TOUCH RUGBY
Beasts maintain strong lead
The Taipei Beasts moved to a dominant lead atop the Taipei Winter League table after the second week of competition. The pink-clad outfit yesterday notched three wins to make their record 6-0 after a similarly dominant opening week. They beat the Taipei Hulks 4-2, KGB 10-0 and the Taipei Celts 5-2 at the Bailing Rugby Fields in Shilin District yesterday. The Celts are second on the table with three wins and three losses overall, while the Hulks are third with two wins, one draw and two losses. AyKang Galaxy defeated KGB 4-2 in their only game yesterday for fourth, with KGB fifth and Taipei American School sixth, although they have only played three games so far.
ATHLETICS
Qatar paid Diack-led firm
France’s Le Monde newspaper said it obtained documents showing that a former International Association of Athletics Federations official received two payments totaling about US$3.5 million from Qatari investors before the vote for next year’s athletics world championships. The newspaper on Friday said that two payments from Oryx Qatar Sports Investments, an investment fund linked to the Qatari government, were made to Pamodzi Sports Marketing in October and November 2011, days before the vote. Pamodzi is held by Papa Massata Diack, a former marketing consultant at the association who has been banned for allegations of extorting hundreds of thousands of dollars from a Russian marathon runner to avoid a doping ban before the 2012 Olympics. Qatar eventually lost out to London, but was later awarded the 2019 worlds.
SOCCER
Sanchez leads Betis to win
Joaquin Sanchez on Friday placed two corner-kicks for teammates to head home and give Real Betis Balompie a victory in the debut of coach Victor Sanchez. Joaquin’s two crosses for first-half goals by defenders Bruno Gonzalez and Aissa Mandi earned them a 2-0 win over UD Las Palmas in Seville. Betis found the weak spot in Las Palmas’ set piece defense and Joaquin exploited it with two crisp corner-kicks to the near post, where Gonzales and Mandi scored from close. Betis hired Sanchez last week to take over following their firing of Gus Poyet after four losses in their previous five matches. Sanchez opted for a new five-man defense and it succeeded in limiting Las Palmas’ attack to a few early threats. The win over Las Palmas lifted Betis into 12th place before the rest of the matches of the 12th round are played. Las Palmas, who have cooled off after a great start to the season, remained in ninth place with only one win in the past eight rounds.
SOCCER
Court rules Chiriboga guilty
An Ecuadoran court on Friday handed down a 10-year jail sentence to former national soccer federation president Luis Chiriboga for corruption in another case stemming from the scandal at world governing body FIFA. Chiriboga, 70, who ran the soccer federation for 18 years, but has been under house arrest since late last year, was convicted of money laundering along with two others at the organization. He is one of about 40 soccer bosses, mainly Latin Americans, implicated in US-led investigations that have rocked FIFA. Judge Miriam Escobar said that about US$6.1 million had passed illegally through Ecuador’s soccer federation. Her court in the capital, Quito, ordered the three soccer officials to pay back double that and to give up properties. Lawyers for the men said they would appeal.
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