SOCCER
Singapore busts bet ring
Singapore police said they have arrested 18 people believed to be part of a multimillion-dollar illegal soccer betting ring less than a month before the World Cup starts. “Preliminary investigations revealed that the suspects are believed to have received illegal soccer bets amounting to an estimated S$8 million [US$6.4 million] in the past two weeks alone,” the force said in a statement released on its Web site late on Monday. It did not reveal the nationalities of the suspects, 16 women and two men, who were detained during raids on Sunday and Monday. Cash totaling S$1.4 million, as well as computers, mobile phones, and documents detailing betting and bank transaction records were seized during the raid, police said. Sports betting is deeply entrenched in wealthy Singapore. The Singapore Totalisator Board, which manages the country’s two legal soccer betting and lottery companies, saw revenues of US$983.3 million in the year to March last year. Experts say there are dozens of illegal soccer betting outfits in the city-state.
BASKETBALL
Cavs get No. 1 pick again
The Cleveland Cavaliers have continued their remarkable lottery luck, winning the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft for the second straight year. It is the third time in four years the Cavaliers will be atop the draft after moving up from ninth spot. They had just a 1.7 percent chance of winning the top spot on Tuesday night. They drafted Kyrie Irving first in 2011 and will hope to do better with this win than last year, when they took Anthony Bennett, who had a forgettable rookie season.
BASEBALL
Hero cat throws first pitch
Tara, a California cat that became a YouTube sensation after being videotaped interrupting a dog’s attack on a small boy, “tossed out” a ceremonial pitch at the start of a minor league baseball game on Tuesday. Roger Triantafilo uploaded video footage last week of a dog dragging his four-year-old son, Jeremy, from his bicycle when the hero feline, Tara, ran to the rescue, broadsiding the dog and chasing it away. The video has since amassed more than 21 million views on YouTube. Jeremy, who suffered a bite to his leg as he was dragged off his bicycle by the dog before Tara lunged to his rescue, actually threw the first pitch of the game before handing the ball to his cat. As the crowd at the Sam Lynn Ballpark cheered, parents Roger and Erica Triantafilo supported the cat’s attempt to throw the ball to home plate by using her paw while staff from the Bakersfield Blaze baseball team used fishing wire to give the baseball the appearance of flying through the air. The ball dropped straight to the ground, but the spectacle nonetheless drew a large crowd of “hero cat” fans to the stadium.
BOXING
Groves joins Sauerland
English world super-middleweight contender George Groves has signed a long-term deal to be managed by Germany-based promoters Sauerland ahead of his Wembley Stadium rematch with Carl Froch in 10 days. The 26-year-old has signed for the Sauerland brothers Kalle and Nisse and will fight Froch, 36, for his WBA and IBF titles at Wembley Stadium on May 31, having suffered the first loss of his career to Froch in November last year. Groves joins Team Sauerland’s stable of champions which includes WBO super middleweight Arthur Abraham, WBO cruiserweight Marco Huck, British heavyweight star David Price and former five-time world champion Mikkel Kessler, who is one of only two men to have beaten Froch.
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