SOCCER
Roma edge Palermo 1-0
AS Roma’s Fabio Borini scored the winner after only three minutes as they moved back to sixth place in Serie A with a nervy 1-0 win at Palermo on Saturday. The striker latched on to a clever through ball from Erik Lamela and coolly slotted home from 10m. The visitors squandered several chances to increase their lead and ended up hanging on to claim the points with a resilient defensive display. Roma move up to 41 points, one ahead of Inter.
GOLF
Watson regains Doral lead
Bubba Watson regained his lead about the time he was losing control with his tee shots. He still wound up with a five-under 67 on Saturday and a three-shot lead in the Cadillac Championship in Doral, Florida. Watson lost a four-shot lead in three holes in the middle of his round, only to pull away from Justin Rose despite a few wild shots coming down the stretch. He is poised to capture his first World Golf Championship. Rose (69) and PGA champion Keegan Bradley (66) are tied for second. On another day of low scoring on the Blue Monster, Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods made early moves. It wasn’t enough to keep up with Watson, who was at 17-under 199.
GOLF
McNeill leads in Puerto Rico
George McNeill shot a five-under 67 on Saturday to take a one-stroke lead over Henrik Stenson and Kevin Stadler into the final round of the Puerto Rico Open. McNeill, at 13-under 203, is attempting to win for the first time since the Frys.com Open in 2007 when he was a PGA Tour rookie. He eagled the par-five fifth, dropped strokes with three-putt bogeys on Nos. 7 and 8, then birdied five of the last 10 holes on the Trump International layout.
CRICKET
Dunedin Test draw declared
Heavy overnight rain and persistent showers throughout yesterday washed out the final day’s play of the first Test between South Africa and New Zealand at University Oval in Dunedin, New Zealand. The match was officially declared a draw and ended South Africa’s hopes of taking the top Test ranking from England. The Proteas had to sweep the series 3-0 to give them any chance of taking over the No. 1 spot. No play was possible in the morning session, which had been scheduled to start at 10am and umpires Aleem Dar and Billy Doctrove decided there was no chance of any play after the scheduled lunch break had been taken. The match had been slightly tipped in South Africa’s favor as New Zealand were looking for a record 401 runs to win.
BADMINTON
Lee, Lin to face off in final
Lee Chong Wei and archrival Lin Dan will play for history after setting up their third All England Open badminton final on Saturday. Top-ranked Lee needs a win over the greatest player of this generation to become the first man to win three successive All Englands in the 33-year Open era. Lin, through to his eighth final in nine years, will bid to become the first person to win the world’s oldest tournament five times in the era. Neither man was in any danger in the semi-finals. Lee defeated Lee Hyun-il of South Korea 21-19, 21-18 and Lin put away Kenichi Tago of Japan 21-18, 21-17. Women’s No. 1 and world champion Wang Yihan outlasted defending champ Wang Shixian 20-22, 21-18, 21-18 in their 85-minute, all-Chinese match. The final will be all-Chinese, too, after Li Xuerui overcame unseeded Tai Tzu-ying of Taiwan 19-21, 21-16, 21-10.
FOOTBALL
Redskins, Rams do deal
The Washington Redskins made a deal with the St Louis Rams on Saturday to obtain the second choice in next month’s NFL draft, giving them a chance to select college star quarterback Robert Griffin. The Redskins will send the Rams their first-round selection this year, sixth overall, and their second-round choice this year, 39th overall, and two future first-round picks, likely next year and 2014, according to the Rams’ Web site. Under NFL rules, the move cannot be made official until tomorrow afternoon, when free agency commences.
BIATHLON
Helena Ekholm to retire
Sweden’s Helena Ekholm, who holds three world biathlon titles, will retire after this season, she said on Saturday from Ruhpolding, Germany, where she is taking part in the world championships. “Tomorrow, I will take part in my last big championship distance. The mass start will thereby be my 30th and last world championship run,” the 27-year-old Swede wrote on her Web site. “I feel it is time to go on towards new goals in life. I unfortunately don’t have the 100 percent motivation that is needed to go for the 2014 Olympics.” Ekholm’s last name was Jonsson until she married David Ekholm in 2010.
BASKETBALL
J.R. Smith sorry for picture
New York Knicks guard J.R. Smith has been fined US$25,000 for posting “inappropriate pictures” on his Twitter account, the NBA said on Saturday. Smith posted a picture of a scantily-clad woman on his feed on Thursday. After the Knicks’ defeat at Milwaukee on Friday, Smith told a small group of reporters at the game that he regretted the post, which he appeared to have removed from his account. “I didn’t know it would turn into a big deal,” the New York Post reported Smith as saying. “I definitely regret it. Whenever it takes away from our team, I regret it.” The Knicks inked Smith on Feb. 17 after he returned to the US after playing in China during the NBA lockout. In nine games with New York he is averaging 8.9 points, 2.4 rebounds, 1.3 assists and 1.6 steals.
SNOWBOARDING
Prommegger wins GS
Andreas Prommegger of Austria and Patrizia Kummer of Switzerland won snowboard World Cup parallel giant slaloms on Saturday to lead the discipline standings with one race left. Prommegger sliced through the Pista Stadi course to beat Simon Schoch of Switzerland by 1.83 seconds for his third win and seventh podium of the season. The 31-year-old Prommegger tops the men’s standings with 6,550 points. Roland Fischnaller of Italy slipped into second with 5,930 points after failing to reach the quarterfinals. In the women’s final, Kummer edged Germany’s Amelie Kober by 0.08 seconds after the two boarders finished the first run in the exact same time. Her fifth victory of the season and seventh overall gave her 6,040 points, while Kober climbed into second with 5,180.
BASKETBALL
Panathinaikos win title game
Guards Romain Sato and Sarunas Jasikevicius scored 10 points apiece to lead Panathinaikos to a 71-70 comeback victory over archrival Olympiakos in the Greek Cup final on Saturday. Forward Giorgos Printezis led Olympiakos with 17 points. The win ended Olympiakos’ two-year reign as Greek Cup champion. Panathinaikos, the defending Euroleague champion, has dominated the Greek league, winning 13 titles in the past 14 seasons.
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