seconds off the winning time. Lange leads the World Cup with 988 points, three more than Pierre Lueders of Canada who placed ninth on Sunday.
■ SAILING
Joyon sets world record
Francis Joyon had no heat, no companions and little sleep for nearly two months as he sailed around the globe. Now he has a stunning world record. The 51-year-old Frenchman circled the planet alone in 57 days, 13 hours, 34 minutes, 6 seconds in a trimaran, shattering the record set by Ellen MacArthur by two weeks and beating his own expectations. "It's a bit of a shock" to be among so many people again, Joyon said after hitting land on France's Atlantic coast on Sunday morning. He crossed an imaginary finish line off the shore overnight, and said it was like "landing on the moon" when he reached shore. Joyon skirted the southern reaches of the globe in his 29.7m, 9-tonne trimaran IDEC, a craft he built with parts gathered from other boats. "I had a hard time beating your record. I hope that you won't be in a hurry to beat mine," Joyon said with a smile to MacArthur. He slept in short spells, dodged icebergs and mounted his swaying mast in stormy seas to repair a damaged girder. His boat had no standard electrical generator, which meant he had no heat -- but also meant the boat was lighter than usual. He used wind turbines and solar panels to allow for automatic piloting and communication equipment.
■ SNOWBOARDING
Flander, Neururer triumph
Rok Flander of Slovenia and Heidi Neururer of Austria won the final World Cup parallel slalom race of the season in La Molina, Spain, on Sunday. Flander crossed the finish line at the La Molina course ahead of Benjamin Karl of Austria, with Andreas Prommeger finishing third. Flander's first parallel slalom win of the season was enough to propel him to second in the overall World Cup standings with 3,410 points. Mathieu Bozzetto of France leads with 4,130 points. Neururer beat Nicolien Sauerbreij in the final to overtake the Dutchwoman for the top spot in the overall standings.
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