■SWIMMING
Three world records broken
Paul Biedermann of Germany broke Ian Thorpe’s eight-year-old record in the 200m freestyle by finishing in 1 minute, 40.83 seconds, one of three world records to fall on the last day of a short-course swimming World Cup meet. Randall Bal of the US followed and broke the four-day-old record in the 50m backstroke with a time of 22.87 seconds, beating Peter Marshall by 0.03 seconds. Marshall, also from the US, set the record of 23.05 seconds on Wednesday in Stockholm. Marieke Guehrer of Australia set the third record, clocking 24.99 seconds in the women’s 50m butterfly. That was 0.32 seconds faster than the mark set by Therese Alshammar of Sweden on Wednesday. Alshammar was second in 25.35 seconds.
■NASCAR
Johnson takes the title
Jimmie Johnson finished 15th in the Ford 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway to clinch his third straight title, matching the record set by Cale Yarborough more than three decades ago. Carl Edwards, the only title challenger left, won the 644km race at the southern Florida track. Johnson brought owner Rick Hendrick his eighth championship and helped General Motors clinch the manufacturer’s title. The 33-year-old from El Cajon, California, won seven times this season and had 22 top 10 finishes.
■SWIMMING
Bousquet slams officials
Olympic silver medalist Frederick Bousquet on Sunday criticized French team officials who he believed deprived him of a gold medal in Beijing. France were beaten to the men’s 4x100m gold medal by the US by just 0.08 seconds and Bousquet, who set a new French short course 100m butterfly record of 51.00 seconds at St Dizier on Sunday, said a late change in the order of the four swimmers in China cost them an Olympic title. “I was deprived of Olympic gold,” said Bousquet, three months after the Games, saying he was still annoyed at certain officials whom he did not name. Bousquet said the four swimmers had decided he would do the final leg, though officials overruled that to name the 100m freestyle gold medalist in China, Alain Bernard, as the final swimmer.
■FORMULA ONE
Officials pan Ecclestone
Canadian officials blamed the “unreasonable demands” of Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone on Sunday for the failure of attempts to save the country’s grand prix. The officials had hoped to persuade the Briton to reinstate the race in Montreal after it was axed from the calendar. Montreal Mayor Gerald Tremblay, who said last month after meeting Ecclestone that he was hopeful a deal could be done, recognized that the talks had come to nothing. “Despite our endeavors and those of the business community, the unreasonable demands of Formula One exceeded the taxpayer’s ability to pay,” he said in a statement.
■GOLF
Daly set for Aussie Open
Two-time major champion John Daly will appear in this month’s Australian Masters at Huntingdale, organizers said yesterday. Daly, the winner of the 1991 US PGA championship and 1995 British Open, will play in this week’s Hong Kong Open before traveling to Australia. Both events are co-sanctioned with the European Tour as part of the Race to Dubai Championship. Daly has had a controversial playing history in Australia. In his last appearance six years ago he was disqualified from a tournament for failing to sign his scorecard after throwing his ball and putter into a lake.
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