■ CYCLING
Pellizotti takes stage
Italian rider Franco Pellizotti of Liquigas won the 16th stage of the Tour of Italy, a 12.9km time trial on Monday. Spain’s Tour de France champion Alberto Contador retained the leader’s pink jersey after finishing fourth on the day, 22 seconds off Pellizotti’s pace. Specialist Italian climber Emanuele Sella finished second on the stage at six seconds, just ahead of a stunning performance from 37-year-old Italian veteran and former two-time Giro winner Gilberto Simoni, third at 17 seconds back. Reigning Tour de France champion Contador extended his lead at the top of the overall standings, though, as second-placed Riccardo Ricco was fifth on the stage, eight seconds behind Contador. It was a bad day for two overall contenders, though, as Italian Marzio Bruseghin lost 42 seconds to Contador and Russian Tour of Spain champion Denis Menchov gave up almost 1minute 30 seconds after coming to a virtual standstill in the steep final kilometer.
■ BASEBALL
Lightning kills ex-MLB star
Former Major League Baseball player Geremi Gonzalez was struck by lightning and killed over the weekend at a lake in his native Venezuela, authorities said on Monday. Gonzalez, 33, a pitcher who was signed to Japan’s Yomiuri Giants last year, had previously played for the Chicago Cubs, the Tampa Bay Rays, the Boston Red Sox, the New York Mets and the Milwaukee Brewers. There were conflicting versions of what Gonzalez was doing at the time of his death on Sunday, but local emergency services said he was playing with a motorized water-bike when the lightning struck at Lake Maracaibo in his home state of Zulia.
■ CRICKET
Gough to call it a day
Former England pace bowler Darren Gough will retire from first-class cricket at the end of the season. Yorkshire captain Gough, 37, believes the time is right to bow out because he is finding it increasingly difficult to cope with the strain on his body of four-day cricket. “I have always been confident that this would be my last season,” Gough said. “Although Yorkshire had asked me if I would stay for another year I thought the time was right for me to call it a day at the end of September ... I will still enjoy playing the game and will probably turn out for a pub team or something like that.”
■ SOCCER
Clashes leave fan dead
One man died and at least 10 people were wounded in clashes between hundreds of fans in Vietnam, state media reported yesterday. The violence erupted in the central city of Vinh on Sunday after a 1-1 draw between local V-League team Song Lam Nghe An and visitors Haiphong Cement. Fighting broke out after Haiphong scored an equalizer three minutes from time, which the 600 visiting Haiphong fans noisily celebrated with firecrackers, reported the state-run Vietnam News daily. Hooligans then started to hurl bricks and bottles at each other. “The brawl quickly turned into a huge battle, with most fans involved using bricks, sticks and whatever else was lying around to fight against each other,” the newspaper said. The Haiphong fans, heavily outnumbered, were escorted from the stadium after about 90 minutes under police guard, and placed onto their fleet of buses, reported another newspaper, the Thanh Nien daily. As the buses, many with broken windows, sped out of town, one hit a fan of the home team, 23-year-old Ha Huy Thanh, who was then run over by a second vehicle and pronounced dead at a local hospital, the report said.
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