■BOXING
Johansson dies aged 76
Ingemar Johansson, the Swede who stunned the boxing world by knocking out Floyd Patterson to win the world heavyweight title in 1959, has died, a longtime friend said yesterday. He was 76. Johansson died at a nursing home in Kungsbacka, on the Swedish west coast, said Stig Caldeborn, a close friend who sparred with Johansson when they were in their teens. Johansson’s daughter, Maria Gregner, told Swedish news agency TT that the former world champion died just before midnight on Friday. He knocked out Patterson in the third round at Yankee Stadium in New York on June 26, 1959, to win the world heavyweight title. He floored the American seven times in the third round before referee Ruby Goldstein stopped the fight 2 minutes, 3 seconds into the round.
■HANDBALL
France to face Croatia
Past Olympic and world champions France and Croatia will play for the world men’s handball championship after convincing semi-final wins on Friday. France dispatched European champions Denmark 27-22, then the tournament hosts comfortably downed Poland 29-23, setting off euphoric singing and chanting from the home crowd. The final is today. France “can be beaten,” said Croatia coach Lino Cervar, “but we’ll have to be fantastic” in the final. His French counterpart, Claude Onesta, said he wanted to meet Croatia, as he believed they were the best teams in the world at the moment.
■SPEED SKATING
German women grab wins
Jenny Wolf and Anni Friesinger gave Germany two victories at a speed skating World Cup meet on Friday. Wolf scored her 12th win of the season — and her 38th career victory — in various events by taking the 500m sprint in a course-record 37.58 seconds. Wolf was already assured of winning the World Cup title in the event with two races left since only Lee Sang-hwa could catch her and the South Korean didn’t show up for the meet. Friesinger celebrated her first win in 11 months when she took the 1,500m in 1 minute, 56.90 seconds. The German ace is coming back after injury and earned her 56th career win. In the men’s races, Yu Fengtong of China edged Keiichiro Nagashima of Japan by 0.01 seconds to win the 500m in 35.03 seconds. Sven Kramer of the Netherlands won the 5,000m in another course-record time of 6 minutes, 16.02 seconds and took the lead in the season standings.
■CRICKET
‘Bearded Wonder’ dies at 69
Cricket statistician Bill Frindall has died aged 69 after suffering from legionnaires’ disease, the BBC announced on Friday. Frindall was the longest-serving member of BBC Radio’s Test Match Special program, having joined in 1966. Known to listeners in Britain and beyond as the ‘Bearded Wonder,’ a nickname given to him by the late BBC commentator Brian Johnston, Frindall covered more than 350 Test matches. He also wrote several books, including four editions of the Wisden Book of Cricket Records, and since 1986 had edited the Playfair Cricket Annual, a pocket-book guide to the county and international game.
■NORDIC SKIING
Angerer returns to form
Germany’s Tobias Angerer signaled his return to form by winning the men’s 15km freestyle on Friday, three weeks before the start of the world championships in Liberec, Czech Republic. Angerer finished just ahead of France’s Jean-Marc Gaillard and Sergei Dolidovich of Belarus.
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