TENNIS
Snow halts play
Heavy rain and snow wiped out most of Tuesday’s play at the BMW Open in Munich, Germany, with Florian Mayer beating Matthias Bachinger 6-4, 6-4 in the only full-length match. The two German qualifiers played in long sleeves and two layers of clothing as they battled strong winds before snow and rain interrupted play for four hours. Play resumed briefly in the afternoon before organizers finally called it a day. Mayer advanced to the second round, as did Mikhail Kukushkin when his first-round opponent, Evgeny Donskoy, retired with Kukushkin leading 6-2, 3-0.
TENNIS
Granollers battles to win
Fifth-seeded Marcel Granollers had to fight hard in the second set to advance to the second round of the Istanbul Open in Turkey on Tuesday, beating the 413rd-ranked wild-card Cem Ilkel 6-1, 7-6 (11/9). Sixth-seeded Jiri Vesely defeated Thiemo de Bakker 6-3, 7-5 in the first round, while seventh-seeded Teymuraz Gabashvili was upset 6-4, 6-2 by Damir Dzumhur. Karen Khachanov made the second round by beating Aljaz Bedene 6-4, 6-7 (4/7), 6-4, while Chung Hyeon defeated Carlos Berlocq 6-2, 6-3.
BOXING
Holmes admits brain toll
Former heavyweight champion Larry Holmes and other athletes say they are all too aware of the toll that blows to the head can take on an athlete’s brain. In remarks on Tuesday at a Capitol Hill news conference on brain research, Holmes introduced himself by recounting his record — 75 fights, including 69 wins with 44 by knockout. “My intent was not to hurt anybody,” said Holmes, appearing with boxers Paulie Malignaggi and Austin Trout, former football star Herschel Walker and mixed martial artist Phil Davis. Mentioned throughout the news conference was heavyweight great Muhammad Ali, who suffers from Parkinson’s disease. US Senator John McCain and Charles Bernick, a doctor with the Cleveland Clinic’s Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health, joined the athletes in thanking corporations for their support — and to welcome a noteworthy development: The Nevada Athletic Commission is to require all fighters to undergo brain testing. Bernick, who said there are more than 650 fighters — men and women — in the study, said he hopes other sports commissions follow Nevada’s lead. Walker, a star running back involved in the mixed martial arts, called the ongoing research into brain damage a blessing. “In my former field, they’re not going to know about it until you’re dead,” he said. Scott Coker, president of the mixed martial arts promotion company Bellator MMA, and Kevin Kay, president of the cable network Spike, also attended the news conference.
ATHLETICS
Runner goes extra miles
A 12-year-old western New York girl has wound up running 16.1 extra kilometers after she got into the wrong road race. LeeAdianez Rodriguez had registered for the 5km race that was part of the Rochester Regional Health Flower City Challenge on Sunday. She thought she was arriving late at the starting line when the race started, so she began running with the crowd. It turned out she was running with the half-marathoners on the 21.1km course. Rodriguez said she realized about halfway through that she was in the wrong race, but decided to finish. She completed the half-marathon in 2 hours, 43 minutes, 31 seconds. Her mother became worried when she was not among the finishers of the 5km run, but they were reunited when she finished the half-marathon.
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