All three top finishers in the men’s 800m final were disqualified in the latest dispute to hit the Asian Games in Incheon, South Korea, yesterday.
Qatar’s Femi Ogunode completed a sprint double when he won the 200m in a Games record 20.14 seconds to add to his new Asian mark of 9.93 seconds in the 100m. Yet controversy broke out in the men’s 800m when Abdulaziz Mohammed, Musaab Bala and Abraham Kipchirchir Rotich, who finished one, two and three, were all disqualified.
The Games’ official Web site said Saudi Mohammed was disqualified for obstruction, while Qatar’s Bala and Rotich of Bahrain were penalized for breaking lane regulations.
The drama comes just days after Bahrain’s Ruth Jebet was stripped of her steeplechase win as she was about to step onto the podium, only to be reinstated the next day.
As Afghanistan’s men’s cricketers reached the semi-finals with victory over Nepal, the war-torn country’s head of the sport invited top nations to tour.
“I am telling the players to come to my country and play there, they will treasure those memories for ever,” Afghanistan Cricket Board chairman Shahzada Masoud said.
Shi Tingmao won the women’s 1m springboard and He Chao took the men’s equivalent as China progressed to six diving medals, four away from a perfect 10.
Rhythmic gymnast Son Yeon-jae failed to inspire South Korea to team gold, but remained the favorite for the individual title today.
South Korea’s women edged China 1-0 to take field hockey gold, but China still reached 130 golds overall, ahead of 62 for the hosts.
Today, all eyes will be on the all-Korea soccer final, with millions of fans in both nations to be glued to their TVs for the clash, which earns the winner a ticket to the 2016 Rio Games and leaves the loser facing a hazardous qualification route.
Few soccer fixtures are painted with as much political intrigue as this one. The last time the two sides met in the Asiad final was in 1978 in Bangkok, where neither could find the net and gold medals were handed out to both sets of players.
A post-game report in the Bangkok Post read: “Both sides were relieved to see the gruelling game end, and the atmosphere could not have been more friendly as the 22 players embraced each other.”
Given the current frosty state of inter-Korean relations, another show of cross-border conviviality is unlikely whatever the score today.
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