TENNIS
Nadal to return to Queen’s
Rafael Nadal will start his bid to win a third Wimbledon title by returning to the grass-court tournament at Queen’s Club later this year. Nadal, a 14-time Grand Slam champion, has reached the Wimbledon final in each of the five years he played at Queen’s, but UK tax laws forced the world No. 3 to turn his back on the west London event. The 28-year-old Spaniard had instead prepared for Wimbledon by playing in Germany at the Gerry Weber Open in Halle in recent years. Since his last visit to Queen’s in 2011, Nadal has failed to get past the fourth round at the All England Club and the former world No. 1, who last won Wimbledon in 2010, has decided to return after a three-year absence.
RUGBY UNION
Ugo Monye plans to retire
Harlequins’ former England and British and Irish Lions wing Ugo Monye plans to retire at the end of the season, he announced on the English Premiership club’s Web site on Monday. “It is a decision that I have been thinking about for a long time, and one that I haven’t taken lightly,” said Monye, who has spent his entire playing career at Quins, making 237 appearances. “I have had an unbelievable 13 years at Quins, and look back on my career with no regrets.” Monye, 31, won 14 England caps between 2008 and 2012, and played in two Tests on the Lions’ 2009 tour of South Africa, scoring one try in the third-Test victory in Johannesburg. He added: “I can honestly say that the one thing I am most proud of is that I have been a one-club man in a game that is ever-changing, and I am excited to be staying on at the club after my retirement in a different capacity.”
BASEBALL
Dodgers’ Ryu placed on DL
Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Ryu Hyun-jin, a South Korean left-hander, is scheduled to begin the upcoming Major League Baseball season on the disabled list, team manager Don Mattingly said. Ryu, who turns 28 today, went 14-7 with a 3.38 earned-run average last season. However, he has a nagging left shoulder injury that prompted the Dodgers to send him home from pre-season training in Arizona to be examined by a doctor. Mattingly said a cortisone injection, treatment that helped ease shoulder stiffness last season, was delivered last week, but Ryu was barely able to lob a ball on Sunday.
SOCCER
Lucarelli banned over insult
Crisis-hit Parma have yet another problem. Captain Alessandro Lucarelli has been banned for three matches for insulting the referee. The incident occurred when Lucarelli was sent off in Sunday’s 2-0 loss at home to Torino. Parma were declared bankrupt by an Italian court last week with debts of more than 200 million euros (US$219.7 million), and the club’s new owner and president, Giampietro Manenti, was arrested on charges of money laundering and embezzlement. Players have not been paid all season and Parma sit last in Serie A.
RUGBY UNION
Manu to move to Edinburgh
Highlanders cocaptain Nasi Manu is to leave the Super 15 competition at the end of the season to join Edinburgh, the New Zealand club said yesterday. The Highlanders said Manu had signed a two-year contract with the Scottish club, but remained focused on this year’s Super 15 campaign. Manu should find conditions familiar in Scotland — the Highlanders home city Dunedin has a similar climate and is known as “the Edinburgh of the south.”
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