■SOCCER
Drunken ref amuses crowd
Referee Sergei Shmolik was helped off the field with back pain while officiating a Belarus league match, but later was shown to be drunk. In TV footage shown on Wednesday on Russian television, Shmolik staggered as he was helped off the field at the end of Saturday’s match. The Belarusian sports Web site Presball reported that the crowd in Vitebsk Stadium, where the local team was hosting Naftan, was amused with the referee’s strange behavior through the second half. Shmolik was hardly moving by the end of the match, which ended in a 1-1 draw, officiating from the center circle by the end of the game. Presball said Shmolik got help after the match, but later was taken to hospital for a test, which showed high levels of alcohol in his system. The Belarus soccer federation said Shmolik’s case would be subject to a disciplinary committee.
■FIELD HOCKEY
Livermore misses Beijing
Veteran Brent Livermore was left off a 16-man Australian men’s field hockey team announced yesterday to defend its Athens gold at the Beijing Olympics. Livermore, a 289-match international, was trying to make his third Olympic team. Eight first-time Olympians and eight players who won gold at Athens in 2004 are on the squad. Livermore, 32, has been trying to get back to full fitness since being diagnosed with stress fractures of the feet days after he was omitted from Australia’s Champions Trophy team. The Australians will also be without Nathan Eglington, who has a torn groin muscle. Eglington, who has 47 goals in 136 internationals, was also a member of the winning line-up in Athens.
■GYMNASTICS
Shewfelt selected for Games
Olympic floor exercise champion Kyle Shewfelt was selected for the Canadian gymnastics team for the Beijing Games this week, 10 months after breaking the tibias in both of his legs. This will be Shewfelt’s third Olympic Games. “I have worked so hard to earn my place on this team and now I am ready to push myself hard through the next 30 days,” Shewfelt said in a posting on his Web site. “Gold medal or not, these Olympics might just be the best of the bunch. And that’s because of everything I’ve gone through just to make it there,” he said. Shewfelt’s gold on the floor at the Athens Games was Canada’s first in artistic gymnastics and he was expected to be a medal contender in Beijing on the floor and vault. But while training on Aug. 27 for the world championships, he landed a tumbling move stiff-legged and broke the tibias in both legs and damaged ligaments in his left knee. He had surgery 10 days later and underwent extensive rehab.
■GOLF
Scott, Ogilvy to play Open
The world’s third and fourth ranked golfers, Adam Scott and Geoff Ogilvy, are confirmed to play in the Australian Open at Royal Sydney in December, the PGA of Australia said yesterday. Craig Parry is the defending champion for the 93rd Australian Open, which takes place from Dec. 11 to Dec. 14. The PGA also yesterday released the dates of Australian golf’s other two big tournaments, the Masters and the PGA Championship. The Masters, celebrating its 30th anniversary this year and with US$1.42 million prize money, takes place at Melbourne’s Huntingdale course from Nov. 27 to Nov. 30. Australia’s oldest professional tournament, the PGA championship, which has US$1.33 million prize money, will be staged at Queensland’s Regency Coolum resort from Dec. 4 to Dec. 7. This year’s Open will have a minimum US$1.56 million prize money.
■ATHLETICS
Jamaican wins 100m sprint
Jamaican sprinter Dexter Lee won the 100m sprint in 10.40 seconds on Wednesday on the second day of the World Junior Championships in Bydgoszcz, Poland. The 17-year-old Lee outpaced Wilhelm van der Vyver of South Africa, who finished second in 10.42, and Terrell Wilks of the US, who was third in 10.45. In the girl’s 100, 18-year-old Jeneba Tarmoh of the US won in 11.37. Ashlee Nelson of Britain was second in 11.49 and Sheniqua Ferguson of the Bahamas was third in 11.52. Tarmoh’s win gave the US its second gold medal of the day. Earlier, Marquise Goodwin won the long jump with a personal best of 7.74m. The 17-year-old American finished ahead of Dzmitry Astrouski of Bulgaria and Eusebio Caceres of Spain. There are athletes from 183 countries at the junior worlds, which opened on Tuesday and will run through Sunday.
■ATHLETICS
Greek makes best jump
Greece’s Piyi Devetzi gave her Beijing Olympic medal chances a boost when she produced the best triple jump of the year so far in the European Athletics Premium Meeting in Thessaloniki on Wednesday in Athens, Greece. The Olympics silver medalist from four years ago produced a winning jump of 15.22m while Cuban World Champion and previous world leader Yargelis Savigne had to settle for a best of 15.12m. Jamaican sprinter Veronica Campbell ran 10.85 in the 100m to clock the third-best performance at the distance this year.
■CRICKET
Sri Lanka to boycott tour
Top Sri Lankan cricketers want the hastily arranged Test tour of England next year to be canceled because the dates clash with the lucrative Indian Premier League, a source close to the team said yesterday. “The players met Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse and urged him to get the tour postponed or played after the IPL,” the source said. “The president was very sympathetic towards the players and agreed to look into their request.” The tour, arranged earlier this month after England suspended bilateral cricket relations with Zimbabwe, includes two Tests, three one-dayers and four warm-up games and runs from April 21 to May 30. The IPL, which features at least 13 top Sri Lankans, is due to be played between April 10 and May 25. A top player, who declined to be named, said the cricketers handed the president a letter when they met him on Wednesday to celebrate their victory in the recent Asia Cup in Pakistan.
■CRICKET
Hair appointed to panel
Controversial umpire Darrell Hair has been appointed to an Australian high performance panel less than a week after his 2006 decision to award the first forfeit in test history was overturned by the International Cricket Council. Cricket Australia on Thursday unveiled a four-man Umpire High Performance Panel designed to act as mentors to officials coming through its ranks. Hair was included along with former test umpire Ric Evans, David Levens and Bob Stratford, the ICC’s regional umpiring director for Australasia and the Pacific. “CA is committed to ensuring the highest standard of umpiring and to enhance and support the development of Australian umpires for international cricket,” Cricket Australia chief executive James Sutherland said. Hair, who has officiated at first-class level for 20 years, has been the most contentious umpire in recent decades.
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