GOLF
McIlroy pulls out with injury
Rory McIlroy has withdrawn from this week’s Abu Dhabi HSBC Golf Championship because of a rib injury. The European Tour on Monday released a statement saying that the second-ranked McIlroy underwent tests after he was injured during the South African Open Championship, which revealed a stress fracture. McIlroy said it was “bitterly disappointing” and “really quite annoying” to miss the tournament, which has the best field of the season on the European Tour. “In situations like this, you simply have to listen to the experts,” he said. The Northern Irishman played with the injury for the final three rounds in Johannesburg, where he lost in a playoff to Graeme Storm.
SOCCER
Sociedad defeat Malaga 2-0
Real Sociedad on Monday scored twice in the second half to beat Malaga 2-0 and move back into the La Liga top five. Inigo Martinez scored in the 50th minute and Juanmi in the 62nd at Estadio La Rosaleda in Malaga, Spain. Real Sociedad, who have won three of their past four league matches, passed Villarreal into fifth place. Malaga are winless in five matches and have lost three in a row, remaining 13th. Malaga’s next match is at league leaders Real Madrid on Saturday. Real Sociedad are to host eighth-placed Celta Vigo on Sunday.
SOCCER
AC Milan rally to tie Torino
AC Milan on Monday battled back from two goals down to draw 2-2 at Torino, keeping their bid for Europe alive by moving fifth in the Serie A table. Andrea Belotti had put Torino ahead after 21 minutes with his 14th league goal of the season and Marco Benassi adding a second for the hosts five minutes later. However, 17-year-old Milan goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma saved a Adem Ljajic penalty to prevent the hosts from going 3-0 up after just 32 minutes. Once the storm had passed Milan responded positively, with Andrea Bertolacci scoring on 55 minutes and Carlos Bacca slotting in a penalty five minutes later. Milan played the final minutes of the game with 10 men after Alessio Romagnoli was sent off on 88 minutes for a second yellow card. They overtook city rivals Inter, moving into fifth with 37 points, eight points behind leaders Juventus.
SWIMMING
Olympian Wilkie quits club
British swimming Olympian David Wilkie revealed he tore up his health club member’s card after being accused of swimming too fast. The 62-year-old — who won gold in the 200m breaststroke at the 1976 Montreal Olympics — told the Daily Mail that he had been astonished by a lifeguard informing him he was going too fast. “I was just swimming as normal in the pool, doing front crawl, and the lifeguard came up to me and said: ‘I think you banged into somebody.’ I said: ‘It’s the fast lane you know, this is rubbish,’” said Wilkie, who took silver in the 200m breaststroke at the 1972 Munich Olympics. “You go to the pool to swim, not to have lifeguards telling you how to swim.” A spokesperson for the club confirmed that the incident in 2015 had taken place and that Wilkie had resigned as a member. “We take any complaints we receive from our members seriously. We spoke with Mr Wilkie in 2015 to resolve his complaint and we were sorry to see him leave our club.”
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