TENNIS
Baghdatis beats Querrey
Marcos Baghdatis saved two match points before defeating fifth-seeded Sam Querrey of the US 1-6, 7-6 (10/8), 6-4 on Wednesday to advance to the quarter-finals of the Nottingham Open in England. The ninth-seeded Cypriot trailed 5-6 and 7-8 in the tiebreaker before taking the second set to force a decider against last year’s finalist Querrey. Baghdatis had 10 aces, two fewer than Querrey, as he reached his fifth quarter-final of the year. He next plays second-seeded Pablo Cuevas of Uruguay, who came through a tough three-setter against Daniel Evans of Britain 6-7 (4/7), 7-6 (7/5), 6-4. Seventh-seeded Andreas Seppi beat Adrian Mannarino 6-2, 6-3 and plays Dudi Sela of Israel in the last eight. Sela defeated Benjamin Becker of Germany 6-3, 2-6, 6-4. Fourth-seeded Alexandr Dolgopolov beat Canadian qualifier Frank Dancevic 6-3, 7-5.
OLYMPICS
Schwazer lying: Tallent
Olympic race walk champion Jared Tallent has given short shrift to Alex Schwazer’s protests of innocence after the Italian’s latest positive drugs test. Schwazer, who won the 50km gold at the 2008 Beijing Games, returned a positive result for a steroid, the Italian athletics federation said on Wednesday, six weeks after he returned from a near-four year doping ban to win the world title in Rome. Schwazer denied any wrongdoing at a media conference and suggested he was a victim of sabotage, but Tallent, who was runner-up in Rome and edged for the Beijing gold by the Italian, was having none of it. “Last time Schwazer held a press conference he lied and told made-up stories,” Tallent tweeted on Thursday. “Why would anyone believe him this time?” he added, with the hash-tag “#banschwazer.” Schwazer was excluded from his London title defense after testing positive for the blood-booster EPO in 2012 and cried when admitting his guilt at a media conference. Banned for three years and six months, he was given an additional six-month ban with three months suspended last year for evading anti-doping tests. His ban expired at the end of April. Tallent was presented with the London Games gold medal in Melbourne last week, four years after he finished runner-up behind a Russian drug cheat who was stripped of the title by a Court of Arbitration of Sport decision in March.
OLYMPICS
Kuwait sues over suspension
Kuwait has filed suit in a Swiss court seeking US$1 billion in damages from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) over its suspension from competition, Kuwaiti Minister of Information and Minister of State for Youth Affairs Sheikh Salman al-Humoud Al Sabah said. The IOC and world soccer governing body FIFA suspended Kuwait in October last year over laws that allow government interference in sports. Al Sabah said that the suspension, which threatens to exclude Kuwaiti athletes from the Olympics in Rio in August, was “unjustifiable” and imposed without proper investigation. “It’s totally unacceptable that Kuwait is treated in this unfair way and barred from international sports activities without any appropriate probe being conducted,” the official KUNA news agency quoted the minister as saying late on Wednesday. Apart from the IOC and FIFA, 16 other international sporting federations have also blacklisted Kuwait. In January, the Kuwaiti government filed suit in a domestic court seeking damages of US$1.3 billion from 15 Kuwaiti sports officials it alleged had actively sought the suspensions.
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