MOTOR RACING
Rossi on pole in Japan
Nine-time world champion Valentino Rossi stormed to pole position for today’s Grand Prix of Japan after clocking the fastest time in qualifying yesterday, resuming his campaign to overtake championship leader Marc Marquez. Honda’s Marquez will start from second on the grid with his closest championship rival Rossi standing 52 points behind. Defending world champion Jorge Lorenzo overcame a spectacular crash earlier in the day and earned the third-fastest lap in qualifying to share the front row. Rossi clocked 1 minute, 43.954 seconds at the Twin Ring Motegi circuit, while Marquez finished 0.180sec slower and Lorenzo came in 0.267sec after the leading Italian.
CRICKET
Tournaments separated
Cricket Australia says the International Cricket Council has approved its bid to host the Women’s Twenty20 world tournament in 2020 as a separate event and not in conjunction with the men’s tournament. The decision was announced yesterday by Cricket Australia, saying women’s cricket would benefit from having an event which would be played “away from the shadow of the men’s game.” The women’s tournament will be held in Australia in February and March of 2020, while the men’s world tournament will take place in October and November. Cricket Australia chairman David Peever said “women’s cricket is undoubtedly gaining in popularity around the globe and we felt that by separating the two events we could accelerate that growth.”
HORSE RACING
Moodie stands aside
A top official in Australia’s premier thoroughbred racing state of Victoria has stepped aside pending an integrity probe, rocking the industry in the lead-up to the A$6.2 million (US$4.7 million) Melbourne Cup. Racing Victoria (RV) said its chairman, David Moodie, had stood aside pending an investigation by Racing Integrity commissioner Sal Perna. The governing body said in a statement that the probe related to “a matter” that had been reported to Perna by the body’s independent Integrity Council, but provided no further details. Local media reported Moodie was being investigated over allegations of impropriety relating to inappropriate disclosures of information. Moodie took over as chairman in May last year after predecessor Robert Roulston’s sudden resignation in the wake of an internal audit. Moodie could not be reached for comment.
BASEBALL
Drone injury takes out Bauer
Cleveland pitcher Trevor Bauer will miss his scheduled start in the second game of the American League Championship Series after cutting his pitching hand on one of his drones. “You know, it’s kind of self-explanatory — I think we’ve all, probably everybody in here probably at some point or another had a drone-related problem,” Indians manager Terry Francona quipped at his news conference before Game 1 of the series on Friday. Francona said Bauer told him he was doing “routine maintenance” on the machine and cut his pinky finger. That means right-handed hurler Josh Tomlin was to start Game 2 in Cleveland yesterday, and Bauer, who received several stitches to his right little finger, will start Game 3 in Toronto tomorrow. “The challenge for the doctors will be to make sure this thing, by the time he pitches, has healed enough where it’s not bleeding,” Francona 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