BASEBALL
Escobar banned for gay slur
Major League Baseball slapped Toronto Blue Jays player Yunel Escobar with a three-game ban on Tuesday after he appeared in a game with a homophobic slur written in eye black on his face. The gay slur was written in Spanish and appeared in the shortstop’s eye black during Saturday’s contest against the Boston Red Sox. “The salary lost by Escobar during his suspension will be directed by the Toronto Blue Jays to You Can Play and the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD),” the Blue Jays said on Tuesday. “Yunel will participate in an outreach initiative to help educate society about sensitivity and tolerance to others based on their sexual orientation ... Escobar will also participate in a sensitivity training program in accordance with the Blue Jays and Major League Baseball. The Blue Jays want to reaffirm that discrimination of any kind will not be tolerated. The club looks forward to supporting the efforts of You Can Play and GLAAD to help promote education for players and fans alike and to help keep language like this out of the game and society.”
TENNIS
Venus to play in Hopman Cup
Venus Williams will make her Hopman Cup debut in Perth later this year, partnering John Isner to represent the US in the mixed international tournament, organizers said yesterday. Seven-time Grand Slam champion Williams will have a chance to match her sister Serena, who won the tournament in 2008 with Mardy Fish and five years earlier with James Blake. “I’ve never been to Perth — I’ve never played the Hopman Cup, so for me it’s going to be a wonderful experience,” Williams said in a press release. “I’ve watched it literally every year on TV so now I get to play, I’m very excited.” World No. 10 Isner won the title last year with Bethanie Mattek-Sands. Novak Djokovic and Ana Ivanovic have already been confirmed as the Serbia pairing for the event, which will take place from Dec. 29 to Jan. 5.
SOCCER
Allawee cleared of fixing
Malaysia international goalkeeper Sharbinee Allawee has been cleared of match-fixing allegations leveled at him by his club manager after passing a lie-detector test, a government anti-corruption agency has said. Terengganu’s English coach Peter Butler substituted 25-year-old Sharbinee after the goalkeeper had clumsily palmed the ball into his own net to allow Kedah to equalize in a Malaysia Cup match earlier this month. An incensed Butler vowed Sharbinee would not play for his side again following the incident, but the director of the Terengganu office of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Agency (MACC) said the player was found to have done nothing wrong. “As far as we are concerned, he is innocent,” Md Yusoff Md Zin told yesterday’s Malaysian Star.
PARALYMPICS
Coach accused of abuse
An investigation has been launched after a South Korean athlete with cerebral palsy accused his coach of abusing him at the London Paralympic Games earlier this month. The unnamed athlete also said the coach had taken money from him to pay for training sessions, Yonhap news agency said, adding that prosecutors in Incheon were investigating. “During the Paralympics, the coach one night returned home drunk and hammered the athlete’s head with a light stand,” the athlete’s aide told Yonhap. “He has been abusing him frequently since 2010. The athlete is ranked No. 1 in the world, but couldn’t win a medal because of injuries he sustained from the coach’s abuse.”
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