■SOCCER
Ronaldo faces DNA test
A Brazilian court has ordered dual World Cup winner Ronaldo to take a DNA test to resolve a paternity dispute. The demand was made after a Brazilian resident of Singapore claimed Ronaldo was the father of her four-year-old boy. Speaking about her child, Michele Umrazu, 27, said: “His hair, his eyes, his nose are the same as Ronaldo’s.” According to reports the woman had up to now believed her child’s father was her ex-fiance, an American, but when he agreed to a paternity test it came back negative. Michele Umrazu’s mother told Brazil’s Quem magazine that her daughter and Ronaldo had first met at the 2002 World Cup in Tokyo, meeting up again in August 2004, nine months before the baby was born.
■BASEBALL
Umpire hit by three fouls
Baseball umpire Marty Foster was struck by three foul balls on Wednesday and was taken for X-rays on his swollen and bruised left arm after San Francisco’s 5-2 victory over Arizona in Phoenix. Foster was hit twice on the arm and once in the mask, but he never left the game. He said X-rays were negative, but added he was to be seen again by a doctor later on Wednesday night for further evaluation on a stiff neck.
■CHESS
Kasparov leads Karpov 3-1
Garry Kasparov stretched his lead over Anatoly Karpov to 3-1 on Wednesday on the second day of an exhibition chess match commemorating the 25th anniversary of their marathon first title bout. Karpov, 58, won his first game of the unofficial tournament, which is being played in Valencia, Spain, after Kasparov abandoned the game. Kasparov, 46, rebounded to win the second game as Karpov ran out of time. On Tuesday, Kasparov won the first two semi-rapid games as Karpov struggled to manage his time.
■ICE HOCKEY
Coyotes to stay in Phoenix
The troubled Phoenix Coyotes franchise isn’t off to Canada any time soon following an emergency bankruptcy hearing in a US court on Wednesday. The Coyotes will play the 2009-2010 regular season at Glendale arena while the staff, coaches and players await the outcome of competing auction bids, including one from Canadian business tycoon Jim Balsillie. Balsillie, who wants to eventually move the team to Hamilton, Ontario, told the courts that he would keep the club in Phoenix this season if he won the auction.
The bankrupt National Hockey League franchise has been bleeding red ink since being moved to Arizona from Winnepeg in 1996.
■BADMINTON
No. 1 Lee loses in Japan
World No. 1 Lee Chong Wei of Malaysia failed to live up to his pre-match promise, losing to Indonesia’s Simon Santoso in the Japan Open badminton tournament in Tokyo yesterday. The top seed, who has been struggling with his old left knee injury, worked hard in the final game, clawing back from 5-12 to 19-19 before finally surrendering 19-21, 21-15, 21-19 in the second round. Lee, the champion in Tokyo in 2007, quickly left the court for treatment to his knee without talking to reporters. With the win, Santoso set up a clash against defending champion and teammate Soni Dwi Kuncoro, the winner over China’s Chen Long 21-19, 15-21, 21-14. In the women’s action, the 2007 champion Tine Rasmussen of Denmark crashed to China’s Wang Xin 15-21, 21-15, 21-14, but other seeds, China’s Wang Lin and Wang Yihan, and Pi Hongyan of France safely went through.
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