■SPEEDSKATING
Champ berated by state
Olympic champion short track speedskater Zhou Yang has been chided by China’s deputy sports minister for thanking her parents but not her country after winning gold at the Vancouver Games last month. The 18-year-old, who won gold in the 1,500m and as part of the 3,000m relay team, said in Canada that she hoped her achievements would make life easier for her unemployed parents. “It is OK to thank your parents, but firstly you should thank the motherland. You should put the motherland first, not only thank your parents,” Chinese Vice Sports Minister Yu Zaiqing told the Southern Metropolis Daily. Her parents were awarded a 94m² apartment valued at 300,000 yuan (US$44,000) by the local government in their home city of Changchun after Zhou’s 1,500m triumph.
■GOLF
Couples wins Newport title
Fred Couples won his second straight Champions Tour title, shooting a six-under 65 for a four-stroke victory on Sunday in the Toshiba Classic. Couples, making his third start on the 50-and-over tour, had an 18-under 195 total on the Newport Beach Country Club course. Couples earned US$255,000 to push his tour-leading total to US$691,000. Ronnie Black (65) finished second. Tom Lehman (69) and Taiwan’s Lu Chien-soon (69) tied for third at 12-under.
■SWIMMING
Phelps breaks own record
Olympic star Michael Phelps broke his own US record in the 200-yard butterfly on Sunday, winning in 1 minute, 39.65 seconds at the Maryland State Championships at the US Naval Academy. Phelps set the old mark of 1 minute, 39.7 seconds in 2006 at Austin, Texas. He looked back to see his split times from four years ago and entered the race with a goal of breaking his US mark. “I wanted to try and go out and take a shot at it,” he said. “Coming off the last turn, I wanted to stay under as long as I could. That was clearly the difference.”
■HORSE RACING
Vodka forced to retire
Japan’s back-to-back horse of the year Vodka has been forced to retire after suffering a nosebleed in a warm-up race for this month’s Dubai World Cup. The Japan Racing Association described the six-year-old mare as a “jewel for Japanese and world horse racing” yesterday after hearing of the shock decision to end her racing career. “When we saw she had a nosebleed again after the race the owner [Yuzo Tanimizu] and I decided to retire her,” Vodka’s trainer Katsuhiko Sumii told reporters. Vodka, who captured public imagination in 2007 by becoming the first filly to win the Japan Derby in 64 years, also bled when winning the Japan Cup last November. She will now be bred to last year’s Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe winner Sea the Stars in Ireland.
■CYCLING
Rabon prevails in Murcia
Czech rider Frantisek Rabon held off a determined challenge from last year’s winner Denis Menchov of Russia to take the overall title in the Tour of Murcia on Sunday. Rabon — who had set up overall victory in Saturday’s time-trial when he won it — had Menchov back in second 38 seconds adrift, with British hope Bradley Wiggins third overall 53 seconds behind. US seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong finished seventh overall, over seven minutes off the pace. Sunday’s fifth and final stage was won by Dutchman Theo Bos.
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