Frenchwoman Marion Bartoli, third seed at the joint ATP/WTA Kremlin Cup tournament, advanced into the last eight with a straight-sets win over Russia’s Ksenia Pervak in Moscow on Thursday.
The 27-year-old Bartoli, who needs to win the Kremlin Cup title to take the final spot in the year-ending WTA finale in Istanbul, won 6-1, 6-1 in her first ever meeting with Pervak.
The opponents traded breaks from the start, but Bartoli then moved up a gear to take five consecutive games and the first set in 38 minutes.
In the second, Bartoli accentuated her dominance at the hardcourts of Moscow Olympic indoor stadium producing two more breaks to take the set and the match in 1 hour, 10 minutes.
In the quarter-final, Bartoli will face another Russian Elena Vesnina, who ousted compatriot Ekaterina Ivanova 6-3, 6-4.
Meanwhile, sixth seed Russian Svetlana Kuznetsova also won her second-round clash with Bulgaria’s Tsvetana Pironkova 7-5, 7-5 in 1 hour, 62 minutes to book a meeting with Estonia’s Kaia Kanepi.
In the ATP section of the event top seed Janko Tipsarevic of Serbia battled back from a set down to advance into the quarter-final round beating local crowd favorite Igor Kunitsyn, the 2008 champion, 6-7 (5/7), 6-1, 6-0.
Tipsarevic will face sixth seed Dmitry Tursunov, who outplayed Julien Benneteau 6-3, 7-6 (7/1).
Third seed Alexandr Dolgopolov of the Ukraine crashed out of the tournament at the hands of Frenchman Jeremy Chardy, who won 6-3, 7-6 (8/6) to face Germany’s Philipp Kohlschreiber, who saw off seventh seed Gilles Muller of Luxembourg 7-6 (7/4), 6-3.
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
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