A strong second-half performance from unfancied Levante UD saw them maintain their push for a place in the Champions League with a 3-1 win over Granada on Saturday.
At the other end of La Liga, Real Racing Club de Santander were relegated following a 3-0 defeat to Real Sociedad.
Levante, who are more accustomed to fighting relegation battles, have shown that their promising start to the campaign was no fluke.
Arouna Kone had the first chance of the game for Levante shortly before halftime with a shot which was well saved by goalkeeper Julio Cesar, but after the break the Ivory Coast striker did make the breakthrough.
Granada grabbed an equalizer with their first moment of real danger as Odion Ighalo swept the ball home after 66 minutes.
Levante quickly restored their lead through Xavi Torres and then Valdo Lopes made sure of the win seven minutes from the end.
Antoine Griezmann hit a brace and Imanol Agirretxe got the other goal as Sociedad condemned Racing to the second division after a desperate run which has seen them fail to win since mid-January.
Above them, Sporting de Gijon are still showing plenty of fight with a 3-0 victory away to RCD Espanyol, their third in four games, but Javier Clemente’s side still have a lot of work to do if they are to stay up.
Adrian Colunga, Oscar Trejo and Mate Bilic scored the second-half goals for Sporting, who are four points adrift of Villarreal, who drew 1-1 with CA Osasuna.
Villarreal have responded well to the arrival of coach Miguel Angel Lotina and they extended their unbeaten run to four games with Bruno Soriano putting them ahead before the break, before Raul Garcia equalized midway through the second half.
Elsewhere, RCD Mallorca ran out 3-1 winners in the mid-table scrap with Getafe.
Taiwanese world No. 1 women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei on Saturday overcame a first-set loss to win her opening match at the Madrid Open. Top seeds Hsieh and partner Elise Mertens of Belgium, with whom she last month won her fourth Indian Wells women’s doubles title, bounced back from a rocky first set to beat Asia Muhammad of the US and Aldila Sutjiadi of Indonesia 2-6, 6-4, 10-2. Hsieh and Mertens were next to face Heather Watson of the UK and Xu Yifan of China in the round of 16. Thirty-eight-year-old Hsieh last month reclaimed her world No. 1 spot after her Indian
EYES ON THE PRIZE: Armed with three solid men’s singles shuttlers and doubles Olympic champions, Taiwan aim to make their first Thomas Cup semi-final, Chou Tien-chen said Taiwanese badminton star Tai Tzu-ying yesterday quickly dispatched Malaysia’s Goh Jin Wei in straight sets, while her male counterpart Chou Tien-chen beat Germany’s Kai Schaefer, as Taiwan’s women’s and men’s teams won their Group B opening rounds of the TotalEnergies BWF Thomas and Uber Cup Finals in Chengdu, China. World No. 5 Tai beat Goh 21-19, 22-20 in a speedy 33 minutes, her fourth straight victory over the world No. 24 shuttler since they first faced each other in the quarter-finals of the 2018 Malaysia Open, where Tai went on to win the women’s singles title. Malaysia followed up Tai’s opening victory
Chen Yi-tung (陳奕通) secured a historic Olympic berth on Sunday by winning the senior men’s foil event at the 2024 Asia Oceania Zonal Olympic Fencing Qualifiers in United Arab Emirates. Chen defeated Samuel Elijah of Singapore 15-4 in the final in Dubai to secure the only wild card in the event, making him the first male Olympian fencer from Taiwan in 36 years and only the sixth Taiwanese fencer to ever qualify for the quadrennial event. The last appearance by a Taiwanese male fencer at the Olympics was in 1988, when Wang San-tsai (王三財) and Cheng Ming-hsiang (鄭明祥) competed in Seoul. The
Rafael Nadal on Tuesday lost in straight sets to 31st-ranked Jiri Lehecka in the fourth round at the Madrid Open, while Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei advanced to the semi-finals in the women’s doubles. Nadal said that he was feeling good about his progress following his latest injury layoff. Nadal called it a “positive week” in every way and said his body held up well. “I was able to play four matches, a couple of tough matches,” Nadal said. “So very positive, winning three matches, playing four matches at the high level of tennis. I enjoyed a lot playing at home. I leave here with