SOCCER
Valencia held by Malaga
Valencia’s winless streak extended to six La Liga games as Pablo Fornals struck deep into stoppage-time to hand Malaga a deserved 2-2 draw at a discontented Mestalla on Sunday. Pablo Fornals had given the visitors the perfect start after just three minutes, but Valencia looked set for a much-needed win as Rodrigo and Alvaro Medran turned the game around before halftime. However, Valencia’s Italian boss Cesare Prandelli was faced with his first calls to go from the home fans after just seven games in charge when Fornals made Malaga’s late pressure count in the 93rd minute. Valencia move just two points clear of the relegation zone in 16th place. Earlier, Athletic Bilbao leapfrogged Sociedad Deportiva Eibar into seventh place as they got the better of a Basque derby with a 3-1 win at the San Mames.
SOCCER
Hamburg move up to 17th
Hamburg SV moved off the bottom of the Bundesliga table on Sunday after securing their first league win of the season with a 2-0 victory at fellow strugglers SV Darmstadt 98. Ingolstadt 04, who lost 2-1 at Werder Bremen on Saturday, are now bottom after Hamburg’s Michael Gregoritsch scored his third goal in two games to give his side a first-half lead at Darmstadt. When Serbia winger Filip Kostic whipped in a cross with half an hour gone, striker Gregoritsch produced a superb diving header. In the dying stages, Japan international Gotoku Sakai sprinted clear, then slipped the ball to Matthias Ostrzolek, who blasted home from the edge of the penalty area on 90 minutes for his first Bundesliga goal. “It is important that we won — it was a sign to the league that we’re still alive,” Gregoritsch told Sky after a win which took some of the pressure off Hamburg coach Markus Gisdol. “It feels like a big rock has been lifted off all of our hearts.” The result leaves Hamburg 17th, one place below Darmstadt, with both teams in the relegation places.
GOLF
Matsuyama triumphs again
Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama, the hottest player in world golf over the past two months, survived a shaky back nine to clinch his fourth win in five starts with a two-stroke victory at the Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas on Sunday. While tournament host Tiger Woods delivered the good, bad and ugly as he finished 14 shots back in his much-anticipated return to competition, Matsuyama ended a dominant week with his worst round, a one-over 73 at the Albany course on the island of New Providence. “I have played very, very well until today,” world No. 6 Matsuyama, speaking through an interpreter, told the Golf Channel about his sizzling run. “Today, I struggled a bit.”
GOLF
Stone claims second title
Brandon Stone claimed a second European Tour victory as he ran away from the field for a seven-stroke triumph at the Alfred Dunhill Championship at the Leopard Creek Country Club in Malelane, South Africa, on Sunday. The 23-year-old extended his overnight three-shot advantage as he finished with a 67 and a 22-under total of 266 on the opening weekend of the new season. Four birdies in five holes from 10th strengthened his grip on the leaderboard and saw him move away from the chasing pack to add to the South African Open title he won in January.
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