■SKI-JUMPING
Japanese veteran wins
Takanobu Okabe became the oldest winner of a ski-jumping World Cup event in history on Tuesday when the 38-year-old won an event on the large hill in Kuopio, Finland. Just 24 hours after Finland’s Janne Ahonen announced that he was returning to the sport after less than a year in retirement, the Japanese jumper celebrated the fifth World Cup victory of his career with jumps of 123.5m and 123m for a total of 241.7 points. Switzerland’s Simon Ammann came second on 240.4 points after jumps of 119.5m and 126m with Adam Malysz of Poland claiming third on 239.3 after jumps of 119m and 127m. Okabe last enjoyed victory 11 years ago in a ski-flying event in Vikersund, Norway.
■BASEBALL
Defectors star in video game
Havana on Tuesday debuted a baseball video game that includes famous Cuban-born defectors long expunged from official memory here after they abandoned the communist island to play in the US. The country’s first baseball video game, MVP Cuba 1.0, features a number of Cuban stars who triumphed in the US major leagues, including star pitchers Orlando Hernandez — nicknamed “El Duque” — and Jose Contreras. The game was unveiled at a state information science center over the weekend, Juventud Rebelde daily newspaper reported.
■RUGBY UNION
Serge Blanco in heart scare
Former France great Serge Blanco, current president of Top 14 side Biarritz, underwent an operation on Monday after complaining about feeling unwell, former club president Marcel Martin said on Tuesday. “Serge Blanco was hospitalized as a precaution on Sunday night and had what I would call a standard operation on Monday morning,” Martin said. “It wasn’t a heart attack, properly speaking,” Martin said, before adding that Blanco “responded well to the operation and is recovering well.” Blanco, 50, won 93 caps for his country in the 1980s and early 1990s. He still holds the record number of tries scored for his country at 38.
■SOCCER
Promotion contenders held
English Championship leaders Wolverhampton and their fellow promotion contenders Birmingham and Reading were all held to draws on Tuesday. The three teams, all vying to reach the lucrative Premier League, dropped points that could yet prove valuable in their quest to reach the top-flight. Wolves were held to a goalless draw at home to Ipswich Town, while Birmingham suffered a late scare at lowly Barnsley before playing out a 1-1 draw. Reading, third in the table, came from behind to lead against bottom-of-the-table Charlton only to be held to a 2-2 draw away to the struggling Londoners. Norwich beat Cardiff 2-0 at Carrow Road to take them to within two points of safety while relegation rivals Southampton, who dropped down to second-bottom, drew 1-1 with Derby County.
■SAILING
Mendelblatt, Prada move up
Mark Mendelblatt, the 2005 Bacardi Cup champion and America’s Cup tactician, and crew Bruno Prada of Brazil finished first on day three of the Bacardi Cup star class regatta on Biscayne Bay on Tuesday. The win moved them up six slots to third overall. Bermuda’s Peter Bromby and crew Magnus Liljedahl, who were in the top five in a fleet of 62 boats for the entire race, took second place and maintained first place overall after three of six races. The US’ Andy MacDonald and Brian Fatih finished third.
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