RUGBY UNION
’Bok lock Etzebeth banned
Springbok lock Eben Etzebeth has been banned for two weeks for a headbutt and will miss Saturday’s Rugby Championship Test against the All Blacks. The 20-year-old was found guilty of headbutting veteran Wallabies lock Nathan Sharpe in the first half of their 26-19 defeat in Australia last weekend. SANZAR judicial officer Nigel Hampton found it was a deliberate attack and suspended Etzebeth for two weeks. Etzebeth will be able to play again from Sept. 25, making him available for South Africa’s home Tests against the Wallabies and the All Blacks. Meanwhile, the Springboks faced front row problems as well in their buildup to Saturday’s Test in Dunedin, with both tighthead props injured. Jannie du Plessis has a hamstring problem and Pat Cilliers has ligament damage to an elbow. A decision would be made yesterday whether a replacement would be flown to New Zealand.
FOOTBALL
Jackson, Nelson injured
Buffalo Bills running back Fred Jackson is out indefinitely and wide receiver David Nelson is to miss the rest of the National Football League (NFL) season with knee injuries, the team said on Monday. The loss of the two players, who were injured in Buffalo’s 48-28 season-opening blowout loss to their division rival New York Jets on Sunday, is a major blow to a Bills team that started the campaign with hopes of snapping a 12-year playoff drought. Jackson, who was injured early in the second quarter on a hard hit by New York’s LaRon Landry, had an MRI on Monday that was inconclusive, according to a report on the team’s Web site. He is to be sidelined for at least a week to 10 days before being re-evaluated to determine a timetable for his return. Nelson, the team’s second-leading receiver in last year’s NFL season with 658 yards and five touchdowns, was injured when he went down to the ground away from the play during the fourth quarter.
FOOTBALL
Vilma out with injury
New Orleans linebacker Jonathan Vilma, recently reinstated after being banned over the Saints’ “bounty” scandal, is to miss at least six weeks after being placed on the physically unable to perform (PUP) list on Monday. Vilma is recovering from off-season knee surgery. Although he will be eligible to return in the NFL’s week six, that’s when the Saints will have their bye week. League rules allow Vilma to take part in team meetings and use the Saints’ training and medical facilities, but he cannot practice with the team while on the PUP list. On Friday, Vilma had a season-long suspension overturned by a three-member appeals panel, which ruled that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell does not have authority to punish players for any salary-cap violations committed in the bounty scheme, in which the league says Saints players were paid cash bonuses for injuring opponents.
FOOTBALL
Browns’ Haden suspended
Cleveland Browns cornerback Joe Haden has been suspended for four games for violating NFL policy on performance enhancing substances, the team said on Monday. No specific detail was given as to which element of the NFL’s policy was breached by Haden, a first-round draft pick by Cleveland in 2010. Haden, whose ban begins immediately, made six tackles and one interception in Cleveland’s 17-16 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles in the team’s season-opening game on Sunday.
TENNIS
Del Potro an injury doubt
World No. 8 Juan Martin del Potro is a doubt with a left-wrist injury for Argentina’s Davis Cup semi-final at home to the Czech Republic this week, captain Martin Jaite said on Monday. “The doctor has told us that Juan Martin has pains in his wrist. He’s going to try it out, and between tomorrow and the day after we’ll decide whether he plays,” Jaite told a press conference. “I’m worried, his doctor recommended him to stop [playing] for a fortnight, but he wants to play.” Argentina are already without injured David Nalbandian, a veteran of three finals, for the tie at Parque Roca on the outskirts of Buenos Aires from Friday to Sunday. Juan Monaco, Carlos Berlocq and Eduardo Schwank are the other members of the team chosen by Jaite, who is lining up Leonardo Mayer, beaten by Del Potro in the third round of the US Open, as a replacement. World No. 11 Monaco would be Argentina’s No. 1 singles player in the event of a forfeit by Del Potro, who had surgery on his right wrist in 2010 a few months after winning the US Open in 2009.
GOLF
No Rio decision: McIlroy
World No. 1 Rory McIlroy, in a bid to dampen mounting speculation over whether he will represent Britain or Ireland at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, says he is no rush to make a decision. The 23-year-old Northern Irishman eased to a third win in four USPGA Tour starts at the BMW Championship in Carmel, Indiana, on Sunday and, for the moment, wants to devote his entire focus to tournament play. “I wish to clarify that I have absolutely not made a decision regarding my participation in the next Olympics,” McIlroy wrote on Monday in an open letter on his Twitter account. “On a personal level, playing in the Olympics would be a huge honour. However, the Games in Rio are still four years away and I certainly won’t be making any decisions with regards to participating any time soon.” In 2009, the Northern Irishman said he would “probably play for Great Britain,” a sentiment he repeated in a recent interview with the Daily Mail newspaper.
SOCCER
Argentina team bus stoned
A bus carrying Argentina’s national team was pelted by stones in Lima on Monday on the eve of their 2014 World Cup qualifier against Peru, according to media reports. Windows of the bus were broken, but none of the players or coaching staff were hurt in the incident outside the Estadio Nacional where the South American group leaders were due to play Peru yesterday. “They threw bricks at us,” Argentine Football Association official Juan Carlos Crespi was quoted as saying in sports daily Ole. The Peruvian daily El Comercio said that after the incident police reinforced their security operation around the Argentina team’s hotel in Lima’s San Isidro district.
SOCCER
Defeat sparks unrest
Armed security forces have formed a tight cordon around the Cameroon Football Federation offices in Yaounde after disappointed fans threatened to ransack them following an embarrassing defeat for the national team. Cameroon’s Indomitable Lions are in danger of missing out on a place at the next finals in South Africa after losing 2-0 to Cape Verde Islands in Praia on Saturday. Angry fans demonstrated outside the offices after the defeat, leading to the deployment of police and military personnel. “A new visitor to this country may have thought we were at war or facing an invasion,” said Martin Ndzinga, who lives next to the offices in the Tsinga neighborhood.
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