■RUGBY UNION
Stormers thrash Lions
The Stormers scored eight tries as they romped to a 56-18 victory over the Lions in an all-South African Super 14 clash at Newlands on Saturday. The win lifted the Stormers to seventh in the standings while the Lions remained 13th. The Lions had started brightly and surged into a 12-3 lead after 20 minutes but they quickly fell apart and conceded eight tries in an hour. After tries by Louis Ludik and Henno Mentz the Lions mustered only six more points from the boot of Andre Pretorius in the remainder of the match. Stormers flank Schalk Burger scored in the 22nd minute and five minutes later Francois Louw scored to level the game. Willem de Waal landed a 30th minute penalty to give the hosts the lead. Just before halftime Andries Bekker scored the Stormers’ third try. The home side put the result beyond doubt with two tries inside the first seven minutes of the second half — the first by Gcobani Bobo and the other from Sireli Naqelevuki. Bekker scored his second try in the 55th minute while Jean de Villiers and Dewaldt Duvenage completed the rout with tries in the last 10 minutes.
■RUGBY UNION
Freier ruled out of Super 14
Wallabies hooker Adam Freier has been ruled out for the remainder of the Super 14 season after he tore his bicep while playing for the New South Wales Waratahs on Friday. Freier was forced off in the second half of the Waratahs’ 21-11 loss to the ACT Brumbies and scans showed he would require surgery, the Waratahs said yesterday. “It’s a real blow,” coach Chris Hickey said in a statement. “Adam has been sharp for us all year and as one of the senior members of the squad he does a lot more work off the field that a lot of people don’t see.”
■BOXING
Abraham defends title
IBF middleweight champion Arthur Abraham defended his title for the ninth time with a unanimous points win over US fighter Lajuan Simon in Kiel, Germany, on Saturday. Abraham dropped 8kg in just over a week to make the weight for the fight and was made to work hard for the win by Simon who suffered the first defeat of his 24-fight career. Simon took everything the champion threw at him throughout and he found his way through Abraham’s defense in the first round. The champion pinned his opponent on the ropes in the second and had Simon on the canvas in the third round after he pushed him down. But Abraham, 29, sat back for the rest of the round, content to soak up Simon’s punches, but caught the 30-year-old challenger in the face several times in the fourth. It was midway through the fifth round when Abraham launched a ferocious assault as he looked for a knock-out, but Simon weathered the storm. By the seventh round, Abraham was clearly on top and lined up Simon several times with quick shots to the body. Simon finished the eighth round the stronger and caught the champion flush in the face several times in the ninth. After an even tenth round, Abraham stepped up the pace but couldn’t land a knock out blow.
■SOCCER
Oldie Miura breaks record
Ageless Japanese star Kazuyoshi Miura has stretched his own record of the oldest scorer in the J-League. The midfielder scored from a penalty in his club Yokohama FC’s 2-1 defeat to Kumamoto in a J-League second division match on Saturday. He was 42 years and 16 days. Miura scored his first J-League goal in 1993. Saturday’s was his 151st goal in J-League, closing on Masashi Nakayama’s record of 157 goals.
■ATHLETICS
Bolt runs season’s first 100
Olympic champion Usain Bolt, the world’s fastest man, ran his first 100m of the season in Spanish Town, Jamaica, on Saturday in a wind-aided 9.93 seconds in a meet at Foster College. Bolt, who set world records to win the 100m and 200m at the Beijing Olympics last August, won with a tailwind of 2.3m per second, edging his training partner Daniel Bailey of Antigua, who crossed in the same time. Running from lane four, Bolt trailed Bailey for the first half of the race but took control at 60m. The Olympic champion said he still has improvements to make. “I still have to work on my start,” Bolt said. “I’m just glad I got through this race injury free. I have a lot more work to do because I’m still not fit.”
■BASKETBALL
Pistons owner dies at 86
Detroit Pistons owner Bill Davidson has died at the age of 86, the team said on Saturday. Davidson had owned the Pistons since 1974 and won NBA championships in 1989, 1990 and 2004. He also won the 2004 Stanley Cup with the Tampa Bay Lightning, the NHL team he owned until last year and three titles with the WNBA’s Detroit Shock. Davidson was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame last year. The cause of death was not immediately released. “He will not only be remembered as a great owner but also as a person who made a difference in many people’s lives,” Pistons coach Michael Curry said in a statement.
■FOOTBALL
Police detain Stallworth
Cleveland Browns wide receiver Dante Stallworth was detained by police on Saturday after a car he was driving allegedly struck and killed a pedestrian in Miami, reports said. Station CBS 4 reported the incident, citing Detective Juan Sanchez of the City of Miami Beach. Stallworth has played seven seasons in the NFL. He signed a seven-year, US$35 million contract with the Browns after the 2007 season.
■FOOTBALL
Peterson joins Lions
The Detroit Lions acquired five-times Pro Bowl linebacker Julian Peterson from the Seattle Seahawks in exchange for defensive tackle Cory Redding and a fifth-round draft pick this year, the team said on Saturday. The 30-year-old Peterson has spent the last three seasons with the Seahawks, racking up 24.5 sacks. Peterson has 714 tackles, 46 sacks, eight interceptions, 15 forced fumbles and eight fumble recoveries in his nine-year NFL career. Redding was selected by Detroit in the third round of the 2003 NFL Draft. “Cory Redding is a guy we’ve had our eye on for some time,” Seahawks president Tim Ruskell said.
■FIELD HOCKEY
Canada to meet US in final
Canada ousted Argentina 4-3 in extra time on Saturday to meet the US in the field hockey final of the Pan American Cup. The US disappointed an enthusiastic crowd at Prince of Wales Country Club by beating host Chile 2-1. Argentina, the highest-ranked side in the tournament at No. 9, rolled through its pool in scoring 33 goals without conceding any. But Canada, which also upset Argentina in the 2007 final, scored first through Mark Pearson in the 20th minute and Lucas Vila leveled from a penalty corner just before halftime. Argentina then went ahead twice in the second half, only for Canada to equalize each time, the last by Gubbar Singh three minutes from the end of regulation time. Connor Grimes scored the winner in extra time. The winner of yesterday’s final qualifies for next year’s World Cup in New Delhi.
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