■BASEBALL
Angels buy pitcher Haren
The Los Angeles Angels have acquired starting pitcher Dan Haren from the Arizona Diamondbacks in exchange for three pitchers and a player to be named later. Left-hander Joe Saunders heads to the Diamondbacks along with minor league pitchers Rafael Rodriguez and Patrick Corbin. Haren is 7-8 this season with a 4.60 earned run average. The three-times All-Star has averaged 15 wins a season over the last four years. In eight seasons with St Louis, Oakland and Arizona, Haren is 86-70 with a 3.71 ERA. Haren said he was excited to head back west where he has family, but sad to leave his old teammates. Saunders, an All-Star in 2008 and the Angels second starter in their rotation, was 6-10 this season with a career high 4.62 ERA. Rodriguez, 25, is a right-handed relief pitcher with Triple-A Salt Lake and has 10 saves this season. Twenty-one-year-old Corbin is a left-handed starter and is 13-3 in 20 starts in Single-A.
■ BASKETBALL
Dream streak past Liberty
Angel McCoughtry scored 28 points and the Atlanta Dream went on a late 11-0 run to end a four-game losing streak with an 82-75 victory over the New York Liberty in WNBA in Atlanta, Georgia, on Sunday. Iziane Castro Marques had 21 points for the Dream, including eight in the decisive final streak. Erika DeSouza added 14 points and 10 rebounds, while McCoughtry also had 10 rebounds and six assists. Atlanta moved into second place in the Eastern Conference, one game behind Indiana. Meanwhile, at Seattle, Lauren Jackson had 16 points and nine rebounds to help the Storm cruise to their 20th victory of the season with a win over the Shock. With the win, the Storm became just the second team in league history to start a season 20-2 and just the fifth team to win 20 or more games in three consecutive seasons.
■TRIATHLON
Gomez sprint wins Hyde Park
Javier Gomez of Spain timed his final sprint to win the Hyde Park Triathlon on Sunday, finishing ahead of Jonathan Brownlee of Britain and overall leader Jan Frodeno of Germany in the fifth race of the world championship. Gomez, the 2008 world champion, pulled away from Frodeno, Brownlee and his brother Alistair Brownlee in the closing stages of the final 10km run to win by six seconds in a time of one hour, 42 minutes, eight seconds. “I felt like I was flying today,” Gomez said. Frodeno finished 22 seconds behind Gomez. Frodeno leads the overall standings with 2,766 points. Gomez is next with 2,573. There are two races left. Defending world champion Alistair Brownlee was taken to a medical tent after finishing 10th.
■BASEBALL
Hall inducts Dawson
Outfielder Andre Dawson had the stage to himself when he was the only player inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, on Sunday. Dawson became just the second player to be enshrined wearing a Montreal Expos hat and perhaps the last for a team that no longer exists. The Expos moved to Washington after the 2004 season and were renamed the Nationals. Former teammate catcher Gary Carter was inducted in 2003. The fleet-footed Dawson, known to baseball fans as “The Hawk,” played 21 major league seasons, the first 11 in Montreal followed by stints with the Chicago Cubs, Boston Red Sox and Florida Marlins. Dawson had waited nearly a decade for the Hall to call, finally voted in by members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America on his ninth attempt.
■SOCCER
Delegation visits Australia
A FIFA delegation began a three-day visit to Australia to inspect stadiums and other facilities for the country’s 2022 World Cup bid yesterday. The inspection team from soccer’s world governing body includes six delegates led by Chilean Football Federation president Harold Mayne-Nicholls. It also includes Danny Jordaan, chief executive of the organizing committee for the recently concluded World Cup in South Africa. Australia, the third stop on a tour of the nine countries that are bidding to host the 2018 or 2022 FIFA World Cup tournaments, was cleared last week by FIFA of wrongdoing. FIFA said it reviewed allegations that expensive gifts were provided to some FIFA Congress delegates in May 2008 — eight months before official campaigning began — but decided there were “no grounds to open a formal case.” Although it considered the matter closed, FIFA reminded Australia’s soccer federation about bidding rules. Yesterday, the FIFA team was treated to a traditional Aboriginal smoking ceremony welcome on the Sydney Opera House forecourt.
■ SOCCER
Wizards defeat Red Devils
Davy Arnaud and Kei Kamara scored first-half goals as the Kansas City Wizards beat Manchester United 2-1 in an exhibition match on Sunday in front of the largest crowd to see a soccer match in Kansas City. A crowd of 52,342 — the biggest for Manchester United on their North American tour so far — eclipsed the 37,319 who witnessed a World Cup qualifier in the city in 2001. Backup goalkeeper Eric Kronberg replaced Jimmy Nielsen at halftime and made five saves for the Wizards, who have not won an MLS title since 2000. Dimitar Berbatov converted a penalty in the 41st minute, after defender Jimmy Conrad was red carded for a dangerous tackle, Manchester United’s only goal. Arnaud scored in the 11th minute and Kamara’s header in the 42nd minute was the winner for the Wizards.
■ MOTORCYCLING
Injury sidelines Srichaphan
Paradorn Srichaphan being sidelined by injury is hardly a rare event, but on Sunday it was his new motorcycle racing career that was put on hold, not tennis. The former world No. 9 tennis player was entered in the 1,000CC Superbike category in the Pro Series Thailand Championship this weekend, but a doctor advised him to pull out because of a leg injury from a motorcycle crash in April. Paradorn, who officially retired this year after a chronic wrist injury kept him off the ATP Tour for three years, plans to remain involved in tennis, but also wanted to indulge a lifelong passion for racing.
■HORSE RACING
Harbinger storms to win
Harbinger stormed to an 11-length success in course-record time to land the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Ascot on Saturday, relegating stable mate and Epsom Derby winner Workforce to fifth place. Ridden by Olivier Peslier, the 4-1 second favorite, on his debut in Group 1 company, raced clear at the 400m mark and came right away from Irish Derby winner Cape Blanco (9-2). Harbinger beat the course record time by just under half a second in an electrifying display, which prompted one bookmaker to slash the four-year-old from 8-1 to even money favorite for the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe in October. It was a fifth success in the King George for trainer Michael Stoute, who first enjoyed a winner in the big race back in 1981 with the ill-fated Shergar.
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