SOCCER
Falcao nears goal record
Radamel Falcao went within one goal of Colombia’s scoring record by netting a penalty on Monday to complete a 3-1 victory over Kuwait in a friendly. Despite Falcao’s struggles for Manchester United this season, the striker has netted three in two games for his country during the international break. The Colombia captain scored from the penalty spot in the 74th minute, taking his international tally to 24 — one short of retired striker Arnoldo Iguaran’s national record. Abel Aguilar volleyed in Colombia’s opener from the edge of the penalty area in the 22nd, but Musaed Alenezi leveled on the stroke of halftime for Kuwait. Edwin Cardona restored Colombia’s lead in the 68th before Falcao made sure of the victory.
OLYMPICS
British soccer plan axed
There will be no repeat of the united British soccer teams from the 2012 Olympics at next year’s Games in Rio de Janeiro after the English Football Association failed to get the necessary support from the other country’s associations, the BBC said on Monday. The FA had hoped to send both a men’s and a women’s team to Rio, but came up short in convincing the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish football associations that it was worth doing. The FA wrote to those associations on Monday to inform them of the decision.
GOLF
Top three due at WGC
World No. 1 Rory McIlroy as well as the next two in the rankings, Sweden’s Henrik Stenson and two-time Masters champion Bubba Watson, are to play at the World Golf Championships (WGC) Match Play, organizers said on Monday. McIlroy, who is to try to win his third successive major and complete a career Grand Slam next week at the Masters, will likely be the man to beat in the field of 64 at Harding Park from April 29 to May 3, the eve of his 26th birthday. The Northern Irish star, whose major wins include the 2011 US Open, the PGA Championship in 2012 and last year and last year’s British Open, was runner-up in the WGC Match Play three years ago to American Hunter Mahan, but has never won the event. Third-ranked Watson could match Jack Nicklaus as the only men to win three green jackets at Augusta National over four years with a Masters repeat. World No. 2 Stenson, the 2007 WGC Match Play winner, was the runner-up in the European Tour’s World Match Play Championship last year and third in the 2008 WGC Match Play.
BOXING
Ao, Beltran to fight
Former world champion Takahiro Ao is to fight for a world lightweight crown in Las Vegas on the eve of Manny Pacquiao’s welterweight showdown with Floyd Mayweather Jr, promoters announced on Monday. The 30-year-old Japanese southpaw faces Mexico’s Raymundo Beltran on May 1 for the vacant World Boxing Organization lightweight crown, launching an eight-night US television boxing series from promoters Top Rank. Ao, 27-3 with one draw and 16 knockouts, won the World Boxing Council featherweight crown in 2009 and held the WBC super-featherweight title from 2010 to 2012. Beltran, 33, is 29-7 with one draw and 17 knockouts. He failed twice before when fighting for the WBO lightweight crown, drawing with Scotsman Ricky Burns in 2013 and losing in November last year to unbeaten American Terence Crawford. The bout will serve as an appetizer for the May 2 showdown between Mayweather and Pacquiao at the MGM Grand for the WBC, WBO and World Boxing Association welterweight crowns.
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