BADMINTON
Chou advances to quarters
Taiwan’s Chou Tien-chen yesterday advanced to the final eight of the men’s singles at the China Open in Changzhou after defeating Kantaphon Wangcharoen of Thailand in straight sets in just 27 minutes. Chou took a 15-14 lead in the first set and scored six consecutive points to finish the set 21-14. He then took a commanding 6-0 lead at the beginning of the second set and went on to win 21-11. Chou last month defeated Wangchareoen at the Asian Games in Indonesia. In the women’s singles on Wednesday, world No. 1 Tai Tzu-ying of Taiwan was upset by unseeded Gao Fangjie of China, who won 21-17, 21-16. In other competitions, Taiwanese Lee Yang and Lee Jhe-huei crashed out in the men’s doubles, as did Hsu Ya-ching and Wu Ti-jung in the women’s doubles.
BASEBALL
Red Sox banner returned
The Boston Red Sox have not clinched this year’s American League East division championship, but a banner marking the accomplishment has already been accidentally unveiled. Boston-area friends Louie Iacuzzi, James Amaral and Randy Baldasarri said they found the banner on a road on Monday morning after it apparently fell off a delivery truck in Somerville, Massachusetts. However, the trio held onto the banner for two days, hoping they would be rewarded with game tickets or a chance to meet their favorite players. Instead, the men took the banner to Fenway Park on Wednesday afternoon and went home empty-handed, the Boston Globe reported. Iacuzzi said he always intended to return the banner and rejected accusations that he stole it.
FOOTBALL
Ravens fined US$200,000
The NFL on Wednesday fined the Baltimore Ravens US$200,000 for pre-season breaches of the league’s coach-to-player communications policy. The Ravens were fined because several players wore helmets with coach-to-player communications while on the field at the same time, NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport said. “The Ravens’ equipment staff misunderstood that this league rule applied in the preseason. Ravens coaches were unaware that multiple players had communication devices in their helmets while on the field at the same time,” Baltimore said on Twitter. In June, an undisclosed infraction forced the team to forfeit two organized team activities and owner Steve Bisciotti and coach John Harbaugh were fined US$100,000 and US$50,000 respectively.
SOCCER
Sampdoria, Fiorentina draw
UC Sampdoria and ACF Fiorentina on Wednesday both missed out on taking second in the Serie A table, as Gianluca Caprari secured a 1-1 draw for the hosts in a match delayed due to a bridge collapse in Genoa, Italy. The match was originally scheduled for the opening weekend of the season, but was pushed back after the incident, which killed 43 people on Aug. 14. The two teams went into the game with two wins from three matches and hoping to cut the gap to early leaders and reigning champions Juventus, who have won all four of their games. Giovanni Simeone headed the visitors into a 13th-minute lead in Genoa, but Caprari picked out the top corner on the hour mark to level. Sampdoria are fourth in the early table, ahead of Fiorentina on goal difference, two points adrift of SPAL and SSC Napoli.
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