Substitute Guillaume Hoarau struck two minutes from time to salvage a 2-2 home draw for Ligue 1 leaders Paris Saint-Germain in an enthralling top-of-the-table clash with confident Montpellier Herault on Sunday.
John Utaka’s header looked to have sealed a famous away win for Montpellier, but France international striker Hoarau tapped in after a good move to send the Parc des Princes delirious.
Montpellier, top scorers in Ligue 1 this season with 47 goals, have surprised most pundits by lasting the course and they deserved to at least stay a point behind the leaders after 24 games of the 38-match season.
Photo: AFP
“I don’t believe in Santa Claus,” Montpellier president Louis Nicollin, who did not travel to Paris, told Canal + TV when asked if his modest side could win the title. “I’m gutted, but then again I’m happy with a draw.”
Defender Alex blasted PSG into an unlikely lead with a swerving free-kick after 41 minutes, but the visitors hit back on the stroke of halftime through Younes Belhanda, as a team who finished way down in 14th place last season showed immense character.
Girondins de Bordeaux earlier continued their improvement and increased Olympique Lyonnais’ domestic woes when Yoan Gouffran struck just before the break to seal a 1-0 home win.
Fifth-placed Lyon lost 2-1 at home to lowly Stade Malherbe Caen the previous weekend before a 1-0 Champions League victory over APOEL Nicosia in midweek, and their inconsistency and nervousness in front of goal was again evident on the west coast.
In the other early Ligue 1 match, AS Saint-Etienne thumped Stade Rennais 4-0 to leapfrog the Brittany side into sixth.
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