Marc Marquez’s amazing MotoGP rookie run continued on Sunday with victory in the Indianapolis Grand Prix, the Honda rider’s fourth win of his debut season.
The 20-year-old Spaniard took over the lead on lap 13, diving under Jorge Lorenzo on turn two.
Marquez led the rest of the way, finishing the 27-lap race in 44 minutes, 52.463 seconds. His countryman and Honda teammate Dani Pedrosa was second, 3.495 seconds back.
Photo: AFP
Yamaha rider Lorenzo, the reigning world champion, was third, 5.704 seconds behind the winner.
Marquez began his first MotoGP campaign in April with a third-place finish in the season-opener at Qatar.
At the Circuit of the Americans race in Austin, Texas, later that month, he became the youngest rider in series history to win a pole and a race.
He has failed to reach the podium only once this year, after a crash at a race in Mugello in June.
With his win on Sunday he completed a sweep of the season’s three US races. He also won at Laguna Seca last month.
“I didn’t make such a good start, but I knew before the race that the most important part was toward the end of the race.” Marquez said, who notched his third straight win and fourth of the season.
He also won in Germany.
“I just tried to follow Dani and Jorge,” he said. “Then I tried to attack. Now we go back to Europe, and we would like to continue,” said Marquez, who became the first rookie to win three consecutive premier-class races since American Kenny Roberts in 1978.
Roberts’ wins came at Austria, France and Mugello.
Riders from Spain swept all three World Championship classes at Indy for the third time in four years. Esteve Rabat won the Moto2 race and Alex Rins won the Moto3.
Marquez leads the MotoGP standings after 10 of 18 races with 188 points. Pedrosa is second on 167 and Lorenzo third on 153.
For Lorenzo, the race marked a return to fitness after he was hampered by a broken collarbone.
Although fatigue was a factor for him late in the race, he now returns to the European circuits friendly to the YZR-M1 in full fitness and just 15 points behind Pedrosa in the standings.
Lorenzo’s teammate Valentino Rossi of Italy struggled early and managed to steal fourth place from Cal Crutchlow on the last lap.
The result keeps Rossi in fourth in the overall standings with 130 points, three clear of Englishman Crutchlow.
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