ICE HOCKEY
Hall of Famer Bathgate dies
NHL legend Andy Bathgate, who set every major New York Rangers scoring record, has died, the NHL team announced on Friday night. He was 83. The eight-time All-Star Bathgate was the league’s most valuable player during the 1958-1959 season and still holds the franchise record for scoring a goal in 10 consecutive games. Bathgate was born in Winnipeg, Canada, and by the time he retired he had played 17 seasons for four teams; the Rangers, Toronto Maple Leafs, Detroit Red Wings and Pittsburgh Penguins. His lone championship title came in 1964 when the Maple Leafs won the Stanley Cup by beating Detroit in seven games. Bathgate completed his career with 349 goals and 973 points in 1,069 NHL games and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1978. He was also the first Rangers player to score 40 goals in a season.
TENNIS
Federer delays comeback
World No. 3 Roger Federer has delayed his ATP Tour return by a month and plans to make his comeback from knee surgery at the Monte Carlo Masters in April. The 17-time Grand Slam champion had initially intended to return at the Indian Wells Masters in California in March. In a Facebook post, Federer said: “I have now had a lot of great practices on the court and in the gym. As it is a long year I don’t want to push it too hard and come back too soon. I will unfortunately not be able to make it back in time for the great event in Indian Wells, but I do plan on playing in the desert next year. After consultation with my team I have decided to enter the Monte Carlo Rolex Masters. Thanks for the support and I will see you back on tour soon.”
WRESTLING
Competition colors up
International wrestling is about to get a lot more colorful. United World Wrestling, the sport’s sanctioning body, announced on Friday that it will allow nations to replace the standard red and blue singlets with ones featuring their home colors. The new uniforms will come in light and dark, and feature red and blue markings. Red and blue singlets were previously used to help referees distinguish the athletes, but often made it tough for fans to tell which country the wrestlers represented. The new guidelines will take effect starting with Olympic qualifying events in Ulan Bator, Mongolia, in April. The move is part of the sport’s ongoing efforts to modernize in the wake of the IOC’s decision to remove wrestling from the Olympic program in 2013. The sport was reinstated eight months later.
CYCLING
Wine deal leaves bad taste
There was a whiff of revolt in France on Friday as news broke that the Tour de France organisers had struck a deal to promote a Chilean wine at this year’s event. The wine “Bicicleta” from Chile’s Cono Sur is the wine in question, and will only be allowed on the promotional events outside France, in Switzerland, Andorra and Spain. However, domestic wine producers were up in arms. “It is unacceptable to allow the Tour de France organizers to promote a wine from Chile,” the Young Farmers group said on its Web site. “They should be supporting only French produce.” The group has threatened to disrupt one of the stages in the Aude region between Carcassonne and Montpellier if the partnership goes ahead. The company that runs the Tour, Amaury Sport Organization, has so far insisted it sees nothing wrong with the deal.
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