ATHLETICS
Taiwan wins Masters medal
Hsu Yung-chung of Taiwan placed third in the 70-74 age group men’s 300m hurdles at the biennial World Masters Athletics Championships in Lyon, France, on Tuesday. Hsu, 73, and Dietmar Steiner of Austria both finished in a time of 50.67 seconds behind the winner, Hans-Jurgen Fruhauf of Germany, but Steiner had a better record in the qualifying rounds and was judged second, while Hsu was awarded third place. In an interview after the event, Hsu said he had learned about the championships in 2013 and been training for the event for only 18 months. At the Asia Championships last year, Hsu won a gold medal in the 400m dash and a silver medal in the 300m hurdles. More than 8,000 athletes are competing in age categories ranging from 35 to 95 at this year’s event, which runs through Sunday.
BOXING
Cotto to defend crown
Puerto Rican Miguel Cotto is to defend his WBC middleweight crown in a 12-round world title fight against former two-time world champion Canelo Alvarez on Nov. 21 in Las Vegas. The 34-year-old Cotto, who is the first boxer from Puerto Rico to become world champion in four weight divisions, has 40 wins, four losses and 33 knockouts. Mexico’s Alvarez, 25, has won 32 of his 47 bouts by knockout and has just one defeat. “I have always said during my whole career that I am here to fight the best names and the best fighters,” Cotto said on Thursday. “This fight has something more,” Alvarez said. “It will hold a special place in history as part of the big rivalry between Mexico and Puerto Rico.”
RUGBY UNION
‘Men In Black’ make advert
New Zealand’s All Blacks have teamed up with former rugby rivals in a Men In Black-themed safety video produced for national carrier Air New Zealand. The video, shown on all the company’s domestic and international flights, features coach Steven Hansen, players Richie McCaw, Dan Carter and Israel Dagg, along with former Wallabies winger David Campese and former England captain Martin Johnson. US actor Rip Torn, who appeared with Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones as the chief of the shadowy Men in Black agency in the franchise’s three movies, appears in that role.
SOCCER
Leicester fines Vardy
Leicester has fined striker Jamie Vardy after he was filmed apparently calling a Japanese man a “Jap” in a casino. Footage published by the Sun newspaper appeared to show Vardy using the derogatory word for a Japanese person three times to a fellow gambler in a Leicester casino last month. Vardy has issued an apology and Leicester says it has now handed him a “substantial fine and prescribed a program of diversity awareness training.”
ATHLETICS
British kit criticized
Olympic long-jump champion Greg Rutherford has criticized the lack of a British flag on the team’s world championships kit. Rutherford posted a picture of the vest on Twitter and said: “Well this isn’t right ... Where’s the Union Jack!?!?” The vest is emblazoned with the words “Great Britain” and also features the logos for British Athletics and Nike on a large white “V” section at the top. There are small red sections on the sides of the vest, which is mostly blue. Although the colors of the Union Jack feature, the flag itself is absent. Rutherford tweeted: “This new kit is ridiculous ... and wrong.” He added: “This isn’t a British kit anymore. It’s promoting British Athletics the company.”
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