■ENGLAND
Wolves snap up duo
Premier League newboys Wolverhampton Wanderers signed Ecuador midfielder Segundo Castillo on a season’s loan from Red Star Belgrade on Monday. Castillo spent last season on loan at Everton, making eight league appearances, but the Toffees opted not to sign him on a permanent basis. Wolves have an option to sign Castillo permanently when the loan expires and Jez Moxey, the club’s chief operating officer, said: “He is a player who arrives with extensive experience at international level as well as one of the leading Premier League clubs in Everton.” Wolves have also clinched the signing of Austria striker Stefan Maierhofer from Rapid Vienna on a three-year deal. Maierhofer, who scored 23 goals in 37 games for Rapid last season, has joined for an undisclosed fee and the deal includes an option for the club to extend the contract with the tall frontman for a further season.
■ENGLAND
Gold shrugs off suggestions
Birmingham co-owner David Gold has shrugged off suggestions by the head of Croatia’s soccer federation that the Premier League club deliberately injured players to help England qualify for the World Cup. Midfielder Luka Modric broke his leg playing for Tottenham against Birmingham on Saturday and will miss next week’s World Cup qualifying match against England. With Arsenal striker Eduardo da Silva having spent a year on the sidelines after breaking his leg against the same opponents in February last year, Croatian soccer federation president Vlatko Markovic has suggested there may a conspiracy against his country. “It’s so ridiculous, it beggars belief,” Gold told the BBC yesterday. “To suggest for one moment that this is a conspiracy, particularly by Birmingham City Football Club, to go about injuring Croatian players is absolutely ridiculous. I can’t see an ounce of reality about it at all. I find it nonsensical.”
■DENMARK
Player loses leg
The family of FC Nordsjaelland defender Jonathan Richter says the player has had the lower part of his left leg amputated, six weeks after he was struck by lightning during a reserve game. Richter’s condition is improving and he will “very soon” be moved from the intensive care unit at a Copenhagen hospital, his family said in a statement posted yesterday on the Superliga club’s Web page. It said he “was making great progress.” Richter, 24, was struck during a brief thunder storm on July 20 while playing against second-tier team Hvidovre. He was placed in an induced coma for 10 days.
■ITALY
Spalletti quits after bad start
AS Roma coach Luciano Spalletti has quit the club after their poor start to the season, he told reporters yesterday. “I have given my resignation and the club have accepted it,” he said. Media said Roma, who lost their opening two league games, were in talks with Claudio Ranieri about taking the job. Reports said the former Juventus coach, born in Rome, had been seen meeting president Rosella Sensi. Former Udinese coach Spalletti was appointed in 2005 and helped a stylish Roma finish second in Serie A in 2007 and last year. They also won the Italian Cup in both those years but started last season badly and ended up sixth in the league. A 3-2 defeat at Genoa in this term’s league opener and Sunday’s 3-1 loss at home to Juventus sealed his decision to leave.
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