ATHLETICS
Powell pulls up lame
Jamaican former 100m world record holder Asafa Powell pulled up lame in an international meeting at Rabat, Morocco, on Sunday and is being evaluated, his manager said. “I am not too worried about it,” Powell was quoted as saying by manager Paul Doyle in an e-mail. “I was cautious in the race when I felt some tightness,” the manager related. “I am confident I will be ready and fit by the [Jamaican world championships] trials.” Powell must finish in the top three against a high quality 100m field at the trials to make the Jamaican team for the world championships in Daegu, South Korea, in August.
RUGBY UNION
McCaw’s bum foot flares up
The Canterbury Crusaders could be without skipper Richie McCaw for the rest of their Super Rugby campaign after his troublesome foot injury flared up again following the team’s 17-16 loss to the Queensland Reds last week. McCaw missed two months after surgery for a stress fracture in his right foot in February and has struggled for fitness since returning in April. A scan following the loss to the Reds had shown that a screw inserted during the surgery was irritating the bone and would cause the 30-year-old flanker to miss up to three weeks with only two rounds remaining in the regular season. “If he was to play through it he could risk further damage,” Crusaders coach Todd Blackadder told reporters.
BASEBALL
Dice-K fears for future
Daisuke Matsuzaka admitted on Sunday he feared for his Boston Red Sox future after learning he would have to undergo season-ending surgery on his right elbow. “I was told the ligament was torn and for the elbow to fully heal, an operation was the only option,” the Japanese pitcher told a news conference. “It was a shock, even though I was kind of prepared for the news. To be honest I feel a lot of anxiety right now. Many people told me the success rate for this kind of surgery is high, but it’s the first time for me and it worries me.”
BASKETBALL
Pistons look for new coach
Four days after buying the NBA’s Detroit Pistons, Tom Gores is looking for a new coach. John Kuester was fired as coach of the Pistons on Sunday after going 57-107 during two seasons in the job, both of which ended without trips to the playoffs. The Pistons won their third NBA crown in 2004 during a run of six consecutive runs to the playoff semi-finals or deeper, but slipped to 27-55 in Kuester’s first season guiding the club and 30-52 this past season. “Decisions like this are difficult to make,” Pistons president Joe Dumars said.
NASCAR
Keselowski wins in Kansas
Brad Keselowski held off Dale Earnhardt Jr to win Sunday’s NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Kansas Speedway and pick up his first victory of the year. Keselowski led the final nine laps, conserving just enough fuel to stave off Earnhardt and snap a 75-race winless streak. Earnardt finished second for the second week in a row in a fuel mileage race. Earnhardt appeared to have enough to make a late charge on Keselowski. That push never came — though Earnhardt did move up to third in the points standings. Denny Hamlin was third, followed by Jeff Gordon and Carl Edwards. Polesitter Kurt Busch led for 152 laps on Sunday and finished ninth. He had to stop for gas as the leader with 10 laps remaining.
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