■SOCCER
Team sacrifices lamb
Bulgarian club Pirin Blagoevgrad have sacrificed a lamb on their home pitch in the hope it will turn results their way, local media reported yesterday. Pirin have just returned to their ground, which was being repaired for several months, at the end of last month only to suffer a 3-1 loss to Chernomorets Burgas — their first defeat in nine league matches. Pirin then lost 2-0 at Lokomotiv Plovdiv last week to slip to 10th in the standings. The lamb was killed at the center of the field with goals then painted with the animal’s blood on Friday — a day before Pirin’s home match against Beroe Stara Zagora. “We just can’t afford losing again at our stadium,” coach Stefan Grozdanov was quoted as saying in the 7 Dni Sport daily. “But I think our footballers are feeling uneasy when playing at our pitch after the repair. They seem like stepping on pins,” he said.
■SOCCER
Winning streak ended
Borussia Moenchengladbach ended Eintracht Frankfurt’s three-game winning streak with a 2-0 Bundesliga victory in Frankfurt, Germany, on Friday. Marco Reus scored with a header in the sixth minute. Michael Bradley played a through ball to Raul Bobadilla, who chipped it over goalkeeper Oka Nikolov and Reus finished the move from close range. Defender Dante rose above Frankfurt’s defense to also score with a header in in the 56th. The win ended Moenchengladbach’s already fading relegation worries.
■CRICKET
Essex players investigated
Two Essex players are being investigated by police over allegations of “match irregularities,” the English club said on Friday, the opening day of the new county championship season. A statement from Essex Police read: “Following allegations received about two Essex County Cricket players involved in match irregularities, we have initiated an investigation and are working closely with Essex County Cricket Club and the English Cricket Board.” The Press Association understood the allegations to be related to betting, but there was no official comment from the county or the England and Wales Cricket Board. Essex Police refused to name the players under investigation.
■SOCCER
Threat made for World Cup
FIFA secretary-general Jerome Valcke said there had been a terrorist threat to the World Cup, but it would not stop organizers from holding the month-long soccer tournament. Valcke commented on Friday on writings in an online magazine that talked about “how beautiful” it would be if a bomb exploded at the match between the US and England in the city of Rustenburg. Valcke said FIFA had received information about the threat and World Cup organizers were working at “the highest level of security.” The comments appeared to come from a contributor to a militant e-magazine called Yearners for Paradise, not usual sites used by al-Qaeda and other groups to make threats. In the article, the author said he was not a spokesman for al-Qaeda.
■BOXING
Zaveck retains title
Slovenia’s Jan Zaveck on Friday retained his International Boxing Federation welterweight crown with a 12th-round technical knockout of challenger Rudolpho Martinez of Argentina in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Zaveck, 34, making his first defense since winning the title in December, now has 29 wins under his belt, including 16 knockouts, for just one defeat.
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