■BASEBALL
Ramirez to play in Taiwan
It was confirmed yesterday that MLB’s Los Angeles Dodgers will arrive in Taiwan on March 11 and that nine-time Silver Slugger Manny Ramirez will be with the team. The Dodgers will play three exhibition games with Taiwan Major League teams, giving local fans a chance to see Ramirez’s legendary batting power. With a career batting average of .313, 37-year-old Dominican-born Ramirez has 546 career home runs, ranking 15th historically and 4th among active players. His 21 career grand slams, second only to Lou Gehrig’s 23 historically, put him in top place among active players. Taipei City Government The team will play at the Tienmu Baseball Stadium on March 12 and March 13 and later in Kaohsiung.
■SOCCER
Former bosses arrested
Three former bosses of China’s graft-ridden soccer association have been formally arrested on corruption charges as the league pledged yesterday to cleanse itself of corruption. Former Chinese Football Association (CFA) boss Nan Yong, one-time vice chief Yang Yimin and just-sacked head of refereeing Zhang Jianqiang were arrested on Monday on charges of match-fixing and bribe-taking, Xinhua news agency reported. The three were detained in January and stripped of their posts in an expanding probe into graft in Chinese football that has made the game a laughing stock amongst beleaguered fans in the world’s most populous nation. “Nan Yong and the others have violated the law, they must bear the legal responsibility ... We fully support the actions of the police,” newly appointed CFA head Wei Di said in a statement posted on the association Web site. “What really hurts is that they were leaders of the China Football Association, this not only is painful, but means that we have a greater responsibility to bear.”
■RUGBY LEAGUE
Second Knight faces charges
A second Newcastle Knights player has been charged with drug dealing, throwing the Australian National Rugby League club into upheaval on Monday. The Knights said they had stood down forward Chris Houston indefinitely after he was charged with four counts of supplying prohibited drugs. The club said Houston was due to appear in court on April 13. Houston’s charges follow the terminating of teammate Danny Wicks’s A$200,000 (US$180,000) yearly club contract with three years remaining after he was charged with supplying drugs on Dec. 16 last year. Wicks is due next to appear in court on March 31.
■SOCCER
No apology for Materazzi
France legend Zinedine Zidane says he would “rather die” than apologize to Marco Materazzi for his infamous headbut of the Italian defender in the 2006 World Cup final. “I will ask forgiveness from football, from supporters, from the team,” he told Spain’s El Pais newspaper published on Monday. “After the match, I entered the dressing room and I told them ‘I’m sorry. It won’t change anything, but I’m asking for your forgiveness.’ But as for him [Materazzi] I cannot. Never, never ... It would be dishonorable... I would rather die.” After a verbal altercation, Zidane was sent off for headbutting Materazzi during the World Cup final in Berlin. “A lot of things happen on the pitch,” he told El Pais. “That sort of thing happens to me quite a lot. But in this case I couldn’t contain myself. It’s not an excuse, but my mother was ill, she was in hospital. More than once they have insulted my mother and I said nothing. But in this case …”
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