OLYMPICS
Gay, Bailey eye bobsled role
Veteran sprinter Tyson Gay is making a bid to force his way onto the US bobsled team after entering this week’s National Push Championships in Canada. The 34-year-old, a polarizing figure in track and field after his 2013 doping conviction, joins Ryan Bailey as another former Olympic sprinter hoping to switch sports. Push championships are compulsory for any athlete aiming to make the US national team during the 2016-2017 season, a key part of preparations for the 2018 Winter Games in PyeongChang. The championships got under way yesterday in Calgary, Alberta. Both Gay and Bailey were members of the US’ 4x100m relay squad which won the silver medal at the 2012 Olympic Games in London. The team was later stripped of the silver after evidence of Gay’s doping emerged.
SOCCER
Iceland out of FIFA game
Iceland will not feature in the latest FIFA video game due to a financial row between the Euro 2016 quarter-finalists and US game manufacturers Electronic Arts (EA). The Icelandic Football Association (KSI) has accused EA of showing them a lack of respect in their monetary offer to the European minnows. “We do not accept bad treatment. They offered under 2 million Icelandic crowns (US$17,300). We made them a counteroffer, which they did not accept,” KSI president Geir Thorsteinsson said. The FIFA series of soccer video games are hugely popular, with the latest version — FIFA 17 — due for release on Tuesday next week in North America and two days later throughout the rest of the world.
OLYMPICS
Rome to pull plug on bid
Rome Mayor Virginia Raggi has decided to withdraw the city’s backing for a bid to host the 2024 Olympic Games in the Italian capital, a city hall official said yesterday. The decision effectively sinks Rome’s bid and narrows the field of Olympics bidders to Paris, Los Angeles and Budapest. Raggi’s anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, which won control of Rome in June, had always expressed doubts about staging the sporting spectacular, saying the heavily indebted city could ill afford to finance the investment needed. However, the Rome 2024 bid team, backed by Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, had held out hopes that she would change her mind. Italian Olympic Committee president Giovanni Malago has said the bid would fail without the city council’s backing.
TENNIS
Lestienne suspended
French tennis player Constant Lestienne has been suspended for seven months and fined US$10,000 for gambling on tennis, the Tennis Integrity Unit (TIU) said yesterday. The 24-year-old — presently at a career-high ranking of 164 — placed bets on 220 tennis matches, none involving him, in a three-year period from February 2012 to June last year. The TIU softened the blow by suspending half his period of the ban — so long as he commits no other offenses — and offered him the olive branch of considering half the fine paid if he cooperates with them. “The suspension applies with immediate effect and means the player is not allowed to compete in, or attend, any tournament or event organized or sanctioned by the governing bodies of the sport,” the TIU statement said.
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