FORMULA ONE
Ferrari fans lock onto ‘F14 T’
Ferrari’s 2014 F1 car will be called the F14 T after an online poll of fans, the Italian team said on Friday. Ferrari said 1,123,741 votes were cast from 208 countries — including Palau, Greenland and Equatorial Guinea — between Jan. 15 and Thursday, with the winning designation beating F166 Turbo by just 19,104. Fans chose from among five names. “It’s nice to know the name of the car has been chosen by our fans,” team principal Stefano Domenicali told Ferrari.com. “The amazing number of votes shows just how popular Ferrari has always been and this will be, as always, a further impetus for us to do well this year.” Ferrari has a lineup of champions this season with Finland’s 2007 champion Kimi Raikkonen returning to Maranello from Lotus as teammate to Spain’s double champion Fernando Alonso.
FORMULA ONE
Mosley wins photo court case
A German court in Hamburg ruled on Friday that Google must block photos of a sadomasochistic orgy involving former Formula One boss Max Mosley, 73. The court said the six images taken from a video of the orgy that was filmed by Britain’s now defunct News of the World tabloid seriously breached Mosley’s privacy. Google must prevent the pictures being shown on its German-based google.de site, including via links on its search engine, the court ruled. This ruling is the latest of a string of legal battles waged by Mosley related to the publication of the video and a 2008 article published by the Rupert Murdoch-owned British newspaper alleging the event was a Nazi-themed orgy. Mosley successfully took the newspaper publisher to court over the Nazi claim, winning £60,000 (US$99,000) in damages when the judge ruled there was no Nazi element. In November last year, a French court also ordered Google to prevent its search engine from providing links to images of the orgy, prompting the US company to immediately announce it would appeal.
BOXING
Froch-Groves rematch called
In London, boxing promoter Eddie Hearn says the IBF has ordered a rematch between Carl Froch and George Groves following their controversial super middleweight title fight in November last year. Froch retained his WBA and IBF titles with a ninth-round stoppage against Groves in Manchester on Nov. 23. Groves launched an appeal, saying referee Howard Foster stopped the all-British fight prematurely. Hearn told The Associated Press on Friday that Groves has been successful with his appeal and that the IBF has ordered a rematch within 90 days. Froch could forfeit his IBF belt and take on former WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr of Mexico in Las Vegas instead.
FOOTBALL
NFL fines Richard Sherman
The NFL slapped Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman with a nearly US$8,000 fine on Friday for “taunting” the San Francisco 49ers during the NFC championship game. Sherman was assessed a 10-yard penalty near the end of the game on Sunday last week for making a choking gesture toward the San Francisco sideline. Sherman said it was directed at 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick. After reviewing the incident, the league’s disciplinary committee decided to fine Sherman a total of US$7,875 for unsportsmanlike conduct and taunting. After the game, Sherman launched into a verbal tirade that went viral in which he slammed 49ers receiver Crabtree.
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