CYCLING
Degenkolb pulls out of Giro
Germany’s John Degenkolb who sprinted to victory on stage five of the Giro d’Italia pulled out of the race during Monday’s rest day, his Argos team announced. “Before the start, I said that I wanted to finish a race and in particular the Giro, but not at any price. I feel it will be difficult for me to recover,” said the 24-year-old, who was lying in 129th position and 1 hour, 9 minutes and 4 seconds behind Italian race leader Vincenzo Nibali, when he dropped out. “The first week of the Giro was very rigorous and we also had to deal with very difficult weather conditions. It has had an impact on my condition and I simply can’t adapt,” added the speedster who won five stages on last year’s Tour of Spain and claimed fourth spot at the world championships. “I know that I am getting stronger every year and I must put my pride to one side and do what is best for my body. We decided as a team that I will go home, firstly to recover and then to work on our next objectives.” Degenkolb is now hoping to be fit to take part in his first Tour de France, that runs from June 29 to July 21.
CRICKET
Petersen replaces Smith
Alviro Petersen has replaced fellow opening batsman Graeme Smith in South Africa’s squad for next month’s Champions Trophy. Head selector Andrew Hudson says Petersen is “the obvious choice” to come in for former limited-overs captain Smith, who was ruled out of the ODI tournament to have surgery on his injured left ankle. Petersen is currently playing for Somerset in English county cricket and is familiar with local conditions ahead of the Champions Trophy in England and Wales. Petersen is Smith’s regular opening partner in Tests for the Proteas, but has only played 17 one-day internationals, the last of which was in January last year.
BASKETBALL
Longley joins Boomers staff
Luc Longley has become a permanent member of the Australian Boomers coaching staff, working as an assistant to Andrej Lemanis. Longley, a member of three consecutive championship teams with the Chicago Bulls in the 1990s, was the first Australian to play in the NBA. He also competed at the Olympics for Australia and was a coaching consultant with the national team for last year’s London Olympics. In a Basketball Australia statement yesterday, Longley said the Olympics “was a chance for me to tip my toe in the water and I enjoyed it and the players responded to me pretty well.” Longley said he’d been away from basketball for a while “but I got to the stage where I really missed it and wanted to get back involved, and Andrej has given me that opportunity.”
GOLF
Mom to the rescue
Nicolas Colsaerts had to send out an SOS to his mother on Monday after his clubs and luggage went astray as he made his way to Bulgaria to defend his World Match-Play title. Colsaerts found himself caught up in a strike at Brussels Airport when he checked in for his flight to Varna for the first-ever major golf tournament staged in Bulgaria. The Belgian was due to arrive in Bulgaria late on Monday, but had to arrange for his mother to travel from Paris yesterday with a spare set of clubs and clothing for her son. Colsaerts heads a field of 24 players from 15 countries competing in the 3 million euros (US$3.9 million) event being played on the stunning Thracian Cliffs course laid out along the Black Sea shoreline at Kavarna 60km north of Bulgaria’s third-largest city, Varna.
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