Spaniard Alejandro Valverde of the Caisse d’Epargne team took the overall race lead after winning the second stage of the Tour of Spain on Sunday, a 176.3km run from Granada to Jaen.
The 28-year-old finished the stage in four hours and 23 minutes, two seconds ahead of Italy’s Davide Rebellin and another Italian, Alessandro Ballan of Lampre.
“The stage was especially suited for sprinters but I knew I would have my chances,” said a smiling Valverde, who was greeted at the finish line by about a dozen family members, including his eight-month-old twin sons Ivan and Alejandro.
PHOTO: EPA
Valverde, who finished second during the Tour of Spain in 2006, is one of the favorites to win the race this year along with compatriots Alberto Contador, last year’s Tour de France champion, and Carlos Sastre.
“We once again saw a Valverde full of life, arriving at the finish line as only he knows how,” said Sastre, the winner of this year’s Tour de France.
The peloton remained tightly together until the final 5km when there were several attempts at a breakaway. With just 1km until the finish line Joaquin Rodriguez of Valverde’s Caisse d’Epargne tried to surprise the peloton with an attack but he failed to open up much of a gap and was countered with a sprint by Riccardo Serrano of Tinkoff. In the final 200m Valverde responded with his own sprint, which took him to the finish line.
“There was a moment when I thought Joaquin would win it alone,” said Valverde, who took over the leader’s golden jersey from Italy’s Filippo Pozzato.
Last year’s champion, Russia’s Denis Menchov, is not participating. The 3,133km Tour of Spain finishes in Madrid on Sept. 21.
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