■BOLIVIA
Players fight with police
Champions Aurora fought with riot police during a game on Sunday with their goalkeeper using a corner flag as a weapon. Aurora beat local rivals Wilstermann 1-0 in a match that ended in uproar after the winners had Eduardo Zenteno sent off late in the game. Centeno dallied over leaving the field and around a dozen police came on to hurry him up. Other Aurora players leapt to Centeno’s defense and aimed karate kicks at the police, who responded by using pepper spray. At one point, Aurura goalkeeper Silvio Dulcich picked up a corner flag to use as a weapon against the police. The referee appeared to abandon the game at one stage but changed his mind after Wilstermann protested. Dulcich was sent off, the game was re-started and Aurora held on for a win.
■PARAGUAY
Ballboy sent off
Cerro Porteno beat arch-rivals Olimpia 3-1 in a fiery meeting of the country’s biggest clubs in which two players, both coaches and a ball boy were sent off. Cesar Ramirez gave Cerro a fourth-minute lead and tempers flared when Marco Lazaga equalized just after the half hour and appeared to provoke the Cerro bench with his celebration. The incident sparked a brawl involving players and officials from both sides, which held up play for seven minutes and ended with Olimpia coach Ever Almeida and his Cerro counterpart Pedro Troglio being sent off along with several other members of the respective benches. Olimpia then had Edison Gimenez and Lazaga sent off in quick succession, both for second yellow cards. Paraguayan media said a ball boy was also sent off in the second half and another fight broke out in the players’ tunnel after the game.
■ENGLAND
Celebration sparks anger
Ipswich Town’s David Norris could face disciplinary action for a controversial goal celebration after the Football Association confirmed yesterday they had written to the midfielder. Norris seemed to make a “handcuff” gesture in support of his jailed former Plymouth teammate Luke McCormick after scoring in Ipswich’s 1-0 victory away to Blackpool in English soccer’s second-tier Championship on Saturday. McCormick is serving a sentence of seven years and four months for causing the deaths of Arron Peak, 10, and his brother Ben, eight, in a car accident when he was under the influence of alcohol earlier this year on his way home from Norris’ wedding. Norris, 26, told yesterday’s Daily Mirror: “It wasn’t a handcuff sign, it was a private message but I can see why people have seen it like that. I apologize if anyone was offended by it.” Mrs Peak told the Mirror the gesture was insulting. She said: “I’m disgusted. To celebrate a goal like that is disrespectful to me and my husband and my boys. He should be given a ban by his club.”
■ARGENTINA
River draw, coach leaves
River Plate fought back from three goals down to draw 3-3 at home to Huracan in Diego Simeone’s final match as coach on Sunday. Simeone left defending champions River Plate with the team bottom of the table. But the former Argentina captain, who announced his resignation on Friday after River were knocked out of the Copa Sudamericana, was applauded into the tunnel after his side’s rousing fight back. Huracan were 3-0 up after only 35 minutes but Matias Abelairas scored with a free kick six minutes after the re-start, Radamel Falcao Garcia scored from a penalty and Eduardo Tuzzio headed the equalizer in the 77th minute.
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