■RUGBY UNION
Bull suspended over tackle
Reigning champions the Bulls will be without leading tryscorer Gerhard van den Heever for the Super 14 semi-finals after the wing was suspended for two weeks Monday for a dangerous tackle. Van den Heever was handed the ban after being yellow-carded and cited for the spear tackle on Canterbury’s Tim Bateman in Friday’s game at Loftus Versfeld. The Bulls won 40-35, to seal a home semi-final, but will be without Van den Heever for the regular season game against the Stormers on Saturday and next weekend’s semi at Soweto’s Orlando Stadium. The 21-year-old Van den Heever has scored eight tries in 12 matches for the Bulls this season and is second on the Super 14 try scorers’ list.
■SOCCER
Three join N Korean squad
J-League Kawasaki Frontale striker Jong Tae-se, nicknamed “Asia’s Wayne Rooney,” will lead a contingent of three Japan-born ethnic Koreans in North Korea’s World Cup squad. The two others are also J-League players, Omiya Ardija midfielder Ahn Yong-hak and Vegalta Sendai midfielder Ryang Yong-gi, a group affiliated to North Korea’s national football association said yesterday. Jong and Ahn helped the communist nation qualify for their second World Cup finals — the first in 44 years since they upset Italy with a single-goal victory to reach the quarter-finals in England in 1966.
■SOCCER
West Ham fire Zola
West Ham fired manager Gianfranco Zola yesterday after a season in which the club barely avoided relegation from the Premier League. The London club announced the departure of the 43-year-old Italian two days after the end of the season.
■BOXING
Pac-man, Mayweather talk
Negotiations for a megafight involving Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr are expected to begin again this week. The matchup involving boxing’s two most high-profile fighters was discussed at length earlier this year, but negotiations fell apart when the sides could not agree on drug testing protocol. Both took other fights, with Pacquiao beating Josh Clottey and Mayweather defeating Shane Mosley. Pacquiao’s trainer, Freddie Roach, said that discussions could begin as early as yesterday, once the results of the Philippine elections are in. Pacquiao is running for Congress.
■SOCCER
Beckham leads Cup bid
England’s World Cup bid team hope David Beckham’s star quality will dazzle FIFA when it hands over its official documents on Friday, and Princes William and Harry will lobby for support at this year’s tournament in South Africa. While an Achilles’ injury has ended Beckham’s hopes of playing at another World Cup this June, the Los Angles Galaxy midfielder will be leading the bid delegation to FIFA headquarters in Zurich on Friday as they try to win England the right to host the 2018 tournament. “The great thing about David is that if he suddenly appeared in any village on the planet, everyone would know who he was,” Football Association chairman David Triesman said on Monday. “People love seeing him and he will play a leading role in the presentation of the book.” Each country vying to host the 2018 or 2022 World Cups will hand over bid books containing technical details on Friday, with England’s taking up 1,752 pages. Technical inspections of all the countries are due by September, and the final vote by FIFA’s 24-man executive committee is on Dec. 2.
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