BASEBALL
Price in US$217m deal
The Boston Red Sox and ace pitcher David Price have agreed to a deal worth US$217 million over seven years, a person familiar with the negotiations said. The person spoke on condition of anonymity on Tuesday night because the deal has not yet been signed and is pending a physical. Price has a 3.09 ERA in eight major league seasons with 1,372 strikeouts and 104 wins. The left-hander was traded from Detroit to Toronto last season as the Blue Jays made a playoff push in the American League East. One year earlier, he was traded to Detroit from Tampa Bay, where he spent the early part of his career. Price is a serious upgrade for the Red Sox pitching staff, who struggled last season as Boston finished 78-84, last in the division.
SOCCER
Verona name Del Neri coach
Struggling Italian side Hellas Verona on Tuesday named Luigi Del Neri as their new coach 24 hours after the firing of Andrea Mandorlini. The 65-year-old takes over with winless Verona anchoring Serie A. Sunday’s latest 3-2 loss to Frosinone left them with a mere six points out of a possible total of 42. A former coach with Porto, AS Roma and Juventus, Del Neri, out of work since 2013, said: “I thank the club for their confidence in me. I missed football. I’m joining a club rich in passion and tradition.”
BASKETBALL
Jackson fined for language
The NBA fined Detroit Pistons point guard Reggie Jackson US$25,000 for directing inappropriate language toward a fan during a loss in Oklahoma City last week. The fine was announced on Tuesday. Jackson was traded by Oklahoma City last season after saying he wanted to be a starter, despite playing behind All-Star Russell Westbrook. Jackson was booed loudly during pregame warmups on Friday last week and jeered most of the time when he touched the ball. He finished with 15 points on four-for-16 shooting as the Thunder beat the Pistons 103-87.
SOCCER
Roma fans vent with carrots
AS Roma supporters infuriated by their team’s faltering form let the players know how they feel on Tuesday — by presenting them with carrots. About 50 supporters turned up at the Trigoria training ground with boxes of the vitamin-packed vegetable. A banner helped to explain the coded meaning of the unusual gift: “Bon Appetit Rabbits,” it read. In Italian, the word for rabbit, coniglio, is synonomous with coward. Roma’s French coach, Rudi Garcia, is under pressure after a 6-1 thrashing by Barcelona in the Champions League last week was followed by a 2-0 home defeat to Atalanta BC on Sunday. The Barca reverse left the club’s hopes of advancing to the knockout stages of Europe’s elite competition in the balance. Runners up to Juventus for the past two seasons, Roma currently stand fourth in Serie A, four points adrift of leaders SSC Napoli. Tuesday’s protest was not the first time the worlds of soccer and fruit and vegetables have collided in Italy. When the national squad was knocked out of the 1966 World Cup by North Korea, the players were famously pelted with rotten tomatoes on their return home. However, the symbolism of the Roma fans’ action was arguably flawed: rabbits do not eat carrots in the wild and it is only thanks to cartoon character Bugs Bunny that they are thought to be particularly keen on the root vegetable.
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