SOCCER
AFC nominates players
Australian goalkeeper Mark Schwarzer, Manchester United midfielder Shinji Kagawa and his Japanese teammate Yuto Nagatomo have been nominated for the Asian Football Confederation’s (AFC) first Asian International Player of the Year award. The AFC announced the three-man shortlist for the new honor yesterday along with the nominees for their Asian Player of the Year award, open to candidates who play for clubs in the continent. South Korean winger Lee Keun-ho, who won the AFC Champions League with Ulsan Hyundai last week, and Australian captain Lucas Neill, who plays for Al Wasl in the United Arab Emirates, were shortlisted for the prize. Also nominated were 2004 winner Ali Karimi, his Iranian teammate Mohsen Bengar and Guangzhou Evergrande defender Zheng Zhi. The winners will be announced at the AFC awards night in Kuala Lumpur on Nov. 29. Three Japanese, Aya Miyama, Homare Sawa and Yuki Ogimi, were nominated for the Women’s Player of the Year award, while a trio of Brazilians, Bruno Correa, Ricardo Oliveira and Rogerio De Assis Silva Coutinho are up for the foreign Player of the Year.
RUGBY UNION
The Beast bounces back
South Africa prop Tendai Mtawarira says his rugby career is not under threat after having a medical procedure to correct an irregular heartbeat. The South African Rugby Union says Mtawarira, who left the Springboks’ tour to Europe after a recurrence of heart palpitations, underwent a “minor” procedure on Wednesday. He was released from hospital in Cape Town on Friday. Mtawarira has managed the condition for some time, but had a recurrence of the palpitations on the morning of the game against Ireland last weekend. He was briefly hospitalized in Dublin. In a statement yesterday, the 27-year-old forward says the procedure was successful and there was “no need to worry. This is something that has happened to me before and can be treated ... it’s not career-threatening.”
GOLF
Coetzee chases Stenson
South African George Coetzee hit a course-record 63 at the Serengeti Golf and Wildlife Estate to end the third round of the South African Open in second place on Saturday. At 13 under par, 26-year-old Coetzee is tied in second place with Sweden’s Magnus Carlsson, just three strokes behind leader Henrik Stenson, who had his worst round yet at 69, after 66 and 65 in the previous two rounds. His round puts him only one stroke behind the lowest score in SA Open history, after John Bland who shot a 62 at the Durban Country Club in 1993.
TENNIS
Czechs eye Davis Cup
Tomas Berdych and Radek Stepanek used a roaring home crowd to come back from a set down on Saturday, putting the Czech Republic 2-1 up over holders Spain and a win away from the Davis Cup title. The Czech pair triumphed 3-6, 7-5, 7-5, 6-3. Spain’s top duo of Marcel Granollers and Marc Lopez silenced the 14,000-strong crowd early on, but the Czechs shook off the slow start by racing ahead in the second set. They took control of the match by winning the third with a Berdych backhand volley and then easing through the fourth set. The Czech pair improved their doubles record to 12-1. World No. 6 Berdych would hope to take that momentum into the first singles match yesterday against fifth-ranked David Ferrer. A win would give the Czech Republic its first Davis Cup crown in 32 years.
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