■WRESTLING
Zadick fails doping test
Mike Zadick, a freestyle wrestling runner-up at the Pan American Games, tested positive for a banned substance and was given a warning, the US Anti-Doping Agency announced on Friday. Zadick, a strength coach for the University of Iowa where he wrestled for three years, took a prescribed medication under a physician’s care but had not sought a prior therapeutic use exemption as required by USADA rules. Zadick, 30, was disqualified from results from March 2 through last Tuesday, forfeiting his third-place showing at 60kg at the Pan American Championships, where he tested positive for triamcinolone acetonide. The violation wiped out Zadick’s decision over Cuba’s Maykel Gonzalez for a bronze medal at the event. In addition to a silver medal last July at the Pan Am Games in Brazil, Zadick was second at the 2006 worlds in China at 60kg. Because there was no ban imposed for the positive test because of the theraputic exemption, Zadick remains eligible for the Beijing Olympics. The US team trials are set for June.
■CYCLING
Cunego wins in Orio
Damiano Cunego of Italy won the fifth stage of the Tour of Basque Country and Tour de France champion Alberto Contador remained the overall leader for the fifth straight day on Friday. Cunego finished the 162km stage from Vitoria to Orio in 4 hours, 2 minutes and 48 seconds. “Winning is always hard, but today it was especially so because it was cold and raining,” Cunego said. Contador crossed the line just behind in the same time and Thomas Dekker of the Netherlands was third. “Luckily, I was able to avoid falling today and now I have to think about tomorrow,” Contador said. Contador has been racing for 20 hours, 34 minutes and 49 seconds, and leads Cunego by 8 seconds.
■CURLING
Scots rally to beat Canada
Scotland rallied in the final two ends to upset Canada 7-6 in the world men’s curling championship playoffs on Friday. Canada led 6-5 after the seventh end. After a scoreless eighth end, the David Murdoch rink from Scotland scored one point in the ninth end and one point in the final frame. Canada had finished first in the draws with a 10-1 record. Scotland advanced to today’s final. Canada will face Norway in the semi-final, with the winner earning a berth in the final. Earlier, the Norway rink skipped by Thomas Ulsrud scored three points in the second end and held on to defeat China 7-5. China will meet the loser of the Canada-Norway match for the bronze medal.
■DIVING
Chinese women triumph
Dong Jun and Lin Na of China won the women’s 3m synchronized springboard event at a Grand Prix meet in Moscow on Friday. Jun and Na finished with 303.00 points, 6.70 points ahead of Katja Dieckow and Nora Subshinski of Germany. Maria Smirnova and Nadezhda Bazhina of Russia were third with 296.70 points. The top Russian pair of Anastasia Pozdnyakova and Julia Pakhalina skipped the event.
■SAILING
Poles win opening race
Mateusz Kusznierewicz and crew Dominik Zycki of Poland won the first race in the Star world championships, edging Mark Mendelblatt and crew Mark Strube in perfect conditions on Friday in Miami. “We were very relaxed this morning and sailed a good race,” Kusznierewicz said. “Seeing Mark right behind me made me a little nervous, but we kept our focus on sailing.” Italians Diego Negri and Luigi Viale finished third.
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