■BASEBALL
Sport to have Rome home
Mayor Gianni Alemanno announced plans on Sunday to donate a parcel of land for a new, baseball-specific stadium that can host international events. It will be built in Tor Vergata, an area south of the city where there’s a campus for the University of Rome. “Rome doesn’t have a baseball stadium that can host international events and as a mayor, I felt I had to fill this deficiency,” Alemanno said in a statement issued following an executive meeting of the International Baseball Federation (IBAF). “I am positive baseball has a great potential in Rome,” Alemanno said. On hand for the meeting was Dan Bonanno, who represented Major League Baseball (MLB). “I think there can be an important cooperation between the city of Rome, IBAF and MLB,” Fraccari said. “I expect the synergy effect to be really strong.” The executive committee also announced that Roberto Fabbricini, the former director of Olympic teams for the Italian Olympic Committee, will take over as executive director of the baseball federation. He had worked for the Italian team until the Beijing Olympics.
■SOCCER
Top clubs face demotion
Two top Chinese clubs could be relegated for match-fixing and gambling, a league official said yesterday, amid a major crackdown to rid the troubled sport of corruption. Guangzhou GPC and Chengdu Blades face demotion to the second division, while second division Qingdao Hailifeng could be disqualified entirely, said Ma Chengquan, director of the Chinese Football League. “It’s just an initial punishment decision. There will be a hearing this afternoon — we will listen to the clubs’ statements,” Ma said. Qingdao Hailifeng also face a fine of 200,000 yuan (US$30,000), he said. A formal final decision would be announced later in the week, he said. The teams can appeal, “but the mountain of evidence unearthed during the nationwide crackdown on gambling means they have little chance of succeeding,” the China Daily said. “We were mentally prepared for such punishment,” the newspaper quoted Guangzhou head coach Peng Weiguo as saying. “We will fight on.”
■DRAG RACING
Flying tire kills fan
A fan has died after being hit by a tire from a crashing dragster at the National Hot Rod Association Arizona Nationals. The woman was watching a first-round run on Sunday at Firebird International Raceway in Chandler when Antron Brown’s Matco Tools/US Army dragster went out of control on the strip and its left rear tire and wheel came off. Alia Maisonet, a spokeswoman for the Gila River Indian Community, says the woman was airlifted to a Phoenix-area hospital for treatment and later died.
■SOCCER
President visits striker
Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo says Salvador Cabanas is hopeful, talking and exercising. The Paraguayan striker, who plays for Mexico’s Club America, is recovering after being shot in the head on Jan. 25 at a Mexico City bar. Lugo says he found Cabanas very lucid and with “a lot of hope” during their talk at the hospital on Sunday. Lugo, who is in Mexico for the Rio Group summit, showed off an America T-shirt that Cabanas signed. Lugo says the player is exercising on a stationary bike. Cabanas had been expected to lead Paraguay’s national team at the World Cup in South Africa this summer. The man suspected of shooting him is still at large.
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