■TABLE TENNIS
Boll crowned king of Europe
Germany’s Timo Boll came from a set down to beat Belarussian Vladimir Samsonov 4-2 and be crowned European table tennis champion in St Petersburg, Russia, on Sunday. Samsonov won the first set 14-12, but Boll took three sets in a row for a 3-1 lead. The Belarussian took the fifth set to reduce the arrears but Boll won the deciding point 11-5 to take the title. There was a shock upset in the women’s event after Lithuania’s Ruta Paskauskiene — ranked 90th in the world — saw off a late fightback from Austria’s Jia Liu to clinch the title. Meanwhile, Hungarian duo Krisztina Toth and Georgina Pota won the women’s doubles title, beating 4-2 Italy’s pair Wenling Tan Monfardini and Nikoleta Stefanova 6-11, 11-4, 11-9, 11-13, 11-6, 12-10. Boll and Christian Suss of Germany defeated Austria’s Werner Schlager and Dutchman Trinko Keen 4-3 (9-11, 11-8, 7-11, 7-11, 11-8, 11-6) to claim the European title in the men’s doubles.
■OLYMPICS
Mexico plans mini-Games
Mexico wants to host a small-scale version of the Olympic Summer Games in 2010 to celebrate the country’s bicentenary, a high-ranking official said. International Olympic Committee chairman Jaques Rogge authorized the event on Sunday, said Mario Vasquez Rana, president of the Pan American Sports Organization. Rana was speaking at a conference on American Olympic sports in the Mexican beach resort Acapulco. Time and date of the Olympic events were to be fixed by the beginning of next year, he said.
■CRICKET
Aussies will be safe: Khan
International cricketers are safe from terror attacks in troubled Pakistan because the game is so well loved in the country, player-turned-politician Imran Khan told Australian media. Australia have not toured Pakistan for a decade and abandoned a visit earlier this year because of security concerns in the wake of the assassination of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto. In August, Australia also pulled out of the Champions Trophy in Pakistan which has now been postponed. Speaking to Australian television, Khan said that while he understood the Australians’ decision, those who wanted to destabilize Pakistan would not risk alienating their support base by attacking cricketers. “I also know that cricketers would never be under any threat from terrorists,” he said in an interview to be screened late yesterday by the Australian Broadcasting Corp. “Terrorists rely on support from the masses, because that’s where they get their recruits, and cricket is a game which is so loved and there’s such passion in Pakistan, that the terrorists know that if a cricket match is bombed, they’ve had it. The public will just turn against them.”
■BASKETBALL
NBA in China joint venture
The NBA has formed a joint venture with Anschutz Entertainment Group to design and develop about 12 multipurpose, NBA-style arenas in major Chinese cities. The announcement was made on Sunday at the O2 Arena in London, where the New Jersey Nets and Miami Heat played a preseason game. AEG runs the O2, and the project will be equally owned by the two parties. NBA commissioner David Stern did not say when the plan would be starting, or where the buildings would be located. “We weren’t going to start construction in the next couple of weeks,” Stern said at a joint news conference with AEG president and CEO Timothy Leiweke. Leiweke said it could take decades to complete the project.
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