Carolina Ruiz Castillo put Spain back on the Alpine skiing map by winning the women’s World Cup downhill in Meribel on Saturday, the first victory in the sport’s blue riband event by any Spaniard.
At 31, the Chilean-born skier who trains in France outpaced the leading favorites to clinch her first World Cup victory, 13 years after her only podium to date in a giant slalom in Sestriere. Ruiz Castillo won in 1 minute, 42.56 seconds to bridge a seven-year gap since the last top spot earned by compatriot Maria Jose Rienda Contreras in a giant slalom in Hafjell seven years ago.
Germany’s Maria Hoefl-Riesch, the super-combined world champion in Schladming, was second, 0.20 seconds adrift for her third downhill podium of the winter after Lake Louise and her bronze medal at the worlds earlier this month.
Local favorite Marie Marchand-Arvier missed the runners-up spot by the slimmest margin, finishing 0.01 behind Hoefl-Riesch.
World Cup leader Tina Maze of Slovenia missed the podium by 0.07 seconds, but added 50 points to her overall World Cup tally, taking it to 1,744 points ahead of Hoefl-Riesch on 886.
MEN’S DOWNHILL
Reuters, GARMISCH-PARTENKIRCHEN, Germany
Italian Christof Innerhofer secured his third World Cup downhill win of the season when he held off a trio of Austrians on the German Kandahar piste on Saturday.
Dubbed “Winnerhofer” when he won the Super-G world title in Garmisch-Partenkirchen two years ago, Innerhofer lived up to his nickname by taking victory in 1 minute, 37.83 seconds.
On a course he relishes, the Italian followed up wins at Beaver Creek and Wengen by finishing 0.12 ahead of Georg Streitberger.
Klaus Kroell was 0.16 off the pace, followed by Hannes Reichelt and Norway’s world champion Aksel Lund Svindal.
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