New Zealand’s All Blacks sealed an agreement with a Maori tribe yesterday to ensure the team can continue to perform its traditional war dance, or haka, before matches.
The eye-rolling, foot-stomping ritual, entitled “Ka Mate,” has been performed by the All Blacks since 1905, but was composed by a leader of the Ngati Toa tribe, which was granted intellectual property rights to it in 2009.
The tribe had threatened to trademark parts of the dance, raising the prospect of a legal battle ahead of the Rugby World Cup in New Zealand later this year.
Photo: AFP
However, the New Zealand Rugby Union (NZRU) said yesterday that it had reached an agreement with the Ngati Toa that would allow the All Blacks to maintain the tradition.
Ngati Toa representative Riki Wineera said the NZRU had assured the tribe, or iwi, that the haka would be used respectfully.
“One of the iwi’s long-standing concerns is that Ka Mate has been used in a belittling and culturally offensive way,” he said.
Details of the agreement remain confidential, although the NZRU has in the past expressed reluctance to pay for the right to perform the ritual, saying reducing it to a commercial commodity would demean it.
The haka is traditionally only performed by men and the Spice Girls attracted criticism in 1997 when they did an impromptu version during a concert in Bali.
A New Zealand bakery chain also came under fire for a 2007 commercial featuring animated gingerbread men doing the haka.
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