■ATHLETICS
Bolt rockets out 200m
Triple Olympic and world champion Usain Bolt ran the fourth-fastest 200m of all-time with a blistering 19.56 second sprint in front of his home fans at the Jamaica International Invitational in Kingston on Saturday. Only Bolt (twice) and former world record holder Michael Johnson have ever clocked faster times. The Jamaican’s world record stands at 19.19 seconds, which he set at last year’s world championships in Berlin, and his latest effort was all the more impressive as it was run into a headwind of 0.8m per second. American world bronze medalist Wallace Spearmon also dipped under 20 seconds, running 19.98 seconds to finish a distant second.
■KENTUCKY DERBY
Super Saver wins in mud
Calvin Borel guided Super Saver through the mud to victory in the 136th Kentucky Derby in Louisville, Kentucky, on Saturday to give trainer Todd Pletcher his first Derby win after 24 fruitless attempts. For Borel, it was a third triumph in four years in the venerable race, the first jewel in US flat racing’s Triple Crown. Borel piloted 50-1 longshot Mine That Bird to a stunning triumph last year, and won in 2007 aboard Street Sense. On the treacherous mud at Churchill Downs, Borel delivered another superb ride on the rail, stalking the leaders before making his move into the stretch to cruise to the victory. Super Saver went off as the second-choice behind favorite Lookin At Lucky in the 2km race. Lookin At Lucky, trained by Bob Baffert, was hindered by his unfavorable post on the rail and finished sixth.
■BOXING
Marquez to face Diaz
Five-times world champion Juan Manuel Marquez will defend his WBA and WBO lightweight titles against Juan Diaz in Las Vegas on July 31 in a rematch of their furious slugfest last year. Mexican Marquez stopped Diaz in the ninth round in Houston in February last year to claim the vacant WBA and WBO belts. Diaz dominated the early rounds before Marquez turned the tide, swarming after his opponent in the eighth and ninth until the referee halted the contest. “Our fight was the fight of the year in 2009 and it may be the fight of the year again in 2010,” Marquez (50-5-1, 37 knockouts) told a news conference at the MGM Grand Hotel & Casino on Saturday. Diaz (35-3, 17 KOs) viewed his sequel with Marquez as a chance for redemption. Marquez, widely regarded as the world’s top lightweight, has not been in the ring since he lost a non-title welterweight bout to Floyd Mayweather Jr in September last year after moving up two weight classes. Diaz, who held the world lightweight title from 2004 to 2007, has lost three of his last five fights.
■ICE HOCKEY
Staal taken out by surgery
Pittsburgh center Jordan Staal has undergone surgery to repair a cut tendon in his right foot and is not expected to play today when the Penguins meet the Montreal Canadiens in Game Two of their Eastern Conference semi-final series. “He is not ruled out for the remainder of the playoffs,” coach Dan Bylsma told the NHL’s official Web site, adding that the injury status was day-to-day. Staal was hurt in a collision with Montreal’s PK Subban in the second period of the Penguins’ victory in Friday’s series opener. The Canadiens’ best all-round defenseman Andrei Markov will miss today’s game after suffering what the team described as a “lower body injury” during Game One’s first period. Markov, a key to the Canadiens’ penalty kill unit, returned to Montreal after the game and was seen by team doctors on Saturday.
■MOTORCROSS
World No. 2 Mcfarlane dies
Australia’s former world motocross No. 2 Andrew McFarlane died in a crash at the country’s national championship in Melbourne yesterday, organizers said. McFarlane suffered severe head injuries in a practice lap crash and despite paramedics’ efforts to revive him, he died at the track at the State Motorcycle Sports Complex in Broadford, north of Melbourne, organizers said. “Ladies and gentlemen, it is with great regret that we announce the passing of Andrew McFarlane,” event manager Kevin Williams said on the event’s live Web feed. McFarlane, 33, returned to Australia last year after nine years competing on the world motocross circuit in Europe and the US and finished second on the world championship circuit in 2005. Ahead of yesterday’s event, the event’s Web site said McFarlane was expected to retire from racing after this season. Motorcycling Australia and Victoria Police have both launched investigations into the accident. McFarlane is survived by his wife Natalie and their young daughter.
■ATHLETICS
Zurich named host city
Zurich was named host city for the 2014 European athletics championships on Saturday. “Athletics is a hugely popular sport in Switzerland and we have been assured today that we can look forward to a fantastic event,” European Athletics president Hansjoerg Wirz said in a statement. This year’s championships will take place in Barcelona from July 26 to Aug. 1. The 2012 event takes place in Helsinki.
■BOXING
Huck defends against Minto
Germany’s WBO cruiserweight world champion Marco Huck defended his title for the third time after challenger Brian Minto was forced to retire at the start of the tenth round in Oldenburg, Germany, on Saturday. Huck, 25, was in control from the first round and put his opponent from Butler, Pennsylvannia, on the canvas twice in the third. Although Minto battled on bravely, by the start of the tenth, referee Robert Byrd had seen enough and stopped the fight. The win leaves Huck with a record of 29 wins, with 22 knock-outs and just one defeat. This was 35-year-old Minto’s fourth defeat of his career.
■CYCLING
Wegmann boosts team
Fabian Wegmann handed his struggling Milram cycling team a boost in their quest for a new sponsor by sprinting to victory in the Frankfurt Grand Prix semi-classic in Frankfurt, Germany, on Saturday. Milram is the last remaining German-backed team in the professional peloton and, with their sponsor — a dairy company — ending its deal at the end of the year, the team is currently battling to find a replacement. Wegmann’s second successive victory, after 201.7km of racing, the German winning ahead of Belgians Geert Verheyen and Bert Scheirlinckx, will provide a timely boost for team bosses as they continue to court potential sponsors. Gerry van Gerwen, the manager of Team Milram, said: “This repeat win in Frankfurt is unbelievably important for our team, especially as it looked at one point as if we could not possibly win.” His win also comes in the wake of a five-week layoff because of a fractured collarbone. However, Wegmann was quick to pay tribute to the hard work of teammates Niki Terpstra and Christian Knees. “Winning here last year was a dream, so repeating my success is simply unbelievable,” Wegmann said.
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