■ TENNIS
Fan seeks delay for Nadal
Not all Argentines are happy that top-ranked Rafael Nadal won’t be playing in the Davis Cup final next week. Tennis fan Julian Baena launched an Internet campaign at quieroganarleanadal.com — “I want to beat Nadal,” in English — urging Davis Cup officials to delay the final until Nadal recovers from knee tendinitis. “There’s nothing more beautiful than to go down in history winning the final against the No. 1 in the world,” Baena wrote on the Web site. “That’s why I propose: Let’s postpone the Davis Cup final until Rafa recovers. Two weeks. A month. Whatever is necessary for him to be 100 percent.” A petition asking for a delay so that “we can enjoy the final we all want to see” had received nearly 13,000 signatures as of late Wednesday. Nadal withdrew this week from Spain’s team to play Argentina, saying he needed three to six weeks to recover. His absence made Argentina the favorite to win its first Davis Cup, starting on Nov. 21 at Mar del Plata.
■ BASKETBALL
Free Nets tickets for jobless
The New Jersey Nets professional basketball team is giving a break to unemployed fans. They’re offering free tickets and will forward their resumes to corporate sponsors as workers grapple with the weak US economy. The NBA team said on Wednesday it will offer unemployed fans tickets to five of its home games this month and next month, as well as resume placement with its 120 corporate sponsors. Unemployed fans can sign up at njnets.com. The team will release 300 tickets per game on a first-come, first-serve basis for fans who enroll in the program.
■ SOCCER
Capello wants to coach UK
England manager Fabio Capello wants to coach a unified British team at the 2012 London Olympics. The Italian’s four-year contract with the English Football Association is set to expire before the games, but Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have blocked plans for a British team because they don’t want to jeopardize their status as separate teams in UEFA and FIFA events. Capello is still hopeful of a breakthrough — and then being favored over Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson, who has already been backed for the post by London 2012 chairman Sebastian Coe. “I will be 66 by [2012] and I will have reached retirement age. Then I want to travel and visit all of the ancient cultures that fascinate me so much,” Capello said in an interview with FIFA Magazine. “But I would also like to make another of my dreams come true by taking part in the Olympic Games, something that I was denied as a player, and something that still fills me with regret. I think it’s only fair that Great Britain should have a football team in the Olympics, but it is up to others to decide how, and with which players.”
■ SWIMMING
Two more world records fall
US swimmer Peter Marshall achieved his second short-course world record in two days at the World Cup in Stockholm on Wednesday. Marshall won the 50m backstroke in 23.05 seconds, beating Australian Robert Hurley’s mark of 23.24 set at the Sydney World Cup last month. Another American, Randall Bal, also went under Hurley’s time for second place at 23.07. Hurley was third in 23.36. Sweden’s Therese Alshammar also set a new record in the women’s 50m butterfly in 25.31 seconds, topping the 25.32 by Australia’s Felicity Galvez at the world short-course championships last April.
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