■OLYMPICS
Local veteran dies aged 96
Henry Hsu (徐亨), a former member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), passed away at the Taipei Veterans General Hospital on Tuesday at the age of 96. A spokesman for the hospital said Hsu died from heart failure on Tuesday afternoon, six months after he was admitted to the hospital suffering from uremia and pneumonia. Hsu made a name for himself as an athlete by winning a gold medal in volleyball at the Ninth Far East Games in Tokyo in 1930 and in soccer at the 10th Far East Games in 1934. He later became a successful hotel tycoon. Hsu headed the Republic of China Olympic Committee between 1973 and 1974. He was elected to the IOC in 1970 and retired from it in 1988, according to the IOC’s Web site.
■YACHTING
Sailor presumed dead
A 72-year-old Slovenian aiming to become the oldest man to sail non-stop around the world is presumed dead after his yacht was found abandoned off Australia’s west coast, authorities said yesterday. Jure Sterk set off from New Zealand in his 9m yacht in October 2007, hoping to make history both as the oldest man to circumnavigate the globe non-stop and in the smallest boat without an engine. He kept contact with amateur radio enthusiasts, and last reported in early last month when he was believed to be 1,900km from the west Australian coast, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) said. Sterk encountered some bad weather around Dec. 26, but told ham radio contacts he was not in danger, an AMSA spokeswoman said. A month later a merchant vessel spotted the badly damaged yacht abandoned and without its lifeboat 1,200km from the coast. Medical experts advised AMSA that there was no chance of him surviving the period since his last radio contact in open seas, and Jiggins said he was now presumed dead. Sterk never activated his emergency distress beacon, and his fate would remain a mystery, she added.
■BASEBALL
Bonds sample positive
Barry Bonds’ urine sample that he provided as part of the anonymous testing that baseball conducted in 2003 has tested positive for performance-enhancing substances, the New York Times reported on Tuesday. Bonds had provided samples that did not test positive under Major League Baseball’s drug-testing program, but those samples were retested after they were seized in a 2004 raid, the newspaper reported. The new information could be a key factor in Bonds’ perjury trial, which is slated to begin on March 2. Citing sources, the newspaper reported last week that authorities detected anabolic steroids in urine samples linked to Bonds that they gathered in their investigation.
■RALLYING
Mitsubishi drops rally
Mitsubishi Motors will no longer compete in the Dakar Rally for financial reasons, the company said yesterday. The announcement came as Japan’s fourth-largest automaker said its group net loss will amount to ¥60 billion (US$670 million) in the fiscal year through March. “The sudden deterioration of the global economy made it necessary for the company to focus its resources more tightly,” Mitsubishi said in a statement. In its 26 entries in the Dakar Rally, Mitsubishi Pajeros won the rally a total of 12 times, including seven consecutive victories from 2001 to 2007. The Japanese manufacturer finished seventh in the car section of this year’s race.
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