Goalkeeper Steve Mandanda’s blunder cost Ligue 1 title hopefuls Olympique de Marseille two points as they conceded a last-gasp goal to draw 2-2 at Stade Rennais on Saturday.
Marseille looked set for a deserved win after Jordan Ayew gave them a 2-1 lead in the 82nd minute, but Rennes equalized when Mandanda mishandled a routine cross from Abdoulaye Sane.
The ball bounced on to the near post and into the path of Romain Alessandrini, who poked it home two minutes from time.
The result left Elie Baup’s side in third place with 42 points from 22 matches, three behind leaders Olympique Lyon.
Second-placed Paris Saint-Germain were to reclaim the lead if they avoided defeat against LOSC Lille Metropole at the Parc des Princes yesterday.
Champions Montpellier Herault climbed to seventh on 32 points, after first-half goals by Emmanuel Herrera and John Utaka sealed a straightforward 2-0 home win over Sochaux-Montbeliard.
At Rennes’s Stade de la Route de Lorient, Marseille were sharper and a week after the Ayew brothers scored one each in a 3-2 win over Montpellier, they were at it again.
In the 37th minute, Andre launched a swift counterattack and played a one-two with Mathieu Valbuena, who set him up with a delightful through-ball for the Ghana striker to beat Benoit Costil with a low crossed shot.
The unmarked Kevin Theophile Catherine headed into the top corner in the 58th minute for the Rennes equalizer.
Jordan Ayew gave the visitors the lead with eight minutes left when he latched on to a Morgan Amalfitano cross.
Basement side AS Nancy-Lorraine and second-bottom ES Troyes AC snatched 2-1 home victories over Lorient and Stade Brestois 29 respectively.
Nancy have 15 points and Troyes 16.
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
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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