RUGBY UNION
Lambie earns ’Boks call-up
Twenty-year-old Patrick Lambie played the match of his life on Saturday to earn a call-up to the 30-man Springbok team for their tour of the UK and Ireland next month. There were also recalls for fullback Francois Steyn and scrumhalf Ruan Pienaar as under-fire coach Peter de Villiers named six uncapped players to face Ireland, Wales, Scotland and England on consecutive weekends. Lambie earned selection after scoring 25 points in a man-of-the-match performance for the Natal Sharks, who beat Western Province 30-10 in the Currie Cup final at Kings Park in Durban on Saturday. Lambie is joined by another 20-year-old flyhalf, Elton Jantjies, while there are also Springbok call-ups for the Sharks trio of wing Lwazi Mvovo, backrowers Keegan Daniel and Willem Alberts, as well as Free State front-rower Coenie Oosthuizen.
RUGBY LEAGUE
Kangaroos through to final
Australia overcame a sluggish start to outclass England 34-14 at AAMI Park in Melbourne yesterday to set up a Four Nations final with old foes New Zealand. The Kangaroos scored six tries to two and had the contest well won early in the second half to coast to victory in steady rain. Australia will first have to go through a “dead rubber” with New Zealand next weekend, before they meet again in the tournament final in Brisbane on Nov. 13. Following their 24-10 loss to New Zealand last week, England had to beat the Kangaroos to stay alive in the tournament, but will now finish their participation with a match against Papua New Guinea next Saturday.
BOXING
N’Dam outpoints Khurtsidze
France’s undefeated Hassan N’Dam unanimously outpointed Georgia’s Avtandil Khurtsidze to take the vacant WBA interim middleweight title in Paris on Saturday. The 26-year-old N’Dam, a Cameroon-born fighter recently granted French citizenship, received winning scores of 117-111, 115-114 and 115-114 from the judges to improve his record to 25-0. The 31-year-old Khurtsidze lost for the second time in 26 fights. N’Dam became the interim WBA champion. Kazakhstan’s Gennady Golovkin is the recognized titleholder. “He is a formidable opponent and he came here to win,” said N’Dam, who finished with cuts above both eyebrows. “He is very small and I received a lot of head butts, but I did my job, it was a fight between a bullfighter and a bull.”
VOLLEYBALL
Brazil win third straight
Beijing Olympic gold medalists Brazil overwhelmed the Netherlands to remain unbeaten with three straight wins at the World Women’s Volleyball Championship yesterday. Brazil, the runners-up to Russia at the previous championship in 2006, rallied to a straightforward 25-19, 25-18, 25-14 victory in Pool B round in Hamamatsu, Japan. Defending champions Russia, the 2006 bronze medalists Serbia, European champions Italy, Japan, the US and South Korea also remained unbeaten.
MOTOGP
Lorenzo wins in Portugal
Yamaha’s newly-crowned world champion Jorge Lorenzo of Spain won his third consecutive Portuguese MotoGP yesterday. The 23-year-old got the better of a close battle with the man he dethroned as champion, his teammate Valentino Rossi, with Honda rider Andrea Dovizioso grabbing third on the line. Lorenzo claimed his first MotoGP title after finishing third to Rossi in Malaysia earlier this month. The MotoGP season concludes in Valencia next Sunday.
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