■BASKETBALL
Player charged with fixing
A former University of Toledo basketball player was charged with fixing games, a little over a year after a former Toledo football player was charged with point-shaving, a federal bill of information filed in US District Court in Detroit showed. Sammy Villegas, who played for four years at Toledo, is accused of shaving points in games during the 2004-2005 and 2005-2006 seasons. Villegas, a guard who finished his career in 2006, also paid money to another player who took part in the point-shaving scheme, prosecutors said. The other player was not charged or named in the bill of information, which was filed on June 30. Villegas was charged with conspiracy to influence sports contests by bribery and received money and other gifts in exchange for fixing games, prosecutors said.
■CYCLING
Armstrong to tackle Rockies
Lance Armstrong is set to race in the Leadville Trail 100 tomorrow, a grueling 161km race in the Rockies that draws 1,000 mountain bike riders and left Floyd Landis battered and bleeding last year. Armstrong’s appearance in the 15th annual Race Across the Sky is the “hugest thing that’s happened to Leadville since we discovered gold,” said Ken Chlouber, the race’s co-founder. “The whole town is buzzing and we are way beyond excited.” But Armstrong, who has turned his competitive juices to running marathons since his retirement from competitive cycling three years ago, cautioned that nobody should expect him to cross the finish line first. The favorite, he said, has to be Dave Wiens, who beat Landis by two minutes last year to win his fifth straight title in a record time of 6 hours, 58 minutes, 47 seconds.
■BASKETBALL
New season unveiled
American Greg Oden’s debut and the Boston Celtics banner raising ceremony will highlight the opening day of the 2008-2009 National Basketball Association season, the league announced on Wednesday. There are also five games scheduled for Christmas Day and an all-star game on Feb. 15 in Phoenix. The Celtics will unveil their 17th championship banner in an Oct. 28 game against LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers. Boston defeated the Cavaliers in a seven-game quarter-final series last year. Also on Oct. 28, the Los Angeles Lakers, who lost to the Celtics in the Finals, host the Portland Trail Blazers in what is expected to be Oden’s NBA debut. The first overall pick last year missed his rookie season after undergoing knee surgery. Christmas will feature five games, highlighted by the Celtics visiting the Lakers. The Christmas festivities begin when the Orlando Magic host the New Orleans Hornets. The first full slate of games take place on Oct. 29, headlined by the league’s return to Oklahoma City, when the former Seattle franchise welcomes the Milwaukee Bucks to the Ford Center.
■soccer
Ribery wins German award
Franck Ribery was named Germany’s player of the year on Wednesday. The Bayern Munich winger won with 224 votes from German journalists in a contest organized by Kicker magazine. Chelsea midfielder Michael Ballack was second with 115 of 766 votes cast. Bayern Munich chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge said on the team’s Web site that Ribery’s victory was “absolutely earned.” “We are happy and proud that Franck Ribery, with an overwhelming majority, was selected as the player of the year for 2008,” Rummenigge 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