RUGBY UNION
Ireland placed second
Ireland have moved up to a highest-ever second place in the world rankings published by World Rugby yesterday. The Six Nations champions romped to a comfortable 35-21 win over Wales in a World Cup warm-up match in Cardiff on Saturday. That, coupled with South Africa’s shock 37-25 Rugby Championship defeat at home to Argentina — the Pumas’ first-ever success against the Springboks — was enough to see Ireland move up one place behind world champions New Zealand. Australia also climbed two places to third after their victory in the Rugby Championship, secured with Saturday’s 27-19 win over the All Blacks, giving them three victories from three. South Africa dropped three places to fifth — England are stable in fourth — having lost all three of their Rugby Championship matches. Argentina’s win moved them above France into seventh, while Wales hold onto sixth, despite their defeat.
SOCCER
Celtic beat Partick Thistle
Celtic showed no ill-effects after last week’s trip to Azerbaijan in the UEFA Champions League as they eased to a 2-0 victory at Partick Thistle in the Scottish Premier League on Sunday. Tom Rogic broke the deadlock in the 28th minute and Kris Commons made sure of the points in the 63rd. Celtic earned a goalless draw in Baku and a 1-0 victory on aggregate on Wednesday last week to line up a Champions League playoff against Malmo FF later this month. Aberdeen were also 2-0 winners on Sunday, courtesy of goals from Graeme Shinnie and Adam Rooney in a home game against Kilmarnock. Celtic, Aberdeen and Heart of Midlothian all have a maximum six points from their first two games of the season.
TENNIS
I’m not quitting: Nadal
Rafael Nadal insisted on Sunday that retirement is not on his mind, despite a year in which he was dethroned as French Open champion and saw his ranking slip to its lowest in a decade. The 29-year-old former world No. 1 and 14-time major winner said that he would hang up his racket only when he has lost the thrill of playing the sport. “For sure, there is more behind than in front in my career. I’m sure of that, but I don’t think about retirement. Day by day is my way to work,” Nadal said on the eve of the Montreal Masters — a major tuneup for the US Open, which starts in three weeks. Nadal slumped to No. 10 in the world in June after he lost his French Open title and then went on to suffer a second-round exit at Wimbledon, but he won on clay in Hamburg recently and hopes to use that to his advantage in his summer hard-court opener. It was in Montreal a decade ago that Nadal claimed the first hard-court title of his career when he beat Andre Agassi in the final. This week, he is chasing a fourth Canadian honor. He is the seventh seed in Montreal and faces either Ukraine’s Sergiy Stakhovsky or Canada’s Filip Peliwo in his first match.
GOLF
Reid in Solheim Cup team
England’s Melissa Reid claimed the fourth automatic qualification spot for the European Solheim Cup team with a share of fifth place at the Tipsport Golf Masters in the Czech Republic on Sunday. She joined Norway’s Suzann Pettersen, Gwladys Nocera of France and compatriot Charley Hull in captain Carin Koch’s team for the match against the US in Germany next month. Koch will complete her lineup when she names the next four automatic qualifiers from the world rankings and her four wild cards.
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