■TENNIS
Peer wins Guangzhou title
Israel’s Shahar Peer won her first WTA singles title in three years yesterday, overcoming Italy’s Alberta Brianti 6-3, 6-4 to claim the Guangzhou Open. Ranked 57 in the world, the 22-year-old, whose claim to fame this year was being denied a visa to compete in the Dubai Open, made her move in the sixth game, breaking Brianti to lead 4-2. She then held serve and took the first set 6-3. The fifth seed kept her momentum going in the second set, exploiting some inconsistent serving by the Italian to grab an early break. She didn’t look back, racing to the title in 88 minutes. Eighth seed Brianti, 29, was playing in her first ever Tour final.
■ATHLETICS
Runner ‘forced to drink blood’
A former track athlete at Central Connecticut State University has sued the school, saying a coach forced him to drink blood as a kind of “tribal ritual.” The lawsuit filed this week by Kenyan Charles Ngetich claims that in 2005, track coach George Kawecki told Ngetich he’d seen a documentary in which a Kenyan group drank blood, and he wanted Ngetich to drink it. Ngetich refused, but claims Kawecki later gave him a cup of blood and demanded he drink it, which Ngetich did. Ngetich claims the incident was the start of mocking from his coach and teammates about his heritage. He claims resulting depression affected his performance, and he lost his scholarship. He is seeking damages of at least US$15,000.
■BOXING
Autopsy finds Gatti hanged
A second autopsy in Canada on Arturo Gatti found that the fighter died by hanging, not strangling, the daily La Presse reported on Saturday. Gatti, a former world champion, was found dead on July 11 in an apartment he was renting with his family in the Brazilian city of Recife. He was 37. Police initially arrested his Brazilian wife, Amanda Rodrigues, on suspicion of strangling him with her handbag strap as he slept following a drunken row. Rodrigues maintained her innocence, and was released when a judge ruled that Gatti likely committed suicide. But Gatti’s relatives claimed there was a coverup, and shipped his remains to Montreal last month for a second autopsy. According to the new postmortem examination, there were no injuries showing one or more other people could have hung the boxer, La Presse reported, without citing sources. There was no sign that Gatti was tied up or beaten, although investigators did not rule out the possibility that the boxer could have been drugged and then hung — “a difficult but not impossible operation,” La Presse said. Toxicologists found in Gatti’s body a substance that causes drowsiness that is sold in Brazil but not in Canada. Canadian specialists still need to contact their Brazilian counterparts to determine whether the amount of the product Gatti had taken was powerful enough to put him to sleep, the paper reported. Gatti, born in Italy but a naturalized Canadian citizen, had lived in the US with his wife and son.
■FOOTBALL
USC suffer surprise loss
The University of Southern California was beaten 16-13 by unranked upstart Washington in college football on Saturday, beaten by a late drive that must have looked familiar to the No. 3-ranked Trojans. Erik Folk kicked a 22-yard field goal with three seconds remaining and Washington’s fired-up defense stymied USC’s fill-in quarterback Aaron Corp. Regular USC quarterback Matt Barkley, who directed an epic game-winning drive to beat Ohio State last week, was out with a sore shoulder.
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