BASEBALL
Wada signs with Orioles
Japanese pitcher Tsuyoshi Wada has signed a two-year, US$8.1 million contract with the Baltimore Orioles, the Major League Baseball team reported on Wednesday. The 30-year-old left-hander signed a deal that includes an option for 2014. Wada becomes the second Japanese native to play for Baltimore, following Koji Uehara. Wada comes to the Orioles from the Fukuoka Hawks of the Japanese Pacific League. In 210 games with the Hawks, Wada had 107 wins, 61 losses and 1,329 strikeouts. Meanwhile, bidding closed on Wednesday for Major League Baseball (MLB) teams trying to land Japanese pitching ace Yu Darvish. MLB officials declined to release details of the bid process, including the name of the team that made the highest offer. Darvish’s current team, the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters, have until Tuesday to accept the bid.
ATHLETICS
Sprinters top nominees list
Usain Bolt and Yohan Blake head the list of athletes nominated for Jamaica’s Sportsman of the Year award. Blake, the 100m champion at the World Athletic Championships in Daegu, South Korea, was recently named the winner of the Jamaica Track and Field Association’s top athlete award. Bolt won the 200m at the same Worlds. Others in contention for the award include West Indies cricketer Marlon Samuels, Pan American 100m champion Lerone Clarke, IAAF Diamond League winner Asafa Powell and boxer Nicholas Walters. Among the women, Veronica Campbell-Brown, the world championships 200m gold medallist and 100m silver medallist, is considered a frontrunner in a group that also includes ICC cricketer of the year Stafanie Taylor. The winners will be announced on Jan. 22.
SOCCER
Ex-wife’s assault ends in ban
Sweden will not select forward Alexander Gerndt until further notice after being convicted of assaulting his ex-wife, the Swedish Football Association (SvFF) said on Wednesday. Gerndt, who has played six times for his country, scoring two goals, was fined 80,000 Swedish kronor (US$11,700) and put on probation for two years on Tuesday. “After a very deep discussion, we decided that domestic violence is something we find very difficult to accept. Therefore, Alexander Gerndt is not available for selection, with immediate effect,” chairman Lars-Ake Lagrell said after a meeting of the SvFF. How long the 25-year-old FC Utrecht player will remain suspended is unclear. Helsinborg district court found Gerndt guilty of two counts of assault, for grabbing his wife by the throat and for kicking a football at her so hard that it bruised her leg.
TENNIS
Davis Cup captain leaves
Argentina’s Davis Cup captain, Modesto Vazquez, says he is to leave after three years in the role. Vazquez admits that during his time in charge he had a “difficult” relationship with David Nalbandian, one of the country’s top players, who he described as “not a positive leader” in an interview with TyC Sports TV channel on Wednesday. Vazquez says the Argentine tennis association decided not to renew his contract following the loss to Spain in the Davis Cup final earlier this month. He says the association had “every right” to make the change. Argentina, which has never won the Davis Cup but was a finalist in 1981, 2006, 2008 and this year, starts next year’s campaign in Germany from Feb. 10 to 12.
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