■Soccer
Team mafia-owned: minister
Togo’s sports minister said on Wednesday the fake national team that played Bahrain last week was made up of “unidentified players and their shadowy handlers” who belonged to a “mafia group.” Christophe Tchao said the team, which lost 3-0 at Bahrain’s National Stadium in Riffa on Sept. 7, did not have the necessary authorization from his ministry to represent the country in an international friendly. Tchao said a mafia group “aided and abetted them to leave Togo without authorization.” A former Togo soccer official said his signature was forged in the Aug. 17 letter to the Bahrain Football Association that set up the match. Kodzo Samlan said he left the federation in May, “so I could not have written that letter.”
■Rugby Union
Unions confirm HK match
The Australian and New Zealand rugby unions have confirmed the Oct. 30 Bledisloe Cup rugby match between the All Blacks and Wallabies will be played in Hong Kong as planned. In a joint statement released yesterday, chief executives Steve Tew of New Zealand and John O’Neill of Australia said 14,000 tickets have been sold for the match, which the teams will play en route to their tours of Britain. Recent reports suggested the match might be moved from Hong Kong because of slow ticket sales, but the chief executives said their unions remained committed to taking the match to Asia.
■Soccer
Grant puts holy day first
West Ham manager Avram Grant will miss his struggling side’s Premier League match away to Stoke City tomorrow so he can observe the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur, the club said on Wednesday. In a statement, West Ham said: “Out of respect for the traditions, heritage and religious obligations of the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur, Avram Grant will not be in the dug-out at Stoke City this Saturday. Dating back thousands of years, Yom Kippur — or Day of Atonement — is the most significant day of the [Jewish] year. It is a strict day of fasting and abstaining that forbids all followers to work. West Ham United fully respect and understand the situation. It is very unusual for the day to clash with the fixture list.” The Hammers statement added Grant would prepare and pick the side, but that assistant manager Zeljko Petrovic, senior coach Paul Groves and first-team coach Kevin Keen would be on the bench at the Britannia Stadium. Grant’s fellow Israeli and West Ham defender Tal Ben Haim could also be ruled out for similar religious reasons if he too observes the 25 hours of fasting and prayer, which start today.
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