MIXED MARTIAL ARTS
Huang, Lee to fight for title
Hawaiian Angela Lee is to defend her women’s atomweight title against Taiwan’s Jenny Huang when ONE Championship hosts its second mixed martial arts promotion in Thailand on March 11. Canadian-born Lee, 20, improved her perfect career record to six wins when she won the title in a unanimous decision against Mei Yamaguchi in May last year. The fight in Bangkok is to be her first defense. “The goal for 2017 is to be an active champion and to stay busy... Since my last fight, I’ve been training extremely hard, improving my skill set and I can’t wait to show everyone,” Lee said. Huang also has a perfect record, winning her fifth fight against April Osenio by submission last month. Five years older than Lee, Huang was later to start her career. “I have been working so hard to come to this point in my career, and now that I’m finally here it all feels very surreal to me,” Huang said. “Inside the cage I only have one goal and that’s to win this bout at any cost. She better be prepared for what I bring to the table, because I will go to battle with my full arsenal.”
ATHLETICS
IAAF issues Russia protocol
The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) has provided new guidelines for Russians hoping to compete in a neutral capacity while their country remains banned from track and field competitions. The IAAF said it is assessing evidence and intelligence relating to about 200 Russian athletes gathered by World Anti-Doping Agency investigator Richard McLaren. Applications from athletes for neutral status would also be scrutinized using several criteria to prove they are clean, including: Whether any support staff, including medics and coaches, have been implicated in a doping violation; whether there have been any atypical findings in doping samples or concerns about their biological passports; and whether any of their samples in storage are due to be retested. The IAAF said athletes do not necessarily have to have been tested outside of Russia, but must have been part of a fully-compliant program for a “sufficiently long period to provide substantial objective assurance of integrity.”
ICE HOCKEY
Blue Jackets extend streak
The Columbus Blue Jackets on Tuesday inched closer to NHL history, notching their 16th consecutive victory with a 3-1 win over the Edmonton Oilers. Cam Atkinson and William Karlsson scored power-play goals and Nick Foligno added a third-period goal in the win, which put the Blue Jackets one victory away from tying the 1992-1993 Pittsburgh Penguins for most successive NHL victories. The Blue Jackets struck first when Atkinson scored 1 minute, 12 seconds into the first power play of the night after Jesse Puljujarvi was called for holding on Jack Johnson. Atkinson collected a feed from Zach Werenski in the high slot and rebounded the puck in off an Oilers defenseman with 7 minutes, 28 seconds left in the opening period. Edmonton equalized 5 minutes, 39 seconds into the second when Patrick Maroon fed Oscar Klefbom, who was entering the zone with speed. Klefbom fired from high between the circles for his sixth goal of the season. Less than five minutes later, 1 minute, 49 seconds into the Jackets’ second power play of the night, Brandon Saad sent a cross-zone pass to Karlsson, whose shot from the right circle found the net.
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