SOCCER
Falcao extends contract
Porto’s prolific Colombian striker Radamel Falcao has agreed to extend his contract until 2015 and now has a release clause of 45 million euros (US$63.8 million), the Portuguese club said on Thursday. The 25-year-old, who scored 38 goals last season to help Porto claim a treble of Portuguese Premier League, Portuguese Cup and Europa League, had been linked with a move to England’s Chelsea, according to media reports.
SOCCER
Oldest rule book auctioned
The world’s oldest soccer rule book dating from the 1850s was sold for £881,250 pounds (US$1.4 million) at a Sotheby’s auction in London, the book’s owners Sheffield FC said on their Web site on Thursday. The club, formed in 1857 and recognized by FIFA as the oldest in the world, have sold the unique documents to raise funds for projects including the building of a new stadium. They currently play in the Northern League, four tiers below the professional Football League. The Sheffield laws, written about five years before the Football Association was formed in 1863, helped to codify strands of the game that were emerging in different parts of the country. A number of laws associated with today’s game were introduced by Sheffield FC, including the indirect free-kick, the corner kick and the crossbar.
SOCCER
No Sneijder deal: Ferguson
Manchester United has no agreement imminent to sign Inter’s Wesley Sneijder, according to the English soccer champion’s manager Alex Ferguson. Newspapers including the Daily Mail reported on Thursday that United were set to pay Inter £35 million (US$56.5 million) for the Netherlands midfielder, who had accepted terms on a contract worth £190,000 a week. Ferguson, who’s seeking a replacement for the retired Paul Scholes, added that no further signings were imminent.
CRICKET
Sri Lanka hires Ratnayake
Former pace bowler Rumesh Ratnayake has been appointed Sri Lanka’s coach for the tour of Australia beginning next month, the head of the country’s newly appointed interim cricket committee said yesterday. “We have appointed Rumesh Ratnayake only for the Australian tour because there is hardly any time to look for another coach,” Sri Lanka Cricket interim committee chairman Upali Dharmadasa said. The 47-year-old former new-ball bowler, who played 23 Tests and 70 one-day internationals from 1982 to 1993, has been working as a development officer with the Asian Cricket Council.
AUSSIE RULES
Player banned for bet
The Australian Football League banned a player for eight matches yesterday after he was found to have placed a A$10 (US$10.66) bet on a teammate to kick the first goal in a match. Australia has moved to draft federal legislation to combat gambling-related corruption in sport and has been weighing up long jail sentences for offenders. The AFL, custodians of the popular indigenous football code Australian Rules, banned Collingwood defender Heath Shaw for 14 matches, with six suspended, after investigators found he had bet on his captain Nick Maxwell to kick the first goal of a match against the Adelaide Crows earlier this year. Shaw, who was also fined A$20,000, had shared a A$20 cash bet with a friend and he was discovered after investigators noted the odds plunge on Maxwell kicking the first goal.
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