SOCCER
Hayatou leads Goal Bureau
The Confederation of African Football (CAF) said its president Issa Hayatou has been appointed as chairman of FIFA’s Goal Bureau to distribute development funds. CAF also said on Tuesday that Hayatou, a FIFA vice president from Cameroon, will take charge of the organizing committee for Olympic football tournaments ahead of next year’s games in London. Hayatou replaces banned Qatari official Mohammed bin Hammam as head of the Goal Bureau, which was created in 1999 to allocate millions of dollars of project funds to FIFA’s less-developed members.
FOOTBALL
Ngata extends contract
Pro Bowl defensive tackle Haloti Ngata has agreed to a five-year contract extension that will keep him with the Baltimore Ravens until 2015, the NFL team said on Tuesday. Ngata, taken by Baltimore with the 12th pick in the 2006 NFL Draft, is coming off a breakout campaign where he set a career-high 5.5 sacks along with 63 tackles to earn Pro Bowl honors for the second straight season. “It just feels awesome,” Ngata, 27, said in a report posted on the team’s Web site. “I won’t have to worry about my family, my kids, with money problems.”
SOCCER
Lechkov to appeal sentence
Former Bulgaria midfielder Yordan Lechkov has been handed a suspended three-year prison sentence for abuse of power as mayor of the southern town of Sliven, a Bulgarian court said on Tuesday. “I didn’t expect such [a] sentence,” Lechkov, who is the Bulgarian Football Union (BFU) vice-president, told reporters. “We’ll appeal, of course, because I think it was a political act.” The BFU was not immediately available to comment. Lechkov, who scored the winning goal in Bulgaria’s famous 2-1 quarter-final victory over Germany at the 1994 World Cup, was found guilty of mismanagement which caused significant damage to the Sliven municipality, the court said. Last year, Lechkov, 44, was removed from the post of Sliven mayor over charges related to abuse of power, but was restored two months later.
VOLLEYBALL
Bulgaria captain suspended
Bulgaria’s volleyball captain Eva Yaneva has been suspended from the national team for two years for unprofessional behavior and breaching the ethics code of the FIVB, volleyball’s governing body. The 26-year-old was also fined 5,000 euros (US$6,833) for publicly criticizing Bulgaria’s former Slovenian coach Dragutin Baltic, sacked earlier this month, Bulgarian media reported yesterday. Yaneva, who recently moved from French team RC Cannes to Russia’s Dynamo Moscow, also failed to turn up for Bulgaria’s preparation camp last month. She presented her apologies at the federation’s board meeting, but the board members were unmoved and voted unanimously for the sanctions.
BASEBALL
President lauds Rivera
Mariano Rivera said he received a phone call from Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli congratulating him on his career saves record. The New York Yankees closer, born in Panama City, said on Tuesday it was an honor and a privilege to speak with Martinelli, who thanked Rivera and wished him good luck. Rivera said he also received a congratulatory text message from Trevor Hoffman, who held the previous major league mark of 601 career saves before Rivera notched his 602nd on Monday against the Minnesota Twins.
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