PREVIEW
▲Chile
▲Honduras
A family tragedy will inspire Honduras midfielder Wilson Palacios when he confronts Chile today in a Group H Nelspruit showdown.
Younger brother Edwin was kidnapped three years ago and although a ransom was paid, his body was discovered in a remote rural area.
“Everything I do in football is for Edwin. He is watching over me,” Palacios told Honduran reporters as the country prepares for only their second World Cup appearance.
Honduras proved a tough nut to crack in Spain 28 years ago, drawing twice and losing the other group game by a single goal, and this offers hope to Colombian coach Reinaldo Rueda.
“Chile play a different brand of football to most countries and you have to be very intelligent to match them,” is the warning he drills into a team prone to defensive lapses.
Since defeating Yugoslavia to finish third as hosts of the 1962 tournament, Chile have played 13 matches in four appearances without celebrating a victory. But hopes are high that a team which finished second behind Brazil in the qualifying competition for South Africa can not only defeat Honduras, but reach the second round.
Argentine coach Marcelo Bielsa favors a 3-3-1-3 system with the team swarming about the field like bees, trying to unsettle rivals. Bielsa is desperate for success after failing to take his homeland beyond the first round at the 2002 World Cup.
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