BOBSLEDDING
Heft, Bauman win at Cup
Beat Hefti and Alex Baumann of Switzerland won a World Cup bobsled race in Winterberg, Germany, on Friday, ending US pilot Steven Holcomb’s seven-race winning streak to start the season. Hefti and Baumann finished the two runs in 1 minute, 52.68 seconds. Alexsandr Zubkov and Alexey Voevoda of Russia were second in 1:53.14, followed by Cory Butner and Chuck Berkeley of the US in 1:53.15.
OLYMPICS
Putin skis at Sochi
Russian President Vladimir Putin polished his action-man credentials on Friday by skiing in Sochi on the first day of a visit to the host city of the Winter Olympic Games opening in a month. The leader donned a black ski-suit along with Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev for a run close to a complex that will be used for downhill and biathlon competitions in the Olympics.
BASKETBALL
Libya releases US players
Libyan authorities have released two Americans detained by the army in the violence-hit city of Benghazi, the basketball club they played for said on Friday. The two had been in Libya contracted to al-Hilal basketball club. Club president Salah al-Fetouri said the army had detained them because they had questioned what they were doing at night on a campus normally closed for non-students.
SKI JUMPING
Takanashi has fourth win
Sara Takanashi of Japan extended her domination of the women’s ski jump World Cup on Friday by earning her fourth straight victory to start the season, underlining her status as the overwhelming favorite for the Sochi Olympics. Takanashi landed jumps of 99m and 96.5m for a total of 232.6 points at the night event in Russia, where she hopes to become the sport’s first female Olympic champion next month when women’s ski jumping makes its debut in Sochi. So far, she has been unbeatable this season — although Carina Vogt of Germany came close on Friday. Vogt had longer jumps in both rounds, but received lower marks from the judges to finish 0.9 points behind in second place. Irina Avvakumova of Russia was third, 7.4 points behind.
SOCCER
Confusion on Cup warm-ups
Confusion reigned for two World Cup finalists on Friday with Cameroon announcing a warm-up against Argentina on June 6 that the South Americans later denied, instead confirming a friendly with Slovenia a day later. Guillermo Tofoni, whose World Eleven agency organizes all Argentina’s friendlies, said they would play their last warm-up against the Slovenians at the River Plate stadium in Buenos Aires on June 7. He denied Argentina would meet Cameroon in a friendly before the Brazil finals. Apart from the Slovenia game, Lionel Messi’s team will play Trinidad and Tobagoat a venue yet to be settled, in preparation for their Group F matches against Bosnia, Iran and Nigeria.
CRICKET
Dhaka Asia Cup to proceed
Asia’s cricket chiefs yesterday said violence-plagued Bangladesh would remain the venue for next month’s Asia Cup and added Afghanistan as the fifth team in the regional one-day tournament. “The tournament will go ahead as scheduled in Dhaka from Feb. 25 to March 7,” Asian Cricket Council chief executive Ashraful Huq said after an executive board meeting in Colombo. Afghanistan will join India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh in the 50-over tournament, Huq added.
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