BASKETBALL
Obama bemoans dispute
US President Barack Obama on Tuesday said billionaire NBA owners and millionaire players should think of their fans, bemoaning the labor dispute which has axed the start of the season. Obama, a hoops enthusiast, also warned that labor stoppages like the one that shuttered the NBA could take some time to get over. The president, appearing on NBC’s Tonight Show with Jay Leno, compared the situation to the recent labor row in the NFL, which was solved before regular season games were canceled. “We should be able to figure out how to split a US$9 billion pot so that our fans, who are allowing us to make all of this money, can actually have a good season,” he said, paraphrasing the conversation between NFL players and owners. “I think the owners and the basketball players need to think the same way,” he said. “I’m concerned about it. I think they need to just remind themselves that the reason they are so successful is because a whole bunch of folks out there love basketball.”
BASKETBALL
Ibaka signs with Real Madrid
Oklahoma City Thunder forward Serge Ibaka has signed a two-month deal to play for Real Madrid, while the NBA lockout continues. The 2.07m Ibaka will join the Spanish club immediately, filling in for the injured Novicka Velickovic. Ibaka has averaged 8.2 points, 6.6 rebounds and 1.9 blocked shots in two seasons for the Thunder. He previously played for Spanish clubs L’Hospitalet and Ricoh Manresa before moving to the NBA in 2009. He is the second NBA player to join Madrid after Dallas Mavericks guard Rudy Fernandez.
CYCLING
Australia’s Ball banned
Three-time Australian Paralympic cycling representative Gregory Ball has been banned for two years after testing positive for the banned steroid stanozolol. Ball tested positive for the anabolic agent during the Australian Track Cycling Champions at which he set a world record in the men’s C1 kilometer time trial. All results achieved by Ball at the championships have been overturned. The ban, imposed by Cycling Australia and acknowledged yesterday by the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority, has been backdated to the date of Ball’s provisional suspension, and will expire on March 9, 2013. Ball is therefore ruled out of consideration for the Australian team to next year’s London Olympics.
BASEBALL
Clemens wants fees back
Former pitching star Roger Clemens on Tuesday asked a US federal judge to make the US government pay for some of his legal tab in his steroids case after a mistrial was declared because of a miscue by prosecutors. Clemens asked that Judge Reggie Walton order the government to pay for his legal fees and expenses incurred between June 25 and July 14, arguing the prosecutors wasted time and money to resolve the allegations. In July, the judge declared a mistrial in the opening days of the trial because prosecutors showed jurors a video clip that included material he had explicitly banned from the trial unless the information was brought up by the defense team. Clemens was indicted last year for perjury, making false statements and obstruction over his testimony to the US Congress in 2008 in which he denied ever taking steroids and human growth hormones. “The court can and should make the government, the party responsible for the need for a second trial, pay for the waste and loss incurred in connection with the first one,” Clemens’ lawyers said in a brief motion.
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