ASIAN GAMES
Hangzhou confirmed as host
The Chinese city of Hangzhou yesterday was confirmed as the host of the 2022 Games, the Olympic Council of Asia announced at its General Assembly in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang Province, was the sole bidder to stage the 19th edition of Asia’s biggest multi-sports event. China has hosted the Asian Games twice before, in Beijing in 1990 and Guangzhou in 2010, and has been awarded the Winter Olympics in 2022. Held every four years, the next Asian Games is to take place in Jakarta in 2018. The council had wanted to switch the Asian Games to an odd-numbered year to avoid clashing with the Winter Olympics and FIFA’s soccer World Cup, but ended that idea after Hanoi, Vietnam, withdrew as the 2019 host. Jakarta stepped in as the replacement, but asked for the Games to be moved forward to 2018 because the Indonesian presidential elections are slated for 2019.
RUGBY UNION
Fiji reveal sound tactic
Whatever shocks lie in store for Fiji in tomorrow’s World Cup opener against England at Twickenham, the roar of the home crowd will not be among them — thanks to a sneaky recording the visitors have been putting to good use. Fiji coach John McKee said his squad had been training against a backdrop of English voices in a bid to accustom themselves to what lies ahead in the game, which is to follow the opening ceremony. “We had a little bit of a strategy earlier in the campaign in Fiji, we had a PA system playing crowd noise and the sounds from Twickenham,” McKee told reporters on Tuesday at Fiji’s team base in Weybridge, near London. “That was part of our preparation. Just the normal crowd noise from Twickenham, they took it off some of the footage. It was good in those sessions we did it, it affected the intensity of the training.” Fiji go into the England game in good form, having won four out of their past five games. “We’ve watched England play a lot of games and we’ve watched their players play a lot of games, so we think there are some chinks there that we can exploit,” McKee said.
FOOTBALL
Hayne draws home viewers
They are minuscule viewership numbers compared with the US, but Jarryd Hayne’s NFL regular-season debut with the San Francisco 49ers drew a higher television audience in Australia than the Super Bowl. Mumbrella, an Australian entertainment Web site, on Wednesday said Hayne’s debut drew a television audience on ESPN of 116,000, topping the record mark of 107,100 for this year’s Super Bowl. ESPN is only available on pay television in Australia. The figures do not include those from a station that acquired the 49ers’ free-to-air rights this season. The former rugby league star’s first touch of the ball was a fumble and turnover to the Minnesota Vikings. However, he had four rushes for 13 yards with a nine-yard gain as his longest run, while also catching a seven-yard pass, in San Francisco’s 20-3 win.
FOOTBALL
Princeton player comes out
US college team Princeton has its first openly homosexual player. Offensive lineman Mason Darrow told Outsports.com in a story posted on Tuesday that he is gay. Darrow said everything has gone well at home and school since he told his teammates and coaches. “I think in this day and age people really just don’t care about it. It’s really not a big deal anymore,” he said.
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