TENNIS
Roddick lifts lid on feud
Retired US player Andy Roddick has lifted the lid on his feud with Novak Djokovic, revealing the two players almost came to blows in a locker room bust-up. Roddick said he pinned Djokovic up against a locker after the Serb beat him in a US Open match. Roddick, 31, did not say what year the incident happened, but the two had a very public row during the 2008 US Open in New York. “I won’t say his name, I’ll just say it rhymes with ‘Schmovak Schmokovic,’” Roddick said on a panel discussion on US sports network Fox. “We got into it at the US Open one time,” Roddick continued. “I was kind of talking trash and he came out and beat the pants off of me as he would, but then he kind of chirped afterward and he came straight in. I went right up to him and had him up against the locker, but then I realized his trainer was about a little bit bigger.” Roddick said he stopped when he realized the confrontation might escalate.
SOCCER
Wenger to warn Wilshere
Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger said he “completely disagrees” with Jack Wilshere’s smoking and will speak to the England midfielder in a bid to get him to stop. Wilshere was photographed smoking a cigarette outside a London nightclub in the early hours of Thursday morning as players relaxed following their Champions League victory at home to Italian side SSC Napoli on Tuesday. Arsenal, the current Premier League leaders, travel to West Bromwich Albion tomorrow and Wenger said he intended to make his feelings known to the 21-year-old Wilshere before that match. “I don’t know really what happened, so I will need to have a chat with him about that,” Wenger said at a news conference yesterday. “There are two things — first of all when you are a football player you are an example and as well you don’t do what damages your health. The fact is that you can damage your health at home, you can smoke at home and you can drink at home, and nobody sees it, but when you go out socially you also damage your reputation as an example.”
GYMNASTICS
Uchimura wins record title
Olympic champion Kohei Uchimura won a record fourth all-around world championship beating Japanese compatriot Ryohei Kato in a final that had a sense of inevitability from the start on Thursday. Uchimura opened with the best floor exercise of the six top qualifiers, and was in command the rest of the way. He mixed strength, poise and elegance in every discipline, reinforcing his reputation as the greatest in the history of the sport. “I always do my own things,” Uchimura said. “I don’t think about rivals.” Aged 24, he can continue to dominate for years to come. “I want to continue until Tokyo 2020,” he said of the Olympic Games his nation will stage. German veteran Fabian Hambuechen, the bronze medalist, has competed against him for years and has no doubt he is the greatest. “Yeah, sure,” he said. “He has no weak event.”
CRICKET
Afghans reach World Cup
Afghanistan booked their place in the World Cup for the first time yesterday when they beat Kenya by seven wickets in their final qualifying match. Set a mere 94 to win, Afghanistan, who were playing in the fifth tier of international cricket just five years ago, reached their target in the 21st over when captain Mohammad Nabi hit Shem Ngoche for a boundary through midwicket. Afghanistan join World Cricket League winners Ireland as qualifiers for the 2015 World Cup to be played in Australia and New Zealand.
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