Cardiff stormed to the top of the English Championship as Michael Chopra’s hat-trick clinched a 3-1 win at Plymouth on Tuesday.
Former Sunderland striker Chopra gave Cardiff a fourth-minute lead and scored again in the 80th minute after rounding goalkeeper Romain Larrieu before completing his hat-trick with a penalty five minutes from time after Marcel Seip fouled Chris Burke.
Alan Gow, recently signed from Rangers, reduced the deficit and Cardiff’s Tony Capaldi was sent off late on, but Dave Jones’ side had done enough to go one point clear of second placed Middlesbrough.
Gareth Southgate’s Middlesbrough, relegated from the Premier League last season, ground out a 2-0 win at newly promoted Scunthorpe with two goals from Adam Johnson
In the 28th minute, Johnson took Gary O’Neil’s through ball and slotted home.
Johnson then missed a penalty early in the second half when Joe Murphy parried his shot, but he made amends in the 53rd minute when a second spot-kick was awarded, for Grant McCann’s challenge on the striker.
West Bromwich Albion won 3-2 at Peterborough to go fourth.
Luke Moore gave the Baggies a third-minute lead with a 20m shot before he doubled the score.
Chris Brunt added a third four minutes before half-time when he tapped into an empty net after Posh goalkeeper Joe Lewis had parried Shaun Cummings’ cross.
Peterborough pulled one goal back on the stroke of half-time through Craig Mackail-Smith’s close-range header before Aaron McLean slid in eight minutes into the second half to draw another back.
Mackail-Smith then had the ball in the net again but it was disallowed for a foul on Scott Carson.
Graham Dorrans was sent off at the death for the Baggies for his second bookable offense.
Bristol City claimed a narrow 1-0 win against QPR thanks to Nicky Maynard’s drilled shot as the Robins went up to fifth.
Sheffield United, beaten in the play-off final by Burnley last season, had to come from behind to draw 1-1 with Leicester at Bramall Lane.
Darren Ambrose scored twice and created another as he helped Crystal Palace to a 3-1 win at his old club Ipswich.
Watford won 4-2 at Nottingham Forest, while Paul Parry, Neil Mellor and Jon Parkin scored as Preston won 3-0 at Barnsley.
Coventry drew 0-0 at Doncaster and Blackpool and Derby also drew 0-0.
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