■ATHLETICS
Bolt, Isinbayeva win awards
Triple Olympic sprint champion Usain Bolt and Russia’s pole vault queen Yelena Isinbayeva were confirmed as IAAF athletes of the year in Monaco on Sunday. The 22-year-old, world-record breaking Bolt captured the 100m, 200m and 4x100m golds in Beijing, where Isinbayeva held the Bird’s Nest Stadium enthralled when she defended her Olympic title with a world record 5.05m. Cuba’s Dayron Robles, the Olympic 110m hurdles champion and world record holder, won the male performance of the year award, while Tirunesh Dibaba of Ethiopia and Barbora Spotakova of the Czech Republic shared the female performance award.
■RUGBY UNION
Player of the Year named
Welsh winger Shane Williams, who played a pivotal role in his team’s Six Nations Grand Slam triumph earlier this year, was on Sunday named the International Rugby Board Player of the Year. The 31-year-old Ospreys star saw off competition from Wales captain Ryan Jones, New Zealand fly-half Dan Carter, Scotland captain Mike Blair and Italy skipper Sergio Parisse to land the award at a gala dinner in London. Pint-sized Williams, 31, scored six tries in this year’s Six Nations and was named player of the tournament as Wales won the Grand Slam. He also broke Gareth Thomas’ try-scoring record and has now scored 43 tries in 60 Tests.
■NORDIC SKIING
Norway win opening events
Norway won both World Cup cross-country ski openers by small margins on Sunday. Petter Northug proved he has one of the strongest finishing kicks by edging Marcus Hellner of Sweden by 0.2 seconds in the men’s 4x10km mixed-style event. “It turned out to be a dream scenario,” Northug said. “Good for me, bad for him. It feels really good.” The Norwegian quartet crossed in 1 hour, 30 minutes, 58.8 seconds. Martin Johnsrud Sundby and Eldar Ronning skied the first two classic-style legs and Tore Ruud Hofstad skied the first freestyle leg. Marthe Kristoffersen, a 19-year-old rookie making her debut on Norway’s “A” team, edged Riitta Liisa Roponen of Finland by 0.4 seconds in the women’s 4x5km relay. Sweden were third, 42.7 seconds back.
■ATHLETICS
Montgomery admits doping
Disgraced former world record holder Tim Montgomery said he took testosterone and human growth hormone before the Sydney Olympics and does not deserve the gold medal he won in the 400m relay. The admission was made during an interview scheduled to air tonight on HBO television. “I have a gold medal that I’m sitting on that I didn’t get with my own ability,” Montgomery said in the interview. “I’m not here to take away from anybody else’s accomplishments, only my own. And I must say, I apologize to the other people that were on the relay team if that was to happen.” Montgomery never tested positive for drugs, but he was banned from track for two years and his world record in the 100m was erased after he was linked to the BALCO doping investigation.
■CYCLING
Contador goes under knife
Spanish cyclist Alberto Contador, winner of last year’s Tour de France, was scheduled to undergo surgery yesterday to relieve a blockage in his nasal passage. Contador, 25, said on Sunday he would undergo a two-hour operation at Madrid’s Ramon and Cajal hospital to relieve the blockage, which was the result of an injury sustained in a crash last May as he won the Giro d’Italia. Contador will also have a polyp in his vocal chord removed.
Taiwanese world No. 1 women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei on Saturday overcame a first-set loss to win her opening match at the Madrid Open. Top seeds Hsieh and partner Elise Mertens of Belgium, with whom she last month won her fourth Indian Wells women’s doubles title, bounced back from a rocky first set to beat Asia Muhammad of the US and Aldila Sutjiadi of Indonesia 2-6, 6-4, 10-2. Hsieh and Mertens were next to face Heather Watson of the UK and Xu Yifan of China in the round of 16. Thirty-eight-year-old Hsieh last month reclaimed her world No. 1 spot after her Indian
EYES ON THE PRIZE: Armed with three solid men’s singles shuttlers and doubles Olympic champions, Taiwan aim to make their first Thomas Cup semi-final, Chou Tien-chen said Taiwanese badminton star Tai Tzu-ying yesterday quickly dispatched Malaysia’s Goh Jin Wei in straight sets, while her male counterpart Chou Tien-chen beat Germany’s Kai Schaefer, as Taiwan’s women’s and men’s teams won their Group B opening rounds of the TotalEnergies BWF Thomas and Uber Cup Finals in Chengdu, China. World No. 5 Tai beat Goh 21-19, 22-20 in a speedy 33 minutes, her fourth straight victory over the world No. 24 shuttler since they first faced each other in the quarter-finals of the 2018 Malaysia Open, where Tai went on to win the women’s singles title. Malaysia followed up Tai’s opening victory
Chen Yi-tung (陳奕通) secured a historic Olympic berth on Sunday by winning the senior men’s foil event at the 2024 Asia Oceania Zonal Olympic Fencing Qualifiers in United Arab Emirates. Chen defeated Samuel Elijah of Singapore 15-4 in the final in Dubai to secure the only wild card in the event, making him the first male Olympian fencer from Taiwan in 36 years and only the sixth Taiwanese fencer to ever qualify for the quadrennial event. The last appearance by a Taiwanese male fencer at the Olympics was in 1988, when Wang San-tsai (王三財) and Cheng Ming-hsiang (鄭明祥) competed in Seoul. The
Rafael Nadal on Tuesday lost in straight sets to 31st-ranked Jiri Lehecka in the fourth round at the Madrid Open, while Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei advanced to the semi-finals in the women’s doubles. Nadal said that he was feeling good about his progress following his latest injury layoff. Nadal called it a “positive week” in every way and said his body held up well. “I was able to play four matches, a couple of tough matches,” Nadal said. “So very positive, winning three matches, playing four matches at the high level of tennis. I enjoyed a lot playing at home. I leave here with