MOTOR RACING
Robert Manzon dies
French racer Robert Manzon, the last surviving driver from Formula One’s debut world championship season in 1950, has died at the age of 97. Friends of his family said the ex-Simca-Gordini racer, who was a founder of the former Grand Prix Drivers’ Club, died at home in the south of France. Manzon took part in 28 Grand Prix from 1950 to 1956, finishing on the podium twice. He was third in Belgium in 1952 in a Gordini and in France in 1954 driving a Ferrari. The 1950 season comprised seven races, starting at Silverstone in Britain and including the Indianapolis 500. The championship was won by Italian Alfa Romeo driver Giuseppe Farina.
RUGBY UNION
Jerry Collins joins Narbonne
Former All Blacks captain and back-row forward Jerry Collins has joined second-flight French club Narbonne as a stop-gap for the injured Rocky Elsom, the club said on Monday. Narbonne’s player-owner Elsom, a former Wallabies captain, has an injured shoulder that is expected to keep him on the sidelines for three months. The 34-year-old Collins has played in France before, at Toulon in the 2008-2009 season, after seven seasons in Wellington. Collins was most recently with Japanese outfit Yamaha Jubilo, but after being arrested for carrying a carving knife had been on a sabbatical year. He captained the All Blacks three times and played his last international for them in 2008.
GOLF
Woods loses tooth
Tiger Woods lost a front tooth after being hit in the face by a video camera while watching his girlfriend Lindsey Vonn take a record 63rd World Cup Alpine ski win in Italy on Monday, according to his agent. The former world No. 1 surprised Vonn when he turned up in the resort of Cortina d’Ampezzo for the Super-G race, but caused more of a stir when photographs showed a gap where his tooth had been. “During a crush of photographers at the awards’ podium at the World Cup event in Italy, a media member with a shoulder-mounted video camera pushed and surged towards the stage, turned and hit Tiger Woods in the mouth,” Mark Steinberg told USA Today. “Woods’ tooth was knocked out by the incident.”
JUDO
Cancer claims Japan great
Two-time Olympic gold medalist and former Japan national coach Hitoshi Saito has died, aged 54, after a battle with cancer. Saito won consecutive Olympic golds for the heavyweight over-95kg category at the 1984 Los Angeles Games and in 1988 in Seoul, in addition to the 1983 Moscow World Judo Championship. He also served as the coach for Japan’s national team for the 2004 Athens Olympics and the 2008 Beijing Games, training the likes of Athens gold medalist Keiji Suzuki. Saito’s stellar international career was nevertheless overshadowed by national hero Yasuhiro Yamashita, who won the open-weight category in the Los Angeles Olympics and was a nine-time Japanese national champion. Despite his Olympic achievements, Saito never beat Yamashita in their three meetings at the national championships, including one bout a year after the Los Angeles Olympics. “He was my biggest rival during my competitive years,” said Yamashita, who now serves as the deputy head of the All Japan Judo Federation, for which Saito served as a board member. Physicians found a tumor near Saito’s gallbladder in 2013, and his condition deteriorated at the end of last year, reports 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