BASKETBALL
Rubio lands US$56m deal
Ricky Rubio is getting a four-year, US$56 million contract extension from the Minnesota Timberwolves. The Timberwolves and Rubio’s agents, Dan Fegan and Jarinn Akana of Relativity Sports, have been negotiating for more than two months and had until midnight to reach a deal or Rubio would have become a restricted free agent after the season. “We have reached an agreement and we are finalizing the paperwork now,” Akana said in a text message just over three hours before the deadline. Rubio is in his fourth season with the Wolves since coming over from Spain in 2011. He has yet to make an All-Star team, but has become the face of the franchise after they traded Kevin Love this summer. As salaries stand right now, the extension will make Rubio the eighth-highest paid point guard in the league.
SOCCER
Neymar to play at Olympics
Brazil captain Neymar is to be part of the home nation’s Olympic soccer squad at Rio 2016, coach Alexandre Gallo said on Friday. “I’ll be calling up three players over 23, well, two in fact, as one of those will be Neymar,” he said in an interview with Arena Sport TV. “We can’t think about Brazilian football without considering a star of his level.” Barcelona forward Neymar will be 24 when the Olympics come around. Ever since taking over the role of Olympics coach in July, Gallo had expressed his intention to pick the mercurial striker. “Neymar is a figurehead. It would be difficult to imagine Argentina at the Olympics without [Lionel] Messi or Portugal without Cristiano [Ronaldo],” Gallo added.
SOCCER
Schalke beat Augsburg 1-0
Schalke 04 moved up to seventh in the Bundesliga as new coach Roberto di Matteo picked up his third win in four games with Friday’s 1-0 victory over Augsburg in Gelsenkirchen. Netherlands striker Klaas-Jan Huntelaar scored the 37th-minute winner. Former Chelsea manager Di Matteo has moved Schalke up from 12th when he took charge three weeks ago. However, the win barely masked Schalke’s poor performance as the hosts were out-played for long periods at the Veltins Arena by mid-table Augsburg. Huntelaar scored his seventh goal of the season in all competitions after Japan defender Atsuto Uchida won possession in his own half and fed the Dutch striker after a superb piece of play. The victory may have come at a heavy price ahead of Wednesday’s trip to Sporting Lisbon in the Champions League after midfielder Julian Draxler went off with a thigh injury after only four minutes.
BOXING
‘Rumble’ ring stolen
Officials in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, have revealed the ring used for “The Rumble in the Jungle” has been stolen as boxing fans on Thursday marked 40 years since one of the most famous and brutal bouts in the sport’s history. As the sporting world remembers Muhammad Ali’s epic showdown with George Foreman, the search is on for the ring into which the two boxers climbed at dawn on Oct. 30, 1974. The ring “was stolen a few years ago,” said Barthelemy Bosongo, manager of the Tata Raphael stadium, which staged the fight. “We don’t know where it’s gone, but it’s no longer in Kinshasa,” he added. “We’re in the process of setting up a judicial investigation.” A leading sports official who wished to remain anonymous believes it “is in South Africa.” “There are no signs left now of the fight, apart from the two dressing rooms” which Ali and Foreman used to change before stepping out for the fight, and into boxing folklore, Bosongo said.
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