ENGLAND
Ched Evans to be retried
Ched Evans will face a retrial after his conviction for raping a 19-year-old woman was quashed by the Court of Appeal in London yesterday. The former Wales striker, 27, was released from prison in October 2014 after serving half of a five-year sentence for raping the woman in a hotel room in Rhyl, north Wales in May 2011. His conviction was overturned by three leading judges following appeal proceedings last month. Details of the grounds of appeal cannot be reported for legal reasons. “In summary, we have concluded that we must allow the appeal and that it is in the interests of justice to order a retrial,” Judge Heather Hallett said. “The appellant will be retried on the allegation of rape,” the court said. Evans, whose former clubs include Manchester City and Sheffield United, was in court to hear the verdict announced along with his girlfriend, Natasha Massey. His case was referred to the Court of Appeal by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), which investigates possible miscarriages of justice in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, after it unearthed new evidence. Following his release, Evans saw an attempt to resurrect his career with English third-tier club Oldham Athletic collapse amid a public outcry. He has not played professional soccer since his release.
FIFA
Human rights were ignored
FIFA ignored any problems to do with World Cup stadium construction, including human rights, up to and including Brazil in 2014, a senior official admitted on Wednesday. Federico Addiechi said soccer’s governing body did not view anything concerned with the building of venues for soccer’s biggest tournament as its “problem.” His admission came during a lively session at a human rights conference in Doha, where FIFA was also attacked for “how little” its done on the plight of migrant workers in Qatar. New president Gianni Infantino was criticized for his non-attendance by Amnesty International, and a Bangladeshi delegate pleaded with Qatar to treat workers with “respect.” And one union leader — Sharan Burrow, general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation — said she had been followed the previous evening by security services. It was Addiechi though who was largely in the firing line. FIFA’s head of corporate social responsibility, conceded his organization had made mistakes. “In the past, we did not recognize the work done in connection with the construction of the stadiums for the World Cup as part of our responsibility,” he said. “We are doing that now, but even until the World Cup in Brazil we always said ... the stadiums are not commissioned by us, we don’t have a contractual relationship with the owners, we are only using it for one month ... and therefore if there are problems, there’s someone else you talk [to] about the problem, certainly not FIFA.”
FRANCE
Marseille reach Cup final
Olympique de Marseille reached the Coupe de France final after Florian Thauvin’s second-half strike gave the crisis-hit club a 1-0 win at Ligue 2 side Sochaux on Wednesday. Thauvin found the back of the net with a low shot across goal after being set up by Steven Fletcher to send OM, whose coach Michel was fired on Tuesday, into the final against bitter rivals Paris Saint-Germain on May 21 at the Stade de France. PSG, who are bidding to replicate last season’s domestic treble and take on Lille OSC in tomorrow’s Coupe de la Ligue final, reached the Coupe de France final with a 1-0 win at Lorient on Tuesday.
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