Taiwan continued their success in the preliminaries of this year’s IBAF 18U Baseball World Cup with a convincing 10-0 blanking of Venezuela in seven innings at the Taichung Intercontinental Baseball Stadium last night to improve to a 3-1 record.
Four quick runs off the South Americans in the bottom of the opening frame set the tone early for the hosts as they greeted a wild Venezuela starter Jesus Torres, who issued a pair of walks on top of two wild pitches, with a two-run double and an RBI single by Chen Tzu-hao and Yang Chia-wei respectively to chase the right-hander.
Taiwan would tack on another run in the second that made it 5-0, before a five-run sixth highlighted by Liang Chia-jung’s two-run double gave them the necessary 10-run margin to trigger the mercy rule and award them the victory.
Starter Chiang Chen-yen scattered three singles and a harmless double over five shutout innings of play to pick up the win, while Torres was charged with the loss for allowing four runs on three hits without recording any outs in a disappointing outing.
SOUTH KOREA 1, US 2
The US scored two early runs off South Korea starter Lee Su-min and held off a late-game rally to escape with a 2-1 win in their contest in Greater Taichung yesterday afternoon.
Starter Brady Aiken allowed at least one opposing hitter to reach safely in nearly every one of the 5-2/3 innings he pitched, but managed to keep South Korea off the board for four innings with some timely strikeouts and clutch defensive play, before surrendering a run in the fifth that made it 2-1.
That was all the US needed as relievers Joseph Demers and Luis Ortiz combined for 3-1/3 shutout innings of one-hit relief to preserve the narrow victory for Aiken.
Trace Loehr reached safety on all four of his plate appearances in the game with two base hits and two walks to spearhead an efficient US lineup that put up two runs on six hits.
Yesterday’s other results:
‧ Australia 4, Italy 7
‧ Colombia 0, Cuba 10 (7 inns)
‧ Mexico 4, Canada 11
‧ Czech Rep 0, Japan 15 (6 inns)
‧ Australia 0, South Korea 4
‧ Italy 4, Colombia 6
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