CYCLING
Leon Sanchez wins Stage 1
Spain’s Luis Leon Sanchez won the 144km opening stage of the Tour of the Basque Country on Monday ahead of compatriot Dani Navarro. The 32-year-old Astana rider Sanchez and Navarro of Cofidis escaped on the descent of the day’s final climb, the Aiastia, 10km from the end of the stage from Exebarria to Markina-Xamein. Australian Simon Gerrans of Orica-GreenEdge won the bunch sprint to finish third in the same time as the winner. “I was desperate to accelerate to overtake Dani Navarro [in the sprint finish]. There wasn’t much space, but I had to take it, and that’s what happened,” Leon Sanchez said.
TENNIS
Monaco defeats Melzer
Juan Monaco beat Gerald Melzer 6-2, 6-7 (3/7), 6-4 on Monday night in the first round of the US Men’s Clay Court Championship. Monaco won the tournament in 2012. It was Melzer’s 2016 Tour debut after winning three Challenger Series titles. American Denis Kudla also advanced, fighting off Germany’s Mischa Zverev 6-3, 6-7 (2/7), 7-6 (7/2). South Korean teenager Chung Hyeon squandered a second-set match point, then made short work of Victor Estrella Burgos of the Dominican Republic 6-4, 6-7 (5/7), 6-0. Chung, 19, played in just his fifth ATP World Tour main-draw match.
CRICKET
Younis quits as coach
Waqar Younis has quit as Pakistan coach only a day after Shahid Afridi stepped down as Twenty20 captain. Pakistan lost three group matches at the World Twenty20 and made an early exit from the tournament in India. “Unfortunately, I couldn’t give the result which the nation was expecting,” said Younis, who was national coach for 19 months. Younis had three months before his contract with the Pakistan Cricket Board was due to expire, but he quit after meeting with board officials in Lahore on Monday. Younis said the board treated him “a bit unfairly” and blamed it for leaking his WT20 tour report, which had criticized Afridi and also said he was not consulted over team selection.
RUGBY UNION
President backs 6N change
Outgoing World Rugby president Bernard Lapasset on Monday backed calls for introducing promotion and relegation to the Six Nations (6N). “We need to change the format of the Six Nations Championship. If we want to look to the future, then the competition needs to be more open, with a promotion-relegation system,” Lapasset told French newspaper Le Figaro. “It could be either direct, or after a play-off, but you need to quickly give a vision and some hope for these teams,” he added, talking about second-tier European countries such as Georgia, Romania and Russia. The debate for relegation and promotion emerged after Georgia’s strong showing at the World Cup last year and intensified after Italy’s woeful displays in this year’s Six Nations. Italy were the last side added to the tournament in 2000, 90 years after France became the first country from outside the British Isles to take part. President of rugby’s world governing body since 2007, Lapasset is to leave the job next month, with Englishman Bill Beaumont the only declared candidate to succeed him. “The only problem will be the Six Nations. It will be difficult for him to open it up, but it has to expand,” Lapasset said. “There will be a Latin vice-president in Argentine Agustin Pichot. That opens prospects. That partnership has a good balance that can help bring rugby a little further.”
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