■BASEBALL
Ham Fighters floored by flu
The entire squad of Japan’s Nippon Ham Fighters baseball team is being quarantined and tested for H1N1 influenza after three players contracted the virus. Team officials said yesterday they had ordered all players and coaching staff to check in to a Sapporo hospital for screening after six more players complained of high fever. The Fighters have so far ruled out canceling games as a precaution. Six sumo wrestlers and officials and a member of Japan’s under-19 women’s soccer team have also picked up the H1N1 flu over the past week. Japan confirmed its third fatality from the disease on Wednesday in Nagoya.
■SOCCER
Ipswich to honor Robson
English Championship club Ipswich Town will rename the North Stand of their Portman Road stadium after former manager Sir Bobby Robson, who died of cancer aged 76 last month. Robson transformed Ipswich into a significant force during a 13-year spell that included winning the FA Cup and UEFA Cup before leaving to coach England in 1982. The club plans to unveil the Sir Bobby Robson Stand at a ceremony on Sept. 26 before the game against Newcastle, who are also closely associated with Robson after his spell as manager at St James Park. Chief executive Simon Clegg said: “The overwhelming majority wanted the Sir Bobby Robson Stand. With the North Stand being seen as the heart of the club and of the fan base, the fans feel this is the right stand to be renamed.”
■RUGBY
Melbourne to vie with Kings
The Australian city of Melbourne will bid against South Africa’s Southern Kings franchise for the 15th Super rugby team when the competition expands in 2011, rugby authorities said yesterday. “Both applicants have been invited to provide more information to SANZAR [South Africa New Zealand and Australia Rugby] including a formal application for entry and business plan,” SANZAR said in a statement. SANZAR imposed a Sept. 25 deadline to receive the final bid documents, with a decision on the location of the team due to be announced by October, the rugby body said. The revamped competition in 2011 will see 15 teams split into three conferences, one in each country, with the new team to play in the Australian conference though SANZAR said it did not need to be based in Australia. South Africa’s Southern Kings, a combined Eastern Province, Border and South Western Districts franchise, would face a logistical challenge fielding a team in the Australian conference. Australia has four teams in the current Super 14 competition, one less than New Zealand and South Africa, and is considered the favorite for the expansion side.
■BOXING
Naito faces bad boy Kameda
Japan’s WBC flyweight champion Daisuke Naito is set to fight self-styled boxing bad boy Koki Kameda in an explosive grudge match in November. The bout between the popular Naito and the eldest of the controversial Kameda boxing brothers has been scheduled for Nov. 29 in Tokyo, Japanese media reported yesterday. Bad blood exists between the 34-year-old Naito and the brash Kameda, 12 years his junior. Naito beat Kameda’s younger brother Daiki in an ugly brawl that ended in farce in 2007, the challenger picking up Naito and slamming him to the canvas. Daiki was banned for a year while Koki, working in the corner, escaped with a warning after TV microphones picked up his advice to elbow Naito in the eye.
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