■ FRANCE
Bordeaux leapfrog Toulouse
Yoann Gourcuff scored one goal and set up another on Saturday to lead Bordeaux to a 2-1 victory that snapped Toulouse’s four-match winning streak in Ligue 1. The France playmaker skipped past defenders Mauro Cetto and Mohamed Fofana with a clever back-heel move, before scoring from close range in the 29th minute. David Bellion doubled the lead for Bordeaux in the 40th minute after receiving Gourcuff’s headed pass and dribbling past Cetto to unleash a diagonal strike. Etienne Capoue pulled a goal back for Toulouse in injury time, taking advantage of a mistake by goalkeeper Mathieu Valverde. Bordeaux leapfrogged Toulouse into second place on goal difference, with 17 points after nine rounds. Also on Saturday, it was Caen 2, Grenoble 2; Monaco 1, Nice 2; Paris Saint-Germain 3, Lorient 2; Nantes 1, Saint-Etienne 0; Sochaux 1, Le Havre 1; and Lyon 2, Lille 2.
■ NETHERLANDS
NAC Breda beat PSV, go top
NAC Breda beat defending champions PSV Eindhoven 2-1 on Saturday to go top of the Dutch league. PSV captain Timmy Simons scored an own-goal to put NAC in front in the 14th minute and Ghana forward Matthew Amoah doubled the advantage with his league-leading ninth goal of the season in the 87th minute. PSV, who host Marseille in the Champions League on Wednesday, scored through Ibrahim Afellay in the 90th minute. NAC have 15 points after six rounds. FC Groningen, who lost 1-0 to Ajax to end their five-game winning streak, dropped to second with 13 points. PSV stayed third with 12 points. Ajax have 10 points. In Amsterdam, Jan Vertonghen set up Oleguer for the game’s only goal in the 37th minute. Also on Saturday, Boldizsar Bodor and Sekou Cisse scored to help Roja JC to a 2-2 home draw with SC Heerenveen. Christian Grindheim and Arnar Smarason scored in the 38th minute and 87th minute for Heerenveen. Marko Arnautovic and Eljero Elia scored in FC Twente’s 2-0 win over Heracles Almelo.
■ ARGENTINA
San Lorenzo win again
San Lorenzo won their sixth match in a row on Saturday when they beat promoted San Martin-Tucuman 1-0 to stay top of the Argentine Apertura championship. Forward Andres Silvera scored the winner in the 25th minute after a mistake by defender Juan Monge, who had been close to giving the visitors the lead three minutes earlier. San Lorenzo, whose coach Miguel Angel Russo is among the favorites to take over the Argentina national team following Alfio Basile’s resignation on Thursday, have 25 points from 10 games. Tigre stayed five points behind in second place with a 3-0 win over Lanus, Martin Morel scoring twice after Leonel Altobelli had put them ahead. Independiente gave Miguel Angel Santoro a winning start to his sixth stint in charge by winning 2-1 at Colon, with two first-half goals from Leonel Nunez.
■ AFRICA
Al Ahli, Coton Sport in final
Egypt’s Al Ahli will meet Coton Sport of Cameroon in the African Champions League final after both sides won their semi-final, second-leg matches on Saturday. A 26th minute goal from Angola international Flavio, from a trademark cross by compatriot Gilberto, handed Al Ahli a 1-0 win over Enyimba in Cairo after a goalless first leg. Ahli are only the second team to reach four successive African Champions League finals. Coton Sport will play in their first Champions League final after a 4-0 win over Dynamos of Zimbabwe in Garoua, Cameroon. Coton Sport are the first side from Cameroon to reach the final since 1980.
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