BOXING
Wladimir Klitschko retires
Former heavyweight world champion Wladimir Klitschko has announced his retirement from boxing. Klitschko, 41, dominated the heavyweight scene for a decade, but lost to Britain’s Anthony Joshua in April after being knocked out in the 11th round. “As an amateur and a professional boxer, I have achieved everything I dreamed of, and now I want to start my second career after sports,” Klitschko said in a statement released by his management yesterday. Klitschko was 64-5 in a career that began in 1996 after he won Olympic gold in Atlanta.
CYCLING
Van Poppel wins fifth stage
Dutch rider Danny van Poppel on Wednesday won the fifth stage of the Tour de Pologne, just edging Slovak duo Luka Mezgec and race leader Peter Sagan at the line. The stage, the shortest on the race at just 130km, was marked by a huge pileup just 900m from the end, a consequence of the tight, twisty layout. Sagan, taking part in his first race since being booted off the Tour de France, leads the overall standings by 14 seconds from Belgium’s Dylan Teuns.
CYCLING
Trentin wins on his birthday
Italian Matteo Trentin on Wednesday celebrated his 28th birthday by winning the 153km second stage of the five-day Vuelta a Burgos in Spain. Trentin sprinted to the finish line ahead of Britain’s Adam Blythe and Dutchman Tim Ariesen, who came second and third respectively. In-form Team Sky rider Mikel Landa finished safely in the peloton after winning Tuesday’s opening stage to maintain his two-second overall lead from Russian Sergei Chernetski.
GOLF
McIlroy fires caddie friend
Rory McIlroy said he got rid of a caddie so that he could keep a friend. McIlroy parted ways with J.P. Fitzgerald after The Open Championship and is to use his best friend, Harry Diamond, as his caddie at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational and the PGA Championship next week. Still to be determined is how long he uses Diamond, and what McIlroy does after the PGA Championship. McIlroy said there was not one incident that led to him switching caddies. Players and caddies go through ups and downs, and they were starting to happen far too frequently, he said. McIlroy and Fitzgerald worked together for nine years. McIlroy said they remain friends and he did not want their roles as player and caddie to change that.
SOCCER
Totti shirt sent into space
AS Roma legend Francesco Totti’s iconic No. 10 shirt, which he wore for the final time on May 28, has been launched into space, the Serie A club said on Wednesday. The 40-year-old played his final game after 24 years with the capital city side in a 3-2 win against Genoa. As a tribute to “immortalize” the forward, a rocket carrying the No. 10 jersey from his final game was launched from French Guiana. “Mission complete: on Tuesday night history was made as Francesco Totti’s final shirt as a Roma player was successfully launched into space,” the club said. Totti played a total of 786 matches for Roma after joining in 1989, scoring a club record of 307 goals, and won the 2006 FIFA World Cup with Italy. The former attacking midfielder is to become a director of the Italian 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