SOCCER
Ronaldinho dealt: Galliani
AC Milan and Flamengo reached an agreement on Saturday for Ronaldinho’s transfer to Brazil’s 2009 champions, the Italian club’s vice-president Adriano Galliani said. “I believe Ronaldinho’s chances of playing for Flamengo are at 99.9 percent,” Galliani told reporters in Rio following a meeting with Flamengo president Patricia Amorim. Ronaldinho was given permission by Milan to seek a move to a club back home after struggling to win a first team place with the Serie A leaders as he looks to enhance his hopes of a place in Brazil’s 2014 World Cup team.
BIATHLON
Flatland sprints to first win
Norway’s Ann Kristin Flatland scored a maiden World Cup biathlon win on Saturday in the sprint at Oberhof, Germany. Flatland, 28, recorded a time of 23 minutes, 29.5 seconds over the 7.5km course, including one penalty loop, as she saw off German double Olympic champion Magdalena Neuner, who finished 5.7 seconds adrift with her two penalty loops.
SOCCER
Norwegian ‘Rock’ dies
Thorbjorn Svenssen, Norway’s most-capped footballer, has died at the age of 86. Arne Dokken, sporting director of the Sandefjord Fotball club where Svenssen spent his entire career, said the former center back died in hospital on Saturday morning. “He had been ill for many years,” Dokken said. Svenssen, nicknamed “The Rock,” won 104 caps and captained Norway 93 times.
SKI JUMPING
Koch soars to victory
Austrian ski jumper Martin Koch won his first World Cup event in Harrachov, Czech Republic, on Saturday beating compatriot and Four Hills champion Thomas Morgenstern. Koch, 28 and a member of the Olympic gold medal winning team, jumped 211m and 213m for a total of 425.2 points to edge out Morgenstern (who jumped 196.5m and 190.5m for 421.9 points). Morgenstern — who has finished on the podium on every occasion bar two this campaign — maintained his huge lead at the top of the overall standings with more than a 350 points advantage over compatriot Andreas Kofler. Ammann lies third almost 400 points adrift.
SOCCER
Singapore mulls firing team
Singapore is considering disbanding its under-performing national soccer team in a development that has shocked the players, local media reported yesterday. The national team had a poor run last year, the final straw their failure to reach the semi-finals of the AFF Cup last month, prompting Football Association of Singapore (FAS) chief Zainudin Nordin to announce a radical overhaul. “It’s scary. I expected to hear calls to drop players after we went out of the [AFF] Suzuki Cup, but I never expected the whole team to be dropped,” forward Khairul Amri told the New Paper.
BULLFIGHTING
TV station stops coverage
Spain’s leading broadcaster said on Saturday it will no longer show the country’s centuries-old tradition of bullfighting in order to protect children from viewing violence. Spain’s state network, RTVE, lists its new ban on transmitting bullfighting programs under a chapter called “Violence with animals” in its latest stylebook and says it “will not broadcast bullfighting.” One of the reasons given by RTVE is that bullfights “generally coincide with hours protected or specially protected for young viewers.”
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