■ FORMULA ONE
Ecclestone denies insult
Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone has denied insulting Africa after the sport’s governing body voted to allow Max Mosley to stay on as president despite a sado-masochistic sex scandal. Britain’s Daily Express newspaper quoted Ecclestone as saying after the June 3 vote in Paris that “just because he [Mosley] got a few more votes from Africa doesn’t mean the King of Spain will want to shake his hand.” The reported remarks triggered a written complaint from Kenyan Automobile Association general secretary David Njoroge, who is also a senior member of the International Automobile Federation (FIA). Njoroge, who is a trustee of the London-based FIA Foundation for the Automobile and Society, said the African members took “great exception in what is clearly derogatory, demeaning and uncalled for attacks on Africa.
■NASCAR
Loeb wins Turkish Rally
Sebastian Loeb beat Henning Solberg by 1 second Friday to lead the first day of the Turkish Rally. The Citroen driver and defending champion took an early lead, winning the first stage on a dry gravel course. Loeb fell back in subsequent stages before winning the 7th leg. Jari Matti Latvala of Finland finished third overall. Loeb, who won the Turkish Rally in 2004 and 2005, is looking to widen his one-point lead in the 2008 title race against Ford driver Mikko Hirvonen of Finland. Hirvonen finished fifth on Friday.
■BOXING
Boxers arrested for heroin
Two Tanzanian boxers and four officials were arrested in Mauritius after they were found with 5kg of heroin, police said on Friday. The team, which was in the Indian Ocean island for the African Boxing championships, a pre-Olympic qualification for this year’s summer Games in Beijing, was arrested on Wednesday. Police first nabbed two members of the team as they placed the drugs, said to be worth US$1.8 million, next to their hotel’s perimetre wall to await collection and later picked up the rest. A Kenyan woman who came to collect the heroin was also arrested. The team consisted of two boxers, a coach, his assistant, a manager and a doctor.
■CYCLING
Russian takes alpine victory
Former mountain bike specialist Youry Trofimov of the Bouyges Telecom team claimed a prestigious alpine victory on the fifth stage of the Dauphine Libere stage race on Friday. Trofimov, of Russia, hoisted himself up the general classification after breaking free of an earlier breakaway to bring victory home after a tough, second day of racing in the Alps. “I’m still having trouble getting my head around it,” said Trofimov. “It’s a surprise. At the start of the breakaway I wasn’t thinking about victory. “But the downhill was an advantage for me, someone who has come from mountain biking,” the Russian said.
■BASKETBALL
Women make Olympic cut
Spain, the Czech Republic, Latvia and Belarus earned berths in the women’s basketball tournament at the Beijing Olympics on Friday, winning their quarter-final games at a FIBA qualifying tournament on Friday. Spain beat Cuba 82-68, the Czechs downed Japan 76-64, Latvia cruised to a 84-26 victory over Angola, while Belarus prevailed over Brazil 86-79 in overtime. Elisa Aguilar led Spain with 28 points and had four assists, while Eva Viteckova had six-three pointers in her game-high 26 for the Czechs, who rallied after trailing 21-16 at the end of the first quarter. Latvia didn’t allow Angola to score more than nine points in any quarter.
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