ATHLETICS
Injured Liu to miss season
Chinese hurdler Liu Xiang is likely to miss this season as he recovers from the injury that dramatically ended his bid to win back the Olympic title in London last year, a report said yesterday. Liu’s coach, Sun Haiping, said the 29-year-old, Olympic champion in the 110m in 2004 and one of China’s biggest stars, would make a “full recovery” from his ruptured Achilles tendon, but would probably not be in action this year. Last year in London, Liu clattered into the first hurdle in his opening heat and after being helped up, he hopped the length of the track before symbolically kissing the last barrier and exiting the Olympic arena.
BASKETBALL
‘Kekua’ predicts NCAA
A business analyst from Virginia beat out 8.15 million other entries to win ESPN’s annual prediction contest for the NCAA basketball championship — but has gained more attention for the handle he created than his powers of prognostication. Craig Gilmore, inspired by several pints of beer and using the name Lannay Kekua, won the contest, accurately picking Louisville to defeat Michigan in Monday night’s college basketball championship game before the 64-team tournament began. Lannay Kekua was the name an apparent hoaxster created to fool Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te’o, leading the football player to think he had an online and telephonic relationship with a woman who in reality never existed. Reports of her death during the season became a touching story until it unraveled as an embarrassing hoax. Gilmore said he chose the name to tease two of his buddies, who are Notre Dame graduates. ESPN says the winner will “have a chance” to win the grand prize of a US$10,000 gift card for electronics retailer Best Buy.
BASKETBALL
Chinese firm sues Jordan
A Chinese sportswear firm sued by Michael Jordan for the unauthorized use of his name has counter-sued the retired NBA superstar for US$8 million for hurting its reputation, Chinese state media said yesterday. Jordan’s lawsuit against Qiaodan Sports Co last year alleged that the firm deliberately misled Chinese consumers about its ties to him. Jordan has been known in China by the Chinese name “Qiaodan” since he became a star in the 1980s. Qiaodan’s products also carry a silhouette of a leaping basketball player, which bears a resemblance to the “Jumpman” logo used by Nike’s Jordan brand. Qiaodan said Jordan misled the public with his lawsuit, the China Daily said.
BASEBALL
Broad face benefits baseball
The shape of a man’s face can help predict his sporting acumen, a study revealed yesterday, after finding that Japanese baseball players whose faces are relatively broad instead of long were most likely to hit a home run. University of London psychologists measured the facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR), of 104 batters in Japan’s professional Central League Pennant who played in the 2011 season and last year. In both seasons, the players who scored the most home runs had the highest fWHR, said the study, which was published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters. Previous research has found a link between face ratio and competitiveness among politicians and financial success among corporate executives, but this work had focused only on Caucasian subjects, not Asians. The new data suggests the association “may be generalizable across cultures,” the paper said, although why facial bulk appears to be so important in sporting success is unclear.
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