■ CYCLING
Sivtsov wins Tour de Georgia
Kanstantin Sivtsov of Belarus secured victory in the Tour de Georgia on Sunday after finishing 20th in the main field of the final stage. The 25-year-old claimed the week-long Tour by four seconds over Australian Trent Lowe. American Levi Leipheimer, one of the pre-race favorites, finished in third place, trailing Sivtsov by 14 seconds. “It’s an important win for the team, it’s not so important for me,” said Sivtsov, who rides for the US-based High Road team and was competing in the US for the first time. “The team was so strong for me. They helped me in the mountains and controlled the race.” New Zealand’s Greg Henderson, Sivtsov’s teammate, won the final stage — a 10-loop circuit race around downtown Atlanta that featured several crashes following rain.
■ CRICKET
Redmond stakes his claim
Aaron Redmond staked his claim for a place in the New Zealand Test team with a solid 72 in the opening match of their English tour against the MCC at Arundel on Sunday. Redmond, 28, is one of only two specialist opening batsmen in the New Zealand squad and could be in line to face England in the first Test at Lord’s, starting on May 15, after this impressive 117-ball knock which included seven fours. He and stand-in captain Jamie Haw shared a first-wicket stand of 91 in a total of 239 for seven before the MCC, chasing an adjusted victory target of 217 off 37 overs following six interruptions for rain, reached 44 for two off nine overs before the match was abandoned because of bad light.
■ CYCLING
Valverde victorious in Liege
Alejandro Valverde won the 94th Liege-Bastogne-Liege race on Sunday in a final sprint for the line ahead of Davide Rebellin and Franck Schleck. Valverde finished the 262km classic in 6 hours, 44 minutes, 5 seconds for his second victory. The Spaniard also won here in 2006 and came second last year. Rebellin, the 2004 winner, finished second. The Italian was just ahead of Luxembourg’s Schleck, whose brother Andy Schleck came in fourth, 30 seconds behind the leading trio. “Frank Schleck and his brother were very strong, but we stuck to them step-by-step and in the sprint I was stronger,” Valverde said.
■ MOTORCYCLING
Bayliss in double win
Troy Bayliss won both races on Sunday to claim victory at the Dutch round of the World Superbike Championship. The Australian, who is due to retire at the end of the season, now leads the standings by 70 points over Carlos Checa of Spain, who moved up to second in the standings after two podium finishes. Troy Corser, who was 10th in race two, stayed third with 89 points, four more than Fonsi Nieto. Racing from the pole, Bayliss pounced on a mistake by Yukio Kagayama, who was leading a third of the way through. He took over the lead and never gave it up to take the first race. Bayliss then edged Nori Haga to claim the second race.
■ ATHLETICS
Kirui breaks course record
Abel Kirui set a course record at the Vienna City Marathon on Sunday, leading a top-three sweep for Kenya. Kirui finished in 2 hours, 7 minutes, 38 seconds. It was the first time in the event’s 25-year history that a runner has broken the 2:08 mark. Duncan Kibet was second, 20 seconds ahead of Paul Biwott. Luminita Talpos of Romania won the women’s race in 2 hours, 26 minutes, 43 seconds. Japan’s Tomo Morimoto was second and Beatrice Omwanza from Kenya was 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