Spanish rider Jose Joaquin Rojas won the first stage of the Tour of Qatar, a 136km ride from Dukhan to Sealine Beach on Sunday.
The 29-year-old Movistar rider — Spanish road race champion in 2011 — edged out Belgian veteran Tom Boonen and Arnaud Demare of France in a sprint finish.
Rojas is unlikely to be able to hold onto the jersey all the way to Friday’s finish, but he said he would try.
Photo: EPA
“We have to try. The important thing for now is not to relax,” he said.
“We will give our all and if we manage to maintain or even improve this result with another victory, it will be welcome,” he said.
The pace picked up in the final 10km and some riders, including world time-trial champion Bradley Wiggins and sprint king Marcel Kittel, failed to keep up.
Astana pair Lars Boom and Lieuwe Westra, along with Matti Brechel of Team Tinkoff-Saxo, went for broke from 25km out, but crosswinds in the final 14km scuppered their chances of holding on to the finish.
“It was a long day, if we didn’t attack, we would have finished in the dark,” Boom said.
With time bonuses given to the top finishers, Rojas leads Boonen by four seconds in the overall standings, while Demare is a further two seconds adrift.
The second stage is the 194.5km ride from al-Wakra to the al-Khor Corniche.
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