TENNIS
Sousa, Coric suffer upsets
Two seeded players lost in the first round at the Open Sud de France in Montpellier on Tuesday, while local favorite Paul-Henri Mathieu advanced in straight sets. Ruben Bemelmans upset sixth-seeded Joao Sousa 6-4, 3-6, 6-4 and Michael Berrer defeated No. 7 seed Borna Coric 7-6 (7/5), 6-2. Mathieu saved all seven break points to beat teenager Elias Ymer, 6-1, 6-4 to set up an all-French second-round match with fourth-seeded Benoit Paire. Also Jan-Lennard Struff beat Nicolas Mahut 6-3, 7-5 and qualifier Dustin Brown had a 7-5, 7-5 victory over Steve Darcis.
TENNIS
Ramos-Vinolas advances
Albert Ramos-Vinolas of Spain reached the second round of the Ecuador Open in Quito on Tuesday, defeating Dusan Lajovic of Serbia 6-4, 7-6 (9/7). The No. 7 seed will face American Rajeev Ram in the second round. Ram defeated Horacio Zeballos of Argentina 6-4, 7-6 (8/6). In another first-round match in the tournament — the first in a month of clay-court events around Latin America — qualifier Andrej Martin of Slovakia defeated Marcel Granollers of Spain 7-6 (9/7), 6-2. Top-seeded Bernard Tomic of Australia had a bye into the second round and will play Roberto Carballes Baena of Spain.
SOCCER
No Venezuelan extradition
Venezuela on Tuesday said it would not seek the extradition of former national soccer federation boss Rafael Esquivel, who is detained in Switzerland as part of a probe into corruption in world governing body FIFA. Esquivel, 69, who was also a member of the executive committee of the South American Football Confederation, was arrested in May last year in Zurich with six other soccer executives on US arrest warrants. The comments about a possible Venezuelan extradition request followed press reports that Esquivel’s lawyers wanted him to be tried in his own country rather than in the US. “It’s not true that Venezuela has requested his extradition,” chief state prosecutor Luisa Ortega told parliament. “Furthermore, we’re not going to request it.” Swiss authorities have approved the extradition of Esquivel, who was born in Tenerife and has dual Spanish-Venezuelan citizenship, to the US.
BOXING
Khan to fight Alvarez
Amir Khan will challenge Mexico’s Saul “Canelo” Alvarez for his WBC world middleweight title in Las Vegas on May 7 in what will be the Briton’s first fight for a year. The 29-year-old Khan, a former Olympic silver medalist and light-welterweight world champion, will be Alvarez’s first opponent since the Mexican beat Miguel Cotto on a unanimous points decision in Vegas in November last year. “Amir was a decorated amateur, a two-time world champion and is in the prime of his career. Fans are in for a great fight on May 7,” Alvarez, 25, beaten only once in 48 fights, said in a statement from Golden Boy Promotions. Alvarez, whose nickname, Canelo, comes from the Spanish word for cinnamon owing to his red hair, has only one defeat on an otherwise unblemished record, a majority decision loss to American star Floyd Mayweather Jr. Khan, who boasts a 31-3 record with 19 knockouts, has not fought since outpointing Chris Algieri in New York in May last year. “I know Canelo fights the best and wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to face me like others have,” Khan said. “My goal is to always fight the biggest names and the best fighters that is why I’m excited for this fight.”
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