■ CYCLING
Frenchman wins sprint
French rider Stephane Poulhies edged a bunch sprint finish to win the second stage of the Tour de l’Ain in Saint-Vulbas, France, on Wednesday. It marked the first professional stage win for the 25-year-old Saur Sojasun rider who completed the 144.4km stage between Lagnieu and Saint-Vulbas in three hours, 22 minutes, nine seconds, nosing across the line just ahead of compatriot Romain Feillu of the Vacansoleil team. Feillu takes over the yellow jersey with a four second advantage over prologue winner Spaniard Haimar Zubeldia of the RadioShack team.
■ FOOTBALL
Fired lineman sues NFL
An NFL lineman who lost his starting job while serving a doping suspension filed a lawsuit against the league in federal court on Wednesday, claiming it knew the weight-loss supplement StarCaps contained a banned substance but didn’t tell players. Jamar Nesbit is an 11-year veteran who lost his starting job with the New Orleans Saints in 2008 when he chose to serve a four-game suspension after testing positive for bumetanide. Nesbit says he took StarCaps, which didn’t list bumetanide as an ingredient. Like a couple of Vikings players who were caught in the same situation, Nesbit says that NFL officials knew StarCaps contained bumetanide, but did not specifically notify players or the US Food and Drug Administration.
■ BOWLING
Fans induct Taylor Swift
Bowling fans have picked country star Taylor Swift as this year’s choice for celebrity induction into the International Bowling Museum and Hall of Fame. Swift barely beat pop star Justin Bieber to secure her lane in bowling history. They were among nine celebrities the Bowling Proprietors’ Association of America nominated for their public support of the sport. Swift has been spotted and photographed bowling with friends. The association, in making the announcement on Wednesday, said this was the first year the celebrity induction process has been open. Nearly 1.3 million votes were cast online.
■ BASEBALL
Mets pitcher arrested
New York Mets closing pitcher Francisco Rodriguez of Venezuela was charged with third-degree assault late on Wednesday night after scuffling with his father-in-law at Citi Field, police said. Rodriguez was arrested and being held at the ballpark early yesterday, police said. His father-in-law was in a hospital with a scrape on his face and a bump on his head. Several security guards, along with some women and children, were seen around the Mets’ family lounge near the clubhouse after New York’s 6-2 loss to Colorado. Rodriguez’s father-in-law had swelling above his right eyebrow.
■ CRICKET
Bert’s ashes prove elusive
Bert Sutcliffe was one of New Zealand’s finest cricketers. In death as well as life, he is proving a hard man to get out at Carisbrook. Sutcliffe scored many of his 17,447 first-class runs at the Dunedin stadium. When he died in 2001, aged 77, some of his ashes were scattered at Carisbrook, the rest interred beneath its turf. With the construction of a new Dunedin stadium, Otago Cricket sought permission from Sutcliffe’s family to re-inter his ashes at another Dunedin ground. However, finding Sutcliffe’s ashes has proved difficult because no one recorded exactly where they were interred. Sutcliffe’s son Gary said Thursday: “Dad’s ashes are proving as elusive as bowlers found taking his wicket.”
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