SOCCER
Ronaldo highest-paid athlete
Real Madrid star Cristiano Ronaldo and Barcelona striker Lionel Messi topped the Forbes magazine list of the world’s highest-paid athletes on Wednesday in the wake of boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr’s retirement and back surgery for golfer Tiger Woods. The list had been topped 12 times by Woods and in three of the past four by Mayweather, who retired last year. This year, Ronaldo topped the list at US$88 million, with US$56 million in salary and US$32 million more from endorsement deals. The three-time FIFA Player of the Year is a marketing juggernaut, with a new Nike deal worth US$13 million annually, plus endorsement partners such as Tag Heuer and Herbalife and his own lines of suits, cologne, shirts, shoes, underwear and hotels. Messi was next at US$81.4 million, with US$28 million of that from sponsorships. LeBron James, who leads the Cleveland Cavaliers against defending champions Golden State in the ongoing NBA Finals, was third on the list and top among Americans with US$77.2 million. Roger Federer was fourth on US$67.8 million.
OLYMPICS
Throw out retests: Russia
Russian Minister of Sport, Tourism and Youth Vitaly Mutko wants all retested doping samples from the 2008 and 2012 Olympics to be thrown out because of alleged flaws in the reanalysis process. “A laboratory which falsely declared a positive test result must be stripped of its accreditation and all the samples it tested must be declared invalid,” Mutko told Russia’s Tass news agency on Wednesday. The International Olympic Committee has reported 55 positive findings in retesting of stored samples from the 2008 Beijing Games and 2012 London Olympics. The Russian Olympic Committee has said 22 of the cases involved Russian athletes, including medalists. Russian officials said two of the athletes were cleared when their “B” samples tested negative, contradicting the positive “A” samples. Mutko said those two cases were enough justification for the entire retesting program to be scrapped.
TENNIS
Rain stops Federer comeback
Roger Federer was a break up in the first set against Taylor Fitz when rain set in for the evening, ending his comeback after seven games at the Mercedes Cup in Stuttgart, Germany, on Wednesday. The break put top-seeded Federer 4-3 up against the US teenager, whose big serve deserted him in that seventh game, but steady rain then forced organizers to abandon play for the day. Federer is returning from a back injury. Federer’s second-round match was to resume yesterday, with the winner to play qualifier Florian Mayer, who beat Michael Berrer 6-3, 3-6, 6-4. Seventh-seeded Philipp Kohlschreiber beat Denis Kudla 7-5, 6-3 to reach the quarter-finals.
TENNIS
Kozlov upsets Johnson
Wild card Stefan Kozlov upset fourth-seeded Steve Johnson 6-3, 6-4 to reach the quarter-finals of the Ricoh Open in The Hague, Netherlands, on Wednesday. Second-seeded Bernard Tomic had a routine 6-4, 6-3 win over Aljaz Bedene, fifth-seeded Sam Quarry fired 11 aces and never faced a break point in beating Tatsuma Ito 6-3, 6-4 and eighth-seeded Nicolas Mahut also made the last eight by defeating Paul-Henri Mathieu 4-6, 6-1, 6-4. On the women’s side, third-seeded Kristina Mladenovic rallied to beat qualifier Natalia Vikhlyantseva 5-7, 6-3, 6-4. Sixth-seeded Coco Vandeweghe beat Nao Hibino 6-2, 6-3 and Madison Brengle outlasted Richel Hogenkamp 7-5, 5-7, 7-5.
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