SOCCER
Bremen eke out draw
Werder Bremen wasted a ton of chances and needed a Claudio Pizarro equalizer to secure a 1-1 draw at promoted Augsburg on Friday. The result gave Werder 17 points from 10 games and moved them up to third in the Bundesliga, five points behind leaders Bayern Munich. Augsburg, looking for their first home win of the season, took the lead against the run of play with a powerful Axel Bellinghausen shot in the 49th minute. Peruvian striker Pizarro leveled in the 68th with his seventh league goal of the season. The visitors hit the woodwork with a Markus Rosenberg header and he was also denied later by goalkeeper Simon Jentzsch, who was playing with a fractured finger. Pizarro twice failed to beat Jentzsch in one-on-one situations late in the game as Werder poured forward. Augsburg are third from bottom on eight points.
GOLF
Garcia turns back the clock
Sergio Garcia opened up a two-shot lead at the Castello Masters on Friday as the talented Spaniard took a step closer to ending a three-year title drought. Playing on the same Club de Campo del Mediterraneo course where he was a boys champion at the age of 12, the 31-year-old Spaniard carded an eight-under 63. It took him to 12-under at the halfway mark — two ahead of Sweden’s Alex Noren, who was also round in 63 as he seeks a third win of the season. Garcia eagled the 549 yard eighth from 15 feet and added six birdies to his opening one, before saving par with a fine bunker shot at the difficult 17th. Britain’s new star Tom Lewis, who won the Portugal Masters in only his third start as a professional last weekend, withdrew before the second round because of a virus. Overnight leader Ross McGowan carded a second round 70 and is eight-under for the tournament, four shots off the lead. He is now joint third with Scotland’s Gary Orr and Australian Marcus Fraser. However, big guns Colin Montgomerie, Jose Maria Olazabal and John Daly all missed the cut.
TENNIS
Azarenka defeats Benesova
Top-seeded Victoria Azarenka of Belarus defeated Iveta Benesova of the Czech Republic 6-3, 6-2 on Friday to reach the semi-finals of the Luxembourg Open. She will play sixth seeded Julia Goerges after the German advanced when Anastasija Sevastova of Latvia withdrew with a hip injury trailing 5-2. In other quarter-finals, Monica Niculescu of Romania defeated lucky loser Lucie Hradecka of the Czech Republic 6-4, 6-4 and Britain’s Anne Keothavong beat Bibiane Schoofs of the Netherlands 6-3, 6-2.
BOXING
WBC restores Hopkins’ belt
The WBC restored Bernard Hopkins as its light heavyweight champion on Thursday after reviewing his controversial loss to Chad Dawson last weekend. The 46-year-old had lost his title after Dawson lifted him off his feet and slammed him to the canvas on Oct. 15 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. Hopkins sustained a shoulder injury and the referee signaled the end of the fight with 12 seconds left in the second round. However, after reviewing the fight video, the WBC concluded the result should be changed to a technical draw, allowing champion Hopkins to retain the title. After the fight, Hopkins filed a formal complaint to the California State Athletic Commission, which will meet to determine whether the fight will count as a loss on his record.
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