PREMIER LEAGUE
Al Bangura trafficked for sex
A Sierra Leonean soccer player who used to play in Britain’s top league has revealed he was trafficked as a teenager, taken to Britain by a man who tried to force him into the sex trade. Ex-Watford player Al Bangura told the BBC that at the age of 14 he traveled from his home country, where a civil war was raging, to Guinea, hoping to play professional soccer in Europe’s top leagues. He met a Frenchman there who said he would help, but instead tried to force Bangura into the sex trade. He was taken to France and then Britain, where he was left in a building. “The guy left me, and so all of a sudden I saw two, three guys come around me, trying to rape me,” Bangura, 27, told the BBC. “I was screaming, shouting, crying, just proper screaming, and I tried to make my way out.”
Rugby Union
Saracens down Ulster
Saracens fought back from 9-0 down to defeat Ulster 27-9 on Friday in Belfast to make it two wins from two in their European Champions Cup campaign. Saracens had defeated four-time champions Toulouse 32-7 in their Pool 1 opener last week and were just as fluent in Northern Ireland in testing conditions. Paddy Jackson kicked three first half penalties for Ulster whose scheduled opening game last week against French team Oyonnax was called off in the aftermath of the Paris terror attacks. However, a try from Chris Wyles kept the English side in touch at the interval before Alex Goode, Duncan Taylor and Billy Vunipola added second half tries to lead their team to a convincing win.
HORSE RACING
Aussie favorite euthanized
Red Cadeaux, who won the hearts of Australian racing fans after finishing runner-up at the Melbourne Cup three times, has been euthanized after “irreversible” complications from surgery on his injured leg, Racing Victoria said on Saturday. The Ed Dunlop-trained stayer pulled up in the final straight of the country’s richest race earlier this month and it was later confirmed he had broken his left foreleg. The 10-year-old gelding had emergency surgery after the race and the initial prognosis was positive. “The Victoria Racing Club is extremely saddened by the passing of Red Cadeaux following irreversible complications from surgery on his injured leg,” the state governing body said in a statement. “The loss of a horse is always particularly sad. Very few horses have endeared themselves to the Australian public like Red Cadeaux, ensuring the impact is only further and more acutely felt.”
LIGUE 1
Valbuena gives evidence
Mathieu Valbuena was named in the Lyon team to play Nice in Ligue 1 on Friday just hours after giving evidence in the sex tape blackmail affair in which his France colleague Karim Benzema has been charged. Valbuena gave evidence before a judge investigating the affair for more than two hours in Versailles, on the outskirts of Paris, on Friday morning. He was seen by an AFP journalist leaving the court in a black Mercedes at around 12:45pm local time following a hearing that began around 10:30am. The 31-year-old then travelled to the Cote d’Azur, almost 1,000km away, on a private jet laid on by Lyon. “He was very calm and answered all questions honestly,” Valbuena’s lawyer Didier Domat said outside the court. The lawyer refused to discuss what had been said during the hearing because of the “confidentiality of the investigation.”
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