■SCOTLAND
Rangers win Old Firm derby
Rangers cruised to the top of the Scottish Premier League on Sunday, with a double from former Celtic player Kenny Miller helping secure a 4-2 win against their Old Firm rivals at Parkhead. Both teams finished with 10 men, with Daniel Cousin and Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink seeing red in the second half. The game came to life in the 37th minute with a superb solo goal from Cousin. But the Rangers fans had little time to celebrate before Georgios Samaras put Celtic level in the 40th minute. The away support went wild in the 52nd minute when Kenny Miller put Rangers ahead with a sweet volley from a Kevin Thomson cross and Pedro Mendes made it 3-1 in the 62nd minute with a wonder strike from 30m out. A horrendous error from Boruc then allowed Kenny Miller to get his second of the game in the 79th minute. Shunsuke Nakamura scored a consolation goal for Celtic in injury time.
■RUSSIA
Kazan beat Perm, stay top
Russian league leaders Kazan consolidated their lead at the top of the table following a 2-1 victory at Perm on Sunday. Kazan top the table with 42 points from 20 matches, six points ahead of Dynamo Moscow. Spartak Moscow, who beat 2-1 Nalchik at home, are third with 33 points. Perm clinched the lead 13 minutes after the break when their Bulgarian striker Martin Kushev scored a spot kick. Kazan replied positively, pinning the hosts back and pulled the scores level just 10 minutes later through forward Alexander Bukharov, who scored from his skipper Sergei Semak’s cross. In the 73rd minute, Kazan’s Christian Noboa of Ecuador netted the winner, beating Perm goalkeeper Sergei Narubin with a well-struck free-kick. Meanwhile second-placed Dynamo Moscow failed to narrow the gap with a 1-1 draw against city rivals FC Moscow.
■NETHERLANDS
Feyenoord lose opener
Ragnar Klavan scored one goal and set up another on Sunday to help Heracles Almelo beat 10-man Feyenoord 3-1 in the opening round of the Dutch league. Andre Bahia gave Feyenoord the lead with a header in the first minute, but Jonathan de Guzman was dismissed for elbowing in the 30th minute. Klavan then set up Darl Douglas for the equalizer in the 37th minute and Klavan and Karim Bridji added later goals for Heracles. NAC Breda beat AZ Alkmaar 2-1 with Ghana striker Matthew Amoah scoring both goals. Mounir El Hamdaoui scored AZ’s goal in the 38th minute.
■GREECE
AEK Athens start with win
Edinho scored one goal and Ismael Blanco converted a penalty kick to lead hosts AEK to a 2-1 win over crosstown rivals Panathinaikos in the first round of the Greek league on Sunday. Panathinaikos controlled play from the start, but could not penetrate a sturdy AEK defense. AEK took the lead with a curling shot from the edge of the box by midfielder Edinho into the upper right corner. In first half injury-time, AEK doubled the score with a penalty converted by Blanco after Nikos Spyropoulos handled the ball in his area.
■SERBIA
Partizan stretch their lead
Serbian champions Partizan Belgrade stretched their perfect league start to three matches after two goals by Zoran Tosic and a third by Nenad Djordjevic gave them a 3-0 win at OFK Belgrade on Sunday. Partizan are top, two points ahead of promoted Javor Ivanjica, who enjoyed a shock 2-0 away defeat of Red Star Belgrade that sent them bottom of the division.
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