A last-gasp penalty from New Zealand fly-half Dan Carter secured a 13-13 draw for Perpignan against Stade Francais on Saturday that prevented the Parisians from overtaking Toulouse at the Top 14 summit.
Earlier in the day, Toulouse had slumped to their third loss of the season at ninth-placed Biarritz.
In front of almost 80,000 spectators at a packed Stade de France, the home side led 7-0 at halftime thanks to a 28th-minute Lionel Beauxis try that the French full-back converted.
PHOTO: AFP
A pair of penalties from Juan Martin Hernandez put Stade’s lead at 13-3 shortly before the hour mark, after Carter had sent over a 52nd-minute penalty.
But Maxime Mermoz sparked the Perpignan fightback when he crashed over for a 72nd-minute try that Carter converted. The Kiwi poster boy then sank a 79th-minute penalty to ensure his side traveled back south with a hard-earned share of the spoils.
The result keeps Toulouse top, two points clear of Stade Francais, despite their surprise 17-13 defeat at a resurgent Biarritz, with Perpignan in third.
In the day’s other games, fourth-placed Clermont thrashed fifth-placed Bayonne 44-10 to open up a 10-point gap over their opponents, while second-bottom Castres were held to an 11-11 draw at home to Brive.
Elsewhere, Montpellier beat Dax 23-14 and Bourgoin overcame Montauban 25-15.
On Friday, Toulon secured their first league win since November against fellow relegation candidates Mont-de-Marsan.
Toulon’s New Zealand import Sonny Bill Williams played a starring role in a five-try, 38-22 victory although coach Tana Umaga had to shelve his playing return after failing to win the necessary administrative clearance.
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