■SOCCER
Star says stadium too big
Wales should rotate their international matches around the country and play at smaller grounds rather than stage them all at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium, captain Craig Bellamy said. Bellamy told reporters before their Group Four match against Russia in the 74,000-capacity stadium: “With the crowds we are getting at the moment, a smaller stadium will definitely help us.” Wales, who have no realistic chance of reaching next year’s World Cup finals in South Africa, had sold only 10,000 tickets by Tuesday. “If you’re getting 18,000 in such a big stadium and there’s such big gaps ... it’s hard to create a tempo from it because there isn’t much atmosphere there,” Bellamy said. In contrast, Northern Ireland manager Nigel Worthington, whose team played Slovakia in Belfast yesterday, said playing at their small Windsor Park ground was one of the big factors in their recent revival on the international stage. “We have 13,500 in and it is worth 80,000,” he said.
■SOCCER
Star’s dad gets jail sentence
The father of former Marseille captain Lorik Cana and player’s agent Christophe Mongai yesterday received suspended jail sentences of a year each following the transfer of the player from Paris Saint Germain (PSG) to the southern French club four years ago. Agim Cana was also fined 100,000 euros (US$145,000) after being found guilty of forgery and use of forgeries and complicity in concealing assets. He was cleared of illegally operating as a players’ agent and issuing death threats against a PSG official. The incident goes back to the summer of 2005 when the 24-year-old Albanian international, now captain of English Premier League side Sunderland, wanted a move to Marseille after finding himself out of favor in Paris. During the transfer, Agim Cana sent Mongai a bill and received half of his agent’s fee for the transaction, which amounted to 131,800 euros. Death threats that Agim Cana allegedly made against former PSG sporting director Jean Michel Moutier in a bid to speed up his son’s transfer were thrown out by the court, as was a charge of illegally acting as a players’ agent.
■BASKETBALL
Ex-player nabbed over arms
Greek authorities say a former basketball player and two other people have been arrested for possession of arms — including two rocket grenade launchers. Greek-Russian Michail Misounov, 45, and two Greeks aged 29 and 50 were arrested in Thessaloniki early on Tuesday, police said. They said the two empty launchers and a handgun were found in the suspects’ homes. Misounov is a former player with Aris, a Thessaloniki basketball team.
■RUGBY UNION
Long wait nearly over
All Blacks great Sir Colin Meads will receive his first Test cap in a special ceremony tomorrow, 52 years after making his international debut. Meads will be among 29 former All Blacks, including his brother Stan, who will be capped in the ceremony at Hamilton ahead of Saturday’s Tri-Nations test between the All Blacks and Springboks. Colin “Pinetree” Meads played his first Test against Australia at Sydney in May, 1957 and went on to play in 55 Tests, four as captain. All Blacks caps are awarded for a player’s first Test appearance but the tradition was interrupted by the second world war and was not reinstated until 1997. The New Zealand Rugby Union began earlier this year to hold ceremonies at which more than 400 former All Blacks will receive caps which have not previously been presented.
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