ENGLAND
Rooney dabbles with horses
Wayne Rooney has followed Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson into racehorse ownership. The England striker has bought two horses with his wife, Coleen, that are based in the stables owned by United teammate Michael Owen and trained by Tom Dascombe. Switcharooney, a two-year colt, cost £63,000 (US$99,000) — barely a third of Rooney’s weekly salary from the Premier League champions. The Rooneys’ other horse is a three-year-old bay colt, Tomway, which is named after Wayne’s father, Thomas Wayne Rooney.
ENGLAND
Charles roots for Burnley
Prince Charles has admitted he is a fan of an English soccer club, but his team are not part of the Premier League’s aristocracy. The heir to the British throne has given royal assent to Burnley, who are currently 10th in the second tier of English soccer. “A consortium of my charities, including the British Asian Trust, has been working in Burnley,” British media reports on Wednesday quoted him as saying. “Some of you asked this evening whether I support a British football club and I said: ‘Yes, Burnley.’” The club have sent the prince a complimentary VIP season ticket. His son, William, is an Aston Villa fan.
ENGLAND
United leave Evra behind
Manchester United fullback Patrice Evra was left out of the squad for yesterday’s Europa League match against Ajax Amsterdam following the events of last weekend, manager Alex Ferguson said on Wednesday. Evra was at the center of the incident on Saturday in which Livepool striker Luis Suarez failed to shake his hand before the Premier League match at Old Trafford following the completion of his eight-match ban for racially abusing the Frenchman. Evra was also criticized for wildly celebrating United’s 2-1 victory in front of Suarez. United striker Dimitar Berbatov and midfielder Ryan Giggs did not travel with the squad for the round-of-32 first-leg match in Amsterdam because they are injured.
SCOTLAND
Rangers’ next game a go
The financiers trying to save Scottish champion Rangers from liquidation assured fans on Wednesday that the next match against Kilmarnock at Ibrox will go ahead. The Glasgow club will start Saturday’s game 14 points behind city rival Celtic after being docked 10 points for entering financial administration on Tuesday. The 54-time Scottish champions were forced to seek bankruptcy protection over tax debts of £9 million accrued in the nine months of Craig Whyte’s ownership. “We can report we have made very good progress within the first 24 hours of being appointed administrators over Rangers,” joint administrators Paul Clark and David Whitehouse said. “Supporters can be reassured that Rangers will continue as a football club.”
ARGENTINA
Messi to battle Switzerland
Barcelona star Lionel Messi will headline Argentina’s squad in an international friendly against Switzerland in Berne on Feb. 29. Argentina coach Alejandro Sabella announced the squad on Wednesday, the same day FIFA’s rankings came out showing his national team had fallen out of the top 10 for the first time since 2004. Argentina dropped to No. 11, one spot behind Denmark. Apart from Messi, the squad features most of Argentina’s top players. They include Barcelona midfielder Javier Mascherano, Real Madrid forwards Angel Di Maria and Gonzalo Higuain, as well as Manchester City striker Sergio Aguero.
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