Former All Black Nick Evans put in a perfect kicking performance in treacherous, driving rain as Harlequins defeated Biarritz 16-9 on Friday to complete their European Cup group stage with a sixth win in six games.
Quins, who had already made sure of their place in the quarter-finals, failed to gain a bonus point, but their Pool 3 tally of 28 points could still make them the top seeds in the knockout phase.
Evans kicked three penalties and converted the game’s only try, which left Biarritz without a hope of squeezing into the last eight as a best runner-up.
Dimitri Yachvili, the third-highest points scorer in European Cup history, missed an early penalty, but was on target with a second attempt as the French side edged ahead at a drenched Stade Aguilera.
Evans leveled at the other end before the English champions grabbed the only try of the game.
Hooker Joe Gray threw long at a lineout, where No. 8 Tom Guest gathered before barging over for a well-worked try, which Evans converted.
Both sides ended the half with 14 men after Biarritz lock Wenceslas Lauret and Quins prop Joe Marler were sin-binned for coming to blows.
Yachvili dragged the French side back into contention with two early penalties in the second period, before Evans kicked a 45m penalty which bounced kindly off the crossbar and over for a 13-9 lead.
Yachvili again went wide with another penalty as the game became an exhausting battle of attrition.
Evans kicked another penalty seven minutes from time to seal a well-earned Harlequins win.
In the night’s other Pool 3 game, Dan Parks kicked 20 points as Connacht beat Zebre 25-20, with the Italian side ending their campaign with a sixth successive defeat.
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