SOCCER
Mainz beat ’Gladbach
Mainz striker Andre Schuerrle scored a late goal to seal his side’s 1-0 win over bottom side Borussia Moenchengladbach in the German league in Berlin on Friday to keep his team on course for a place in Europe. Schuerrle, 20, who has forced his way into the Germany squad on the strength of his performances this season, struck in the 87th minute with a superb goal that keeps his side fifth in the table. With four games to go, fifth in the German league will give Mainz a place in the Europa League when the season ends on May 14, and they now have a five-point lead over sixth-placed Nuremberg. Former German champions ’Gladbach took a step closer to relegation as the defeat leaves them four points away from safety, but there is still all to play for with just seven points separating the league’s bottom five clubs.
GOLF
Schwartzel makes the cut
Newly crowned Masters champion Charl Schwartzel narrowly made the cut in Kuala Lumpur yesterday to join joint leaders Rory McIlroy and Alexander Noren in the third round of the Malaysian Open. Defending champion Noh Seung-yul of South Korea was not as lucky when the second round of the rain-disrupted tournament was completed yesterday. Officials were considering extending the tournament by an extra day because of bad weather. Schwartzel and Noh were among 77 players who were unable to complete their second round on Friday after rain and lightning halted play for nearly three hours. With the cut set at 1-over 145, Schwartzel survived with a 144 after shooting a second-round 71. Noh was 145. Northern Ireland’s McIlroy shrugged off his recent final-round collapse at the Masters, sinking eight birdies on Friday to lead the tournament with Noren of Sweden at 11-under 133. The pair are a stroke ahead of England’s Simon Dyson. Stephen Gallacher of Scotland, 17-year-old Italian Matteo Manasserro and Australia’s Brett Rumford are tied for third at 137. World No. 1 Martin Kaymer of Germany is three-under 141. Officials from the Asian and European Tours — who co-sanction the tournament — are expected to decide today whether to extend the Malaysian Open to tomorrow for the first time ever. In 2006, the tournament at the Kuala Lumpur Golf and Country Club was shortened to 54 holes because of heavy rain.
SOCCER
Mourinho refuses to speak
Real Madrid coach Jose Mourinho turned up at a press conference on Friday on the eve of his side’s league clash against archrivals Barcelona, but refused to speak, leaving it up to assistant coach Aitor Karanka to field reporters’ questions. “Jose Mourinho will not answer any question,” a club spokesman said at the start of the news conference, causing many journalists to abandon Real’s press center in protest. Karanka, 37, was left to justify the Portuguese coach’s decision to remain mute. “Every time he speaks, everything he says gets magnified, he does not want his words to be magnified,” he said as a stony-faced Mourinho sat beside him and faced the journalists who stayed at the press conference. Karanka rejected suggestions that Mourinho’s refusal to talk was disrespectful of Real fans or would soil the club’s image. Mourinho, 48, was slammed for disrespecting the media after he failed to show up to a post-match press conference as scheduled after Real beat Athletic Bilbao 3-0 on April 9. He was replaced by Karanka at the press conference.
CYCLING
Contador punctures twice
Alberto Contador’s chances of winning the Tour of Castilla and Leon suffered a blow when the triple Tour de France winner sustained two punctures during Friday’s mountainous third stage. The Saxo Bank-SunGard rider made it back into the leading group after a first puncture on the penultimate climb of the 157km stage. Contador then got another puncturee 2km from the finish line to slip almost three minutes behind Dutch leader Bauke Mollema in the overall standings. “I could not do anything about that, so I chose to finish the stage calmly and I hope I will have more luck in tomorrow’s time trial,” the 26th-placed Spaniard said.
BOXING
Sturm to face Macklin
Germany’s WBA world champion Felix Sturm will defend his middleweight title against the UK’s Matthew Macklin on July 2 in Cologne, Germany, it was announced on Friday. “This will be one of my toughest fights because I know I can only win against Macklin when I am in top form,” Sturm said. The 32-year-old Sturm will be defending his title for the tenth time, having won the belt in April 2007. He has 35 wins in his career with 15 knockouts and two defeats. Macklin, dubbed “Mack the Knife,” is No. 3 in the WBA rankings. The 28-year-old from Birmingham has 28 victories with 19 knockouts and two defeats.
BOXING
Argument ends in death
An argument about the respective merits of US boxing legend Mike Tyson and Ukraine’s Klitschko brothers ended with a Russian college teacher stabbing his friend to death, investigators said on Friday. Nikolai Makeyev, a teacher in the Siberian city of Tyumen, was having drinks with two other men in his apartment when the argument broke out, the regional investigating committee said in a statement. “Makeyev said that Tyson would come out as winner, but his guest accused him of a lack of patriotism. The host did not like that and he fatally stabbed the victim several times in the back,” it said. The other guest, Makeyev’s friend, managed to flee to his own apartment though he also had stab wounds, and his wife called the police.
SOCCER
All Whites to play Mexico
The New Zealand All Whites will play an international friendly against CONCACAF champions Mexico in Denver, Colorado, on June 1, New Zealand Football confirmed yesterday. They last clashed a year ago in the lead-up to the World Cup when Mexico won 2-0 before 90,000 fans in Los Angeles and New Zealand coach Ricki Herbert is expecting another “intimidating” crowd at Denver’s 76,000-seat stadium. “There’ll be very little neutral about the venue,” Herbert said. “Mexico were playing in front of a home crowd in Los Angeles and it’ll be exactly the same in Denver, but that’s great. We could be back in this part of the world in 2013 trying to take that last step to Brazil, so we want another taste of that type of intimidating environment.” FIFA will conduct a draw in July to see whether the winner of New Zealand’s Oceania group will play off against Asian, North American or South American opposition during two legs for a place in the 2014 FIFA World Cup.
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