SOCCER
Amateur team honored
A sixth-division team which traveled from the Indian Ocean to Corsica could not take home a win in the French Cup on Saturday. La Sainte-Marienne lost 2-0 to host Gazelec Ajaccio, which progressed to the round of 32 alongside fellow first-division teams Nantes, Toulouse, Angers, Bastia and Troyes. Ajaccio players and officials formed a guard of honor after the final whistle for their amateur opponents, who traveled from French territory Reunion Island, and had never advanced this far before in the competition. Third-division side Chambly produced the only shock result of the day with a 4-1 thrashing of Reims after Wilfried Louisy-Daniel’s hat-trick. Struggling at the bottom of the Ligue 1 standings, Troyes grabbed its first win this season with a tense 4-3 victory at third-tier side Dunkerque after Jessy Pi scored the opening goal then the winner in the 116th minute. “It was important to finally win a game, it’s something at least,” Pi said.
SOCCER
Sporting reclaim lead
Islam Slimani scored once in each half to give Sporting Lisbon a 2-0 win over FC Porto that allowed them to reclaim the lead of the Portuguese league from the visitors on Saturday. The striker opened the scoring when he headed in Jefferson’s free-kick. He then secured the three points five minutes from time when he beat ’keeper Iker Casillas following a pass by Bryan Ruiz. Sporting bounced back from their first defeat of the season in the last round by moving back ahead of Porto by two points through 15 rounds. “It is an important win,” Slimani said. “We are working to win the championship.” Elsewhere, Benfica’s Renato Sanches scored in the second half to earn a 1-0 win at Guimaraes that kept the defending champions in third place, four points behind Sporting.
FOOTBALL
Dolphins, Hickey part ways
The Dolphins have parted ways with general manager Dennis Hickey after two seasons, the team announced on Saturday, with his lavish spending unable to help Miami end a playoff drought that stretches back to 2008. Miami were 5-10 heading into yesterday’s season finale and Hickey finishes with a 13-18 record despite heavy investment in a team that were expected to challenge for a post-season berth before the campaign began. “I want to thank Dennis for his work over the last two years. We talked about a number of different possibilities, but at the end we reached this agreement,” executive vice president of football operations Mike Tannenbaum said via a statement.
CRICKET
Ranatunga brothers rejected
Sri Lanka’s World Cup-winning skipper Arjuna Ranatunga and his younger brother Nishantha suffered humiliating defeats yesterday in elections for the country’s cricket board. Arjuna, who led Sri Lanka to its only World Cup victory in 1996, sought the position of vice president, but lost by 22 votes to businessman Jayantha Dharmadasa, according to official results. His brother Nishantha Ranatunga stood for president of Sri Lanka Cricket, but lost by 32 votes to businessman and politician Thilanga Sumathipala. There was no immediate comment from the Ranatunga brothers, both of whom had previously held top positions at Sri Lanka Cricket. Sri Lanka’s then-sports minister Navin Dissanayake had sacked the previous board last April amid allegations of rampant corruption and appointed an interim committee pending fresh elections.
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