TENNIS
Li Na rejects job offer
Li Na, the first Chinese Grand Slam singles title winner after her success at the French Open, rejected an offer to take up a government post — the latest in a series of rewards from her country. The 29-year-old returned to China to a hero’s welcome after reaching a career-high world No. 4 ranking following victory at Roland Garros last month, where she defeated Francesca Schiavone. The government in her native Hubei Province in particular has showered her with honors and wanted to appoint her deputy head of the provincial tennis administration center, Xinhua news agency reported. “I heard about it, but haven’t taken it seriously. I am not capable of managing others. Even if I do, I can only handle my husband, Jiang Shan,” Li was quoted as saying in the report. “In addition, I am still playing now. I don’t have the energy for other things right now.” Li pocketed a 600,000 yuan (US$92,000) check from the Hubei government on top of the US$1.65 million in prize money she got for taking the French Open title.
SOCCER
Olympic skipper probed
The captain of South Korea’s Olympic squad has been questioned by prosecutors investigating a widening match-fixing scandal that has rattled the professional K-League, a spokesman said on Tuesday. Hong Jeong-ho, a 20-year-old defender for Jeju United, has been questioned daily by prosecutors since Sunday, Jeju United spokesman Kim Dong-nam said. Hong was approached by a broker last month to take part in match-fixing, but immediately rejected the offer, the spokesman said. “Hong flatly denied he had committed any wrongdoing,” he said. Eleven players have so far been charged with taking money from gambling brokers in return for allowing their teams to lose. Another player who was implicated in the scandal committed suicide. Of the 11 who have been charged, all but one have been banned for life from the K-League.
SOCCER
I’m no Abramovich: tycoon
A Chinese real-estate tycoon who pledged to spend 500 million yuan to boost soccer in the country over the next three years has taken offense at comparisons with Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich. Wang Jianlin, the chairman of Dalian Wanda, said the path to his fortune had been nothing like that taken by the Russian oligarch. “It’s a shame to be compared to the Russian billionaire. I feel ashamed to be mentioned with him,” he said. “He accumulated his wealth by monopolizing his country’s natural resources,” Wang was quoted as saying by the China Daily newspaper yesterday. “I set up my business empire step by step, competing fiercely in the market.” Wang said he would not use Chinese soccer as his private recreation. The Dalian chairman said investment in Chinese soccer was “necessary support to push it out from the bottom.”
RUGBY UNION
World Cup sales on track
Rugby World Cup organizers in New Zealand said yesterday that ticket sales for the tournament had reached 1 million and were on track to reach an overall target of 1.35 million. Rugby New Zealand chief executive Martin Snedden said there had been strong demand from fans in recent weeks as tickets for matches moved from Christchurch after February’s devastating earthquake went back on the market. More than 100,000 other tickets had been sold since Monday, when the final tranche of tickets were released. “This is a fantastic result and [it] is about where we expected to be with little over two months until the tournament kicks off,” Snedden said.
TENNIS
Venus struggles to return
Venus Williams still has a lot of work ahead to recapture the form that has made her a seven-time Grand Slam champion. After a fourth-round Wimbledon exit, Williams lost in singles and doubles before helping the Washington Kastles to a 21-18 World TeamTennis overtime victory on Tuesday over reigning champion Kansas City. Williams, 34th in the WTA rankings, lost 5-4 to 66th-ranked Christina McHale in a one-set singles matchup of the No. 2 and No. 3 Americans and fell 5-1 in doubles alongside Australian Rennae Stubbs against McHale and Madison Brengle. However, Williams, showing no sign of the hip injury that sidelined her from the Australian Open until just before Wimbledon, joined India’s Leander Paes for a 5-3 mixed doubles triumph and hit two overtime forehand winners on the deciding points. “I feel good about my game. Me being here means I’m healthy enough to play,” Williams said. Williams, a five-time Wimbledon champion who also won the 2000 and 2001 US Opens, has not won a Grand Slam title since 2008 at Wimbledon, but she said that at 31, she is far from finished as a force in women’s tennis.
ICE HOCKEY
Kaberle signs with Carolina
Czech defenseman Tomas Kaberle, who won a Stanley Cup championship with the Boston Bruins last month, signed a three-year contract with the Carolina Hurricanes in Raleigh, North Carolina. The free-agent defenseman will make an average of US$4 million a year with the National Hockey League club. Kaberle, 33, was traded from Toronto to Boston at last season’s regular season trading deadline. He was a member of the Czech national team that won gold at the 2005 World Championships. He won a silver medal at the 2006 Worlds and a bronze at the Turin Olympics that same year.
OLYMPICS
Munich makes 2018 bid
Munich’s bid team has told International Olympic Committee (IOC) members in Durban, South Africa, that the vote for the 2018 Winter Games boils down to a choice between exploring new territories or returning to a traditional venue. German Olympic committee chief Thomas Bach opened the Bavarian capital’s final presentation to IOC members yesterday by saying the games needed “the passion of a whole city” like Munich, Germany. Munich says tradition matters as much as innovation and asked the IOC to give Germany — one of the historic heartlands of Alpine sports — its first Winter Olympics since 1936. Supporting the bid, Munich-born German soccer great Franz Beckenbauer said he was competing for his home town in Durban.
? SOCCER
Two non-EU players allowed
Serie A clubs will be allowed to sign two non-EU players per season instead of the current one, the Italian soccer federation (FIGC) said in Milan, Italy, on Tuesday. The FIGC said in a statement that the change, which will come into effect for the next season, had been unanimously approved at a meeting of the federation. “The return of the two non-EU players is important for Italian football and will enable teams to recover their competitiveness,” Serie A president Maurizio Beretta told the league’s Web site. The restrictions were imposed a year ago following Italy’s first-round exit at last year’s World Cup and were aimed at encouraging clubs to invest in local talent. Top clubs say the move backfired as it has put them at a disadvantage against their European rivals, with no Italian clubs progressing past the quarter-finals of the Champions League last season.
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