■CRICKET
Prisoners protest IPL TV ban
Hundreds of inmates at a prison in Kolkata have gone on hunger strike after they were not allowed to watch Indian Premier League cricket matches, officials said yesterday. B.D. Sharma, the inspector general of West Bengal prisons, said the protest began after guards rejected prisoners’ demands to be able to watch the matches that are being broadcast on a private channel. “They are free to watch the national channels aired by the state-run network, but we can’t allow inmates to watch private channels for security reasons. We have to go by the rules,” Sharma said. The protest, by 500 inmates at the Alipore Central Jail in Kolkata, was continuing yesterday, Sharma said.
■SOCCER
Under-fire keeper speaks out
Liverpool reserve goalkeeper Charles Itandje, banned for 14 days for inappropriate behavior during the Hillsborough memorial service, said British media had blown the affair out of proportion. Television footage showed Itandje smiling at a ceremony for the 20th anniversary of the Hillsborough tragedy, where 96 Liverpool fans died in a crush while attending an FA Cup semi-final. “It is a 30-second video montage that was given senseless proportions. My behavior should be judged over a one-hour video,” Itandje told Sunday’s French sports daily Aujourd’hui Sport. “You know the papers here [in Britain], they do a lot with not much. I even heard I was dancing!” Itandje added he did not feel liked at Anfield. “What happened will not do much to change my situation at the club since I am already on the transfer list,” he said. “I don’t want to be paranoid but I hope this whole story is not linked to my situation at the club. I was supposed to leave last summer. I am kind of the unwanted player in the squad.”
■SOCCER
President slams own fans
Action must be taken to end Italian soccer’s culture of racism, Juventus president Giovanni Cobolli Gigli said on Sunday. Inter goalscorer Mario Balotelli was racially abused by some home fans during Saturday’s 1-1 draw at Juve. “In the name of Juventus and the great majority of our fans, I express a firm condemnation of the racist chants against Inter player Mario Balotelli,” Cobolli Gigli told Italy’s ANSA news service. A section of Juve fans sang “a black Italian does not exist” toward Balotelli on Saturday. The 18-year-old is of Ghanaian descent but was born in Palermo.
■SOCCER
Ref fails to turn up for game
An Argentine third division game was called off on Sunday because nobody told the referee he had been selected to take charge, officials and media reports said. A club official said referee Ariel Montero was sleeping at his home, nearly 600km away, when worried colleagues called him two hours before kick off to ask his whereabouts. The Clarin newspaper said that around 1,000 fans had traveled to see the game between Alumni de Villa Maria and Racing de Cordoba. “The linesmen were in the hotel and Montero hadn’t arrived and so they started to get worried,” Alumni president Guillermo Morelatto said. “They called his house and he didn’t know anything. He was sleeping. Apparently, the Council [championship organizers] said that they hadn’t told him. The assistants spoke to him and he said he hadn’t been told. There was a mix-up.” Clarin said that Racing refused to accept a substitute official and the police would not allow the kick off time to be put back to give Montero time to arrive.
■BASEBALL
Beckett won’t miss game
Josh Beckett’s suspension has been reduced to five games from six, meaning the Boston Red Sox pitcher won’t miss his scheduled turn in the rotation. The results of Beckett’s appeal were announced on Sunday. He was suspended for throwing near the head of Los Angeles’ Bobby Abreu last Sunday. He will start on Saturday against the New York Yankees. Jon Lester is now scheduled to pitch the series opener on Friday. Beckett (2-1) pitched six innings in Boston’s 6-4 win over the Orioles on Saturday.
■HORSE RACING
Vets probe horse deaths
Veterinarians are trying to find out why at least 14 polo horses died in a short time before their match at a Florida tournament. The horses from the Venezuelan Lechuza Caracas team fell ill on Sunday shortly before they were to play in a match at the US Open Polo Championship in Wellington. Veterinarian Scott Swendlin told the Palm Beach Post that some of the horses died immediately, while others struggled for about 45 minutes. Witnesses said the horses began breathing heavily and stumbling while veterinarians quickly tried to hook up intravenous lines and cool them down. The horses’ carcasses were taken to a state laboratory for necropsies. Results were not yet available. “They started getting dizzy,” polo club spokesman Tim O’Connor told the Palm Beach Post. “They dropped right onto the grass.”
■TENNIS
Mantilla wins return match
Spain’s Felix Mantilla, who spent two years bravely battling skin cancer, made an emotional return to tennis on Sunday, winning the ATP Champions Tour title in Barcelona, Spain. The 34-year-old Mantilla saw off compatriot and former French Open champion Albert Costa 6-4, 6-1 to clinch the opening event on this year’s seniors tour. The former top 10 player, who won the ATP claycourt title in Barcelona in 1999, was diagnosed with skin cancer in 2006 after undergoing tests on a mole on his back. He made a brief comeback before retiring, but went on to win his battle against the disease and be given a clean bill of health. “I didn’t think I’d be playing tennis like this again,” Mantilla said. “When I got my illness, I felt like I was retired and that it was finished. But then they gave me the possibility to come here and to play on the ATP Champions Tour and I thought Why not?’ It’s always nice to play your sport whilst having fun.” As well as playing on the seniors tour, Mantilla has also been working for Tennis Australia as a talent-spotter for the last year and he now spends half of the year living in Australia working with young players.
■SPORTS CAR RACING
Ullrich enjoys first win
Retired former Tour de France winner Jan Ullrich enjoyed his first success in his second career as a sports car driver in a race at the famous Nurburgring circuit on Sunday. The 35-year-old German notched up his first driving success at the wheel of a BMW 335 in the Diesel category of the second leg of the endurance championship. “I felt more confident lap after lap, I’m really happy,” he said. Ullrich won the 1997 Tour and was a multiple runner-up behind Lance Armstrong before retiring from cycling after being sacked by his T-Mobile team in 2006. His dismissal was because of his alleged links with Eufemiano Fuentes, the Spanish doctor at the center of the Puerto drugs affair.
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