SOCCER
Star player’s son found dead
The son of Mexico and Real Madrid soccer legend Hugo Sanchez was found dead from apparent gas poisoning on Saturday along with another man in a Mexico City apartment. The body of 30-year-old Hugo Sanchez Portugal was found by his wife when she arrived in the apartment in the morning, Mexico City head of public security Jesus Rodriguez Almeida told reporters. “Everything indicates that the death was due to hydrocarbon intoxication, but this must be corroborated by an autopsy,” the city prosecutor’s office said in a statement. Investigators did not see any signs of struggle, it said. Sanchez Portugal was lying in the living room while the other 35-year-old man, who was not identified, was found in the bathroom. Sanchez Portugal’s famous father arrived in Mexico City from San Diego after being told about the death, local media said. A mobile crime lab of the prosecutor’s office was parked in front of his son’s building on a busy street of the upper-class Polanco neighborhood. Sanchez Portugal was born in Madrid to the soccer player and his first wife. He had been sports director of the Miguel Hidalgo borough, which includes Polanco, since October 2012. Sanchez Portugal played forward for Mexican clubs Pumas and Potros de Atlante and also worked as a television sports commentator.
MOTOR RACING
Rosberg takes pole position
Nico Rosberg edged Mercedes teammate and title rival Lewis Hamilton to take pole position for the Brazilian Grand Prix on Saturday. Rosberg was fastest with a lap of 1 minute, 10.023 seconds, just 0.033 seconds ahead of Hamilton. Local favorite Felipe Massa was third and his Williams teammate Valtteri Bottas finished fourth. Rosberg led Hamilton in all three practice sessions this weekend. He trails Hamilton by 24 points in the overall standings and needs to win in Brazil early this morning Taiwan time to have a real shot at his first title. The championship cannot be decided at Interlagos because the race in Abu Dhabi later this month will be worth double points.
RUGBY LEAGUE
Player smashes door
An England rugby league player has been filmed smashing through a door at a student party following Saturday’s loss to New Zealand in a crucial Four Nations match. Hooker Josh Hodgson, who did not play in the match, is seen crashing through a closed interior door of the flat in the southern city of Dunedin just after wing Josh Charnley had walked through and closed it. Students can be heard chanting “Go through the door!” as the Hull Kingston Rovers player runs at it. England team manager Jon Roberts told Television New Zealand, which was supplied with the video, that the incident was “being dealt with internally and the person involved will be disciplined.” He said arrangements had been made “for full repair of the small damage that occurred.” The students involved said they invited members of the England team back to their flat to continue partying when the bar they were at closed at 4am. Before the Test, which New Zealand won 16-14 to qualify for the Four Nations final, the England players were reported to have been “shocked” by the drunken antics of Dunedin students, who are renowned for burning furniture in the street during parties. Forward Daryl Clark told Britain’s Daily Star that they had their “eyes opened” by the student drunkenness. England were eliminated from the tournament after Australia scored eight tries in a 44-18 win over Samoa to seal a place opposite New Zealand in the final.
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