FOOTBALL
Hernandez charged again
Former New England Patriots player Aaron Hernandez, who was convicted last month of murdering an acquaintance in 2013, was on Monday charged with the non-fatal shooting of a man believed to be a witness to another murder of which Hernandez is accused. Prosecutors in Boston charged Hernandez, 25, with violating Massachusetts witness intimidation for shooting a man in the face in February 2013 after the man made a remark about a 2012 double shooting, according to the Suffolk County prosecutor’s office. Hernandez, who was sentenced to life in prison for murdering semiprofessional football player Odin Lloyd, is awaiting trial on charges he shot dead two Cape Verdean nationals outside a Boston nightclub in 2012 after one of them inadvertently spilled a drink on him. Boston prosecutors declined to identify the person involved in the non-fatal shooting. However, details of the incident match a civil suit filed by Alexander Bradley, a former friend of Hernandez who claims the ex-National Football League tight end shot him, costing him an eye. Bradley testified during Hernandez’s trial in Fall River, Massachusetts, where he was convicted of murdering Lloyd.
BOXING
Martinez set to retire
Former world middleweight champion Sergio “Marvellous” Martinez plans to retire from boxing within the next few weeks because his “knee is shattered.” “I am a boxer, my knee is shattered. I am 40 years old, I’m getting wrinkles and my hair is falling out,” Martinez was quoted as saying in Argentina’s La Nacion daily on Monday. “I’ve already made up my mind, but in a few weeks I will have a final meeting with doctors and make my announcement then.” The Argentine boxer, whose career spanned almost 20 years, lost his WBC middleweight title to Puerto Rican Miguel Cotto in June last year. In his crushing defeat to Cotto in Madison Square Garden, Martinez appeared to struggle to move freely around the ring because of the knee injury, experts said. Since then, Martinez has remained out of the limelight. “Now I cannot play a game of soccer with my mates, like when I was a kid, let alone return to fight at the top level,” Martinez added. During his fighting career, the Argentine notched 51 wins, including 28 knockouts, lost three bouts and drew two.
ICE HOCKEY
Callahan out of playoffs
Tampa Bay Lightning forward Ryan Callahan underwent an emergency appendectomy on Monday and will be out of the NHL playoffs indefinitely. Callahan, a member of the US Olympic team at the Sochi Olympics, missed Monday’s practice and was later sent to a local Tampa hospital after complaining of an illness. Doctors diagnosed him with acute appendicitis and the 30-year-old had his appendix removed.
OLYMPICS
Sporting bodies split
The international wrestling federation and the World Taekwondo Federation on Monday pulled out of the sports’ umbrella organization SportAccord until relations improve following a row with the International Olympic Committee. “Our decision, which is based on our full commitment to the Olympic Movement and its leadership, implies that for the time being, United World Wrestling [UWW] shall refrain to participate in the activities and games organized by SportAccord, until the relations with ASOIF [Association of Summer Olympic International Federations] has improved to the latter’s satisfaction,” UWW president Nenad Lalovic said in a statement.
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