■ CRICKET
Marcus Trescothick retires
Marcus Trescothick retired from international cricket on Saturday, the England batsman's county Somerset announced. His decision followed a recent withdrawal from the county's pre-season tour of the United Arab Emirates after he suffered a recurrence of the stress-related illness which cut short his England career. "I have tried on numerous occasions to make it back to the international stage and it has proved a lot more difficult than I expected," Trescothick, a veteran of 76 Tests and 123 one-day internationals, said in a statement issued by Somerset.
■ SWIMMING
Rice, Edington set records
The first two nights at the Australian swimming championships and Olympic trials produced two world records. Stephanie Rice broke the world mark in the 400m individual medley on Saturday, finishing in a time of 4 minutes, 31.46 seconds. That took 1.43 seconds off American Katie Hoff's mark of 4 minutes, 32.89 seconds set on April 1 last year at the world championships in Melbourne. Yesterday Sophie Edington broke a day-old world record in the women's 50m backstroke. Edington finished in 27.67 seconds to break the mark of 27.95 seconds set by her Australian teammate Emily Seebohn in the semi-finals on Saturday.
■ BOXING
Casamayor stops Katsidis
Cuba's Joel Casamayor stopped previously unbeaten Australian Michael Katsidis 30 seconds into the 10th round in California on Saturday to win an interim world lightweight title. Southpaw Casamayor knocked down the Aussie twice in the first round and flattened him again early in the 10th round. Seconds later, referee Jon Schorle halted the fight. Casamayor, who owns the World Boxing Council and World Boxing Organization interim lightweight titles, improved to 36-3 with one drawn after his 22nd stoppage inside the distance. Katsidis fell to 23-1.
■ SWIMMING
Bernard sets record again
Alain Bernard broke the 100m freestyle world record for the second time in two days on Saturday, setting a new mark of 47.50 seconds in the final at the European swimming championships. The 24-year-old Frenchman took one-tenth of a second off his record of 47.60 seconds recorded in Friday's semi-finals, which shattered Pieter Van den Hoogenband's mark set at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. "It's unbelievable," Bernard said. "I wanted to be faster today." Bernard was relatively unknown before these championships. He finished ninth in the 100m freestyle at last year's world championships and seventh in the 2006 Europeans. Now, he has emerged as one of the favorites at the Beijing Olympics in August.
■ BOXING
Kotelnik takes Rees' title
Hard-hitting Ukrainian Andreas Kotelnik dethroned Gavin Rees as the World Boxing Association light-welterweight world champion with a last round stoppage of the Welshman in Cardiff on Saturday. Rees produced one of the boxing upsets of last year when he took the title from Soulyemane M'Baye. But from the third round on, when his nose started to bleed, Rees started to be picked off by Kotelnik. And the challenger finished the bout 30 seconds from the end of the last round when he dropped Rees with a powerful right hand.
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