BASEBALL
Cardinals grab Masterson
The St Louis Cardinals beefed up their rotation for the second half of the season by acquiring starting pitcher Justin Masterson from the Cleveland Indians on Wednesday. The Cardinals sent a minor-league outfielder to the Indians in exchange for the 29-year-old right-hander on the penultimate day for Major League trades this season. Masterson, who was due to become a free agent at the end of the season, arrives in St Louis in the midst of a fairly disappointing campaign, posting a 4-6 record with a 5.51 ERA. However, the Cardinals will be hoping he can regain the form that helped him finish 14-10 with a 3.45 ERA just one season ago. The Cardinals (56-49) trail first-place Milwaukee by just two games in the National League Central and are locked in a heated divisional race.
CRICKET
Match-fixers to go to jail
New Zealand is to slap a seven-year jail term on anyone caught match-fixing under a new law due to take effect before it hosts the Cricket World Cup and Under-20 FIFA World Cup next year. The Match-Fixing Bill, introduced to parliament yesterday with unanimous political support, would apply the lengthy sentences to anyone caught trying to influence or benefit from the outcome of a match or race. “Match-fixing is a growing problem internationally and has been described as the No. 1 threat to the integrity, value and growth of sport,” New Zealand Minister of Sports Murray McCully said. “As we have seen from recent events, New Zealand is not immune to this threat.” Former New Zealand cricketer Lou Vincent was recently banned for life from the sport after admitting to fixing, while Chris Cairns, who has denied match-fixing, remains under investigation.
RUGBY UNION
Shoulder stymies Woodcock
All Blacks prop Tony Woodcock is looking increasingly likely to need surgery on his shoulder that will end his season, coach Steve Hansen said yesterday. The 110-cap Woodcock was named in the All Blacks squad for the southern hemisphere’s Rugby Championship on Monday, with the caveat that he would miss the start of the tournament as the extent of his shoulder injury is examined. Woodcock was a spectator at the All Blacks training camp in Auckland yesterday when Hansen told local media that a decision should be known in the next week as to whether the 33-year-old’s season was over, though he indicated it was looking more likely he would need surgery. Woodcock, who is one of the more destructive scrummagers in world rugby, is key to Hansen’s plans for the defense of their World Cup title in England next year.
OLYMPICS
Cho leads S Korean effort
South Korean businessman Cho Yang-ho, who led Pyeongchang’s successful bid for the Winter Olympics, has been named as the new president of the organizing committee for the 2018 Games. “I have decided to take up this position to keep the promise I made with the International Olympic Committee to host a successful Olympic Games,” Cho said in a statement. He replaces Kim Jin-sun, who abruptly resigned as president of the committee last week in the middle of a review by the Board of Audit and Inspection. An official at the South Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism denied the review was the reason behind Kim’s resignation, which followed the exit of the vice president and secretary general of the committee, Moon Dong-hoo, who quit earlier this month.
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