■EQUESTRIAN
Aussies out in front
Australia’s Lucinda Fredericks guided her team to the lead in the equestrian three-day eventing yesterday, spurred by on her biggest fan, yet biggest competitor — her husband Clayton. Lucinda topped the list of riders in the dressage, putting the Australians in first place with 102.80 penalty points. “Team Fredericks,” as Lucinda and Clayton are often called, are credited with boosting the Australians to the top of the eventing dressage table, with the magic ingredient being their eagerness to support, and out-do, each other. “I will be out there to help her to get a better score. I have always said that she is going to be my biggest competitor,” Clayton said. While Clayton had given his wife a few pointers before her dressage round on Saturday, they were clearly not necessary as she into first place with 30.40 penalties, and stayed there. Clayton, who had started off in provisional second place with 37 penalties, watched his ranking slide to sixth yesterday, pushed lower by Belgium’s Karin Donckers and Germany’s Ingrid Klimke, who are now in second and third place. The cross-country phase takes place today.
■Shooting China grabs gold
Guo Wenjun of China won the gold medal in the women’s 10m air pistol yesterday in a final that produced an Olympic showdown between Russia and Georgia against the backdrop of military conflict. Georgia’s Nino Salukvadze, who almost left the Games earlier yesterday with her 35-member team over the conflict with Russia, took bronze behind Russia’s Natalia Paderina. After her final shot she wiped tears from her eyes and moments later embraced her Russian rival. “It’s a small victory for my people,” Salukvadze said. “If the world were to draw any lessons from what I did there would never be any wars ... We shouldn’t really stoop so low to wage wars against each other.” Meanwhile, David Kostelecky of the Czech Republic won the gold medal in trap shooting yesterday. He finished with a final score of 146. Giovanni Pellielo of Italy won the silver and Alexey Alipov of Russia won bronze.
■fencing Italian beats Frenchman
Matteo Tagliariol of Italy won the gold medal in men’s epee yesterday, beating Fabrice Jeannet of France 15-9. Tagliariol took control with an early six-point run to lead 8-3, and never looked back. Jeannet won the silver, and Jose Luis Abajo of Spain took the bronze. Tagliariol won Italy’s first gold medal of the Games to give his country’s fencing fans something to cheer about. Andrea Baldini, Italy’s men’s foil star, lost his spot on the Olympic team because of a positive test for a banned substance.
■GYMNASTICS China upstages US team
A crash landing off the asymmetric bars by He Kexin failed to stop China from upstaging an injury-hit US team in women’s qualifying yesterday. She executed four stunning release-and-catch combinations in a high-flying routine but slipped off while attempting to glide from the higher to the lower bar. After remounting the apparatus and completing her dismount she burst into tears. She still scored a respectable 15.725. Americans Nastia Liukin and Chellsie Memmel also came to grief on the asymmetric bars. Memmel fell off mid-routine and Liukin mistimed her dismount and landed awkwardly before rolling backwards. But like He, she was rewarded for her daring content and stayed on course for the apparatus final with 15.950. The Chinese set a benchmark with a combined total of 248.275 points. The US earned 246.800 and Russia were third with 244.400.
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