EQUESTRIAN
Jaguars get Trent Edwards
The Jacksonville Jaguars were awarded quarterback Trent Edwards off waivers on Tuesday after he was released by the winless Buffalo Bills. Edwards will compete with David Garrard for the starting quarterback role for the Jags, who face the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday in an AFC West divisional matchup. The 26-year-old Edwards was selected by the Bills in the third round of the 2007 NFL Draft, but struggled with injuries and consistency. He completed 29 of 52 passes with one touchdown and two interceptions in two games this season. Garrard has also struggled, completing 44-of-74 passes for 448 yards, four touchdowns and five interceptions this year.
EQUESTRIAN
Netherlands win gold
The Netherlands won the gold medal in team Grand Prix dressage at the World Equestrian Games on Tuesday, despite having a horse disqualified. The Netherlands scored 229.754 points, Britain had 224.767 and third-placed Germany finished with 220.595. It was the first time Britain had taken a medal in team dressage at the World Equestrian Games. Dutch rider Adelinde Cornelissen and horse Jerich Parzival were disqualified when the ground jury observed blood in the horse’s saliva, an automatic elimination.
FOOTBALL
Batch starting for Steelers
Quarterback Charlie Batch will start again this week as the undefeated Pittsburgh Steelers await the return of suspended signal-caller Ben Roethlisberger, the team said on Tuesday. “He is doing a nice job,” Steelers coach Mike Tomlin told the team’s Web site (steelers.com). “The guys have a great deal of confidence in him.” The Steelers (3-0) play the Baltimore Ravens (2-1) at Heinz Field in Pittsburgh on Sunday in the final game before starter Roethlisberger returns from a four-game NFL suspension for violating the league’s personal conduct pol. Batch completed 12 of 17 passes and threw for three touchdowns in leading the Steelers past the Tampa Bay Buccaneers 38-13 on Sunday. He gained a chance to start after Dennis Dixon, who played in the Steelers’ opening game, underwent knee surgery.
FORMULA ONE
Gascoyne’s contract extended
Lotus Racing has extended the contract of its chief technical officer Mike Gascoyne until 2015, amid legal challenges over the future of the Formula One team. The reborn Lotus, led by Malaysian airline tycoon Tony Fernandes, entered F1 this season. The team is yet to score a championship point, but had been developing for the longer term. In a statement yesterday, Gascoyne said it was “my intention to finish my career here.” Lotus Racing is currently involved in a legal struggle over the rights to the historic brand.
RUGBY
Brett Stewart acquitted
High-profile Australian rugby league player Brett Stewart was yesterday acquitted of a sexual assault charge against a 17-year-old girl in Sydney. Stewart was charged last year with assaulting the girl outside his house following a party for the club’s season launch in Sydney. A jury returned not guilty verdicts at a Sydney court for one sexual assault charge and two charges of indecent assault, Australian Associated Press said. The 25-year-old wept after the verdict was delivered. Stewart, one of the NRL’s poster boys last year, was stripped from the league’s advertising campaign following the charges against him and suspended for the first four rounds of the season for being drunk at the club’s launch.
CYCLING
Lost bike costs training
New Zealand’s Greg Henderson was still counting the cost of a lost luggage fiasco as the world championships got under way in Australia yesterday, with his training bike yet to be recovered after his flight from Europe. Henderson, who pulled out of the Delhi Commonwealth Games citing safety concerns last week, had been forced to rest for four days instead of training ahead of Sunday’s 262.7km road race in Melbourne and Geelong, local media said yesterday. His race bike had shown up this week but was damaged and unfit for competition. “The forks were smashed to pieces, British Airways have looked after my gear yet again,” New Zealand Press Association quoted him as saying. Henderson, who will ride with Julian Dean and Hayden Roulston on New Zealand’s team, sourced a replacement through his Team Sky team, but still lacked a backup after declining to order one following repeated assurances from the airline. “They says it’s coming, it’ll be tonight, so you don’t make plans. Then you get on the phone again ... I should have known better really,” he said.
CRICKET
England moved by Dachau
England’s cricketers concluded a pre-Ashes get-together in Germany with a visit to the memorial site of the Dachau World War II concentration camp on Tuesday, an England and Wales Cricket Board statement said. England’s five-day trip, which also included team-building exercises, was held in the southern German state of Bavaria. Dachau was the first of the concentration camps established by the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler in 1933 and was the forerunner for similar camps which, like Dachau itself, were used throughout World War II. Official records indicate 40,000 people died in Dachau during the 12 years it was under Nazi control. Last year England, ahead of their 2-1 Ashes series win on home soil, visited the World War I battlefield site at Flanders in Belgium.
CRICKET
Modi’s demise imminent
Suspended Indian Premier League (IPL) chief Lalit Modi was to be stripped of his posts by the country’s powerful cricket board yesterday, an official said in Mumbai, capping his incredible demise. Modi was suspended as the IPL chairman in April by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), owners of the hugely popular Twenty20 IPL tournament, following allegations of corruption, indiscipline and money-laundering. He was also suspended as one of the five vice-presidents of the BCCI and removed as chairman of the T20 Champions League, a separate club tournament organized jointly by India, Australia and South Africa.
CYCLING
Emma Pooley makes history
Emma Pooley blitzed a strong field in Australia to become Britain’s first women’s time trial world champion on Wednesday. Pooley powered through the 22.9km course in the port city of Geelong in 32 minutes, 48.44 seconds to finish 15.7 seconds faster than German silver medalist Judith Arndt. Linda Villumsen of New Zealand took bronze. Pooley, who took silver in the time trial at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, had to overcome a last-minute hitch when race officials found a discrepancy with her bike just before the starting line and ordered her to change it. French cycling great Jeannie Longo-Ciprelli defied her 51 years with an extraordinary ride to finish fifth, ahead of a field of riders half her age.
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