BASKETBALL
anathinaikos into semis
Defending Euroleague champions Panathinaikos BC reached the semi-finals after beating visiting Maccabi Tel Aviv 86-85 in Athens on Thursday. Dimitris Diamantidis scored 25 points, including five free throws in the last 15.7 seconds, and made a crucial last-second steal. David Blu scored 14 points for Maccabi. Panathinaikos won the decider in the best-of-five quarter-finals series to get a chance to defend their title next month in Istanbul. The six-time Euroleague champions will face CSKA Moscow on May 11, while another Greek team, Olympiacos BC, will play Barcelona in the other semi-final. A tense game ended in a free-throw lottery, with Panathinaikos missing five of six before Diamantidis made five of his last six free throws to give the edge to the Greek side.
SOCCER
Rangers bids mulled
Three takeover bids for Scottish champions Rangers are being considered by the administrators trying to rescue the financially stricken club, who hope to accept one of them next week. While administrators now expect Rangers to exit bankruptcy protection before the end of the season, they revealed on Thursday that the club’s debt could exceed US$200 million. However, joint administrator David Whitehouse insisted that they now see “light at the end of the tunnel” following the worst crisis in the club’s 140-year history. The three bidders still in contention are groups from the US and Singapore who have not been identified, and the so-called “Blue Knights” consortium fronted by former Rangers director Paul Murray. “Whitehouse said the most likely way of exiting administration would be by securing a Company Voluntary Arrangement — a legal procedure to help rescue a struggling firm by agreeing deals with creditors over the repayment of debt.
SOCCER
City’s Balotelli in accident
Manchester City’s Mario Balotelli was involved in a car crash on Thursday, although the striker was said to have emerged unharmed. The 21-year-old Italian was in a collision with another vehicle on Medlock Street, near Deansgate in Manchester’s city center. Although Balotelli was unscathed, a passenger from one of the cars was taken to hospital.
SOCCER
Juan Aurich grab Copa win
Peru’s Juan Aurich earned their first win in this season’s Copa Libertadores with a 1-0 victory over Bolivia’s The Strongest in Chiclayo, Peru, on Thursday. Javier Araujo scored the game’s only goal in the 20th minute to give the Peruvian side their first victory in five matches in Group 1. The victory moves Juan Aurich to three points after five matches, while The Strongest remain on seven points. Santos, the defending champions, lead the group with 10 points, with Internacional of Brazil on eight.
MOTO GP
Stoner the favorite at Qatar
World champion Casey Stoner threw down the gauntlet to his rivals in impressive style on Thursday when he topped the first free practice for the season-opening Grand Prix of Qatar. The Australian Honda rider clocked 1 minute, 56.474 seconds to edge out former champion Jorge Lorenzo on a Yamaha with Ducati’s Nicky Hayden almost half a second off the pace in third. Seven-time world champion Valentino Rossi, who has won this race three times, endured a miserable start to his season, managing just the 10th best time, over a second behind Stoner. Stoner will start as favorite for tomorrow’s race, having won four times in the elite class in six visits.
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