TENNIS
Busta wins at Winston-Salem
Spain’s Pablo Carreno Busta won his first ATP World Tour title on Saturday, beating fellow Spaniard Roberto Bautista Agut in three sets in the Winston-Salem Open final. Busta, ranked 49th in the world, overcame dropping a first-set tiebreaker at the Wake Forest Tennis Center to upset 17th-ranked Agut 6-7(8), 7-6(1), 6-4 and win his first tour title in three final-round appearances, all coming this year. Busta, 25, needed just over 2 hours to become the sixth first-time winner on the ATP World Tour this season, and the first to do so in a US tournament. Agut, 28, was trying to win his third tournament this season, becoming the fifth player on tour to win three or more titles, and the fifth of his career. He won earlier this year at Auckland, New Zealand, and Sofia, Bulgaria.
CRICKET
Windies down India in T20
The West Indies beat India by one run in a remarkable Twenty20 match featuring a record haul of 489 runs in Florida on Saturday. In the first game featuring two full-strength international teams on US soil, the West Indies amassed 245-6 with opener Evin Lewis smashing a century off 49 balls on his second T20 appearance. Lewis belted nine sixes while fellow opener Johnson Charles chipped in with 79 off 33 deliveries at the Central Broward Stadium in Lauderhill. Lokesh Rahul then crashed 110 in 51 balls as India went close to reaching their target, sending the large pro-Indian crowd into a frenzy. Mahendra Singh Dhoni was on strike for the final delivery bowled by Dwayne Bravo. He needed to score two runs to clinch victory, but was caught by Marlon Samuels at third man. The teams were scheduled to play a second Twenty20 at the same venue yesterday.
OLYMPICS
Irish businessman freed
Brazilian authorities on Saturday provisionally released an Irish businessman held over an alleged ticket scam at the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, one of his lawyers said. Kevin Mallon, director of British hospitality firm THG, had been held in a Rio prison since his arrest on Aug. 5. Police said at the time that they seized hundreds of tickets from Mallon which they suspect were offered for sale for thousands of US dollars. One of his lawyers, Thiago Andrade, said Mallon was freed from jail in Rio late on Saturday after a judge gave written authorization. “He has just been released,” Andrade told AFP by e-mail shortly after 10:00pm, without elaborating. He said Fallon’s release did not affect the case of another detained suspect, European Olympic chief Patrick Hickey.
NFL
Anthem stance criticized
San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick refused to stand for the national anthem before a pre-season game on Friday, drawing boos from some fans and criticism on social media, but his team said it backed his right to protest. Kaepernick, a former starter who led San Francisco to the 2013 Super Bowl, but has since been demoted to backup, said he sat on the bench during the playing of The Star-Spangled Banner to make a statement about racial injustice in the US. “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” Kaepernick later told NFL Media in an article posted on Saturday. “To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way.” Kaepernick appeared to be referring to police use of deadly force, which has come under increased criticism in recent years.
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