■BASEBALL
Gred Maddux to retire
Four-time pitcher of the year Greg Maddux will announce his retirement tomorrow at the Major League Baseball winter meetings in Las Vegas. Maddux, who turns 43 in April, ranks eighth on the MLB career wins list with 355. He went 8-13 with a 4.22 ERA last season with the San Diego Padres and Los Angeles Dodgers. Maddux made three relief appearances in the playoffs for the Dodgers this year — he had an 0.00 ERA over four innings — and then filed for free agency amid speculation he would retire. On Friday, confirmation came from the office of Maddux’s agent, Scott Boras. Maddux, his family and Boras will hold a news conference at the hotel where the meetings are being held to announce one of the greatest pitchers is finished after 23 MLB seasons.
■SKELETON
Rommel wins World Cup
Frank Rommel of Germany won his first World Cup men’s skeleton race on Friday, overcoming a low starting position to edge Martins Dukurs of Latvia. Rommel, who was disqualified in the season opener last week in Winterberg for missing a start signal, started 19th and finished third in the first heat, which was led by Dukurs. The German posted the fastest time in the second to beat Dukurs by .12 seconds. Rommel finished in an aggregate time of 1 minute, 57.41 seconds. Sandro Stielicke of Germany moved up four places after the first heat to take third. Florian Grass of Germany finished fourth to lead the overall World Cup after two of eight races. Anja Huber beat German teammate Kerstin Szymkowski in the women’s race for her second straight World Cup.
■BASKETBALL
Countries bid for 2014
Three countries competing to host the men’s basketball World Championship in 2014 delivered their bids to governing body FIBA on Friday. China and Italy included taped messages of support from NBA stars Yao Ming and Andrea Bargnani in presentations made at a theater in FIBA’s home city of Geneva. Defending world champion Spain is the third candidate. FIBA secretary-general Patrick Baumann said China would be a leading contender after the successful Olympic tournament in Beijing last August, which was won by the US. “China are clearly favorite in terms of coming in with the experience,” he told reporters. “Spain is the reigning world champion and Olympic silver medalist. Italy has a strong history and passion for basketball.” Turkey is scheduled to host the next world championship, in August and September 2010.
■FOOTBALL
Buffalo takes MAC title
The 12th-ranked Ball State Cardinals fumbled the ball four times and Buffalo scored off each turnover, routing the previously unbeaten team 42-24 Friday in the Mid-American Conference (MAC) championship game. Ball State (12-1) finished the regular season undefeated for the first time since 1949, but entered the game without much of a shot to bust into the Bowl Championship Series because it trailed Utah in the standings. The Bulls returned fumbles 92 and 74 yards on consecutive drives late in the third quarter to take a 28-17 lead. Buffalo (8-5) won its first MAC title, capping the program’s first bowl-eligible season since joining college football’s top tier of teams in 1999. NFL scouts at Ford Field saw Ball State quarterback Nate Davis struggle to hold onto the ball. The Cardinals fumbled four times and Davis was involved each time. Buffalo quarterback Drew Willy, meanwhile, played mistake-free football. Willy was 19-of-28 for 206 yards.
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