TENNIS
Jung ousted in quarters
Taiwan’s Jason Jung on Friday fell to American Sam Querrey 6-3, 3-6, 6-3 in the quarter-finals of the New York Open, as John Isner advanced to the semi-finals, where he is to face the player who knocked him out of the Australian Open. Top seed Isner beat No. 7 seed Jordan Thompson of Australia 6-4, 6-1. He is to play fellow American Reilly Opelka, a 6-3, 6-4 winner over Spain’s Guillermo Garcia-Lopez. Opelka upset Isner in four sets — all in tiebreakers — in Melbourne. The other semi-final is to be No. 6 Querrey against Canadian Brayden Schnur.
SOCCER
Clubs missing out on fees
FIFA said that clubs around the world, many of them small ones in Latin America and Africa, are missing out on transfer compensation of about US$300 million for raising young players who go on to enjoy successful careers in Europe. Under FIFA rules, the club where a player began his career is supposed to receive a percentage of the fee every time he is involved in an international transfer. Many of the world’s top players began their careers at small clubs where even a few thousand dollars could be useful. However, poor record-keeping and the fact that payments are not automatic means that clubs often miss out. The amounts have also not changed since 2001. FIFA is working on wide-ranging reforms to the transfer system and has said that one of the aims is to improve training compensation and solidarity payments. The FIFA Council has already approved the creation of a clearing house to process international transfers, which it says would centralize and simplify payments associated with transfers.
GOLF
Kuchar sorry for caddie pay
Matt Kuchar on Friday apologized to caddie David Ortiz and said he would pay him the amount he asked for after Ortiz criticized the golfer for giving him only US$5,000 of the nearly US$1.3 million he earned by winning the Mayakoba Classic in November last year. Earlier this week, Kuchar shrugged off the outcry over the payment and said that Ortiz, who had stepped in as an emergency replacement, should be “happy” with the pay, despite regular caddies earning payouts of up to 10 percent of a player’s take from a tournament. “For a guy who makes US$200 a day, a US$5,000 week is a really big week,” he told Golf.com on Wednesday in comments he said now make him “cringe.” Ortiz had reportedly sought US$50,000 for helping the 40-year-old earn his first PGA Tour victory in four years.
HORSE RACING
Trainer charged over abuse
Australian trainer Ben Currie has been charged with seven “serious animal welfare breaches,” including the alleged use of electronic devices to shock horses into running faster. The Queensland-based Currie is also accused of unauthorized shock-wave treatments and failure to report bleeding horses to stewards. It came barely a week after Melbourne Cup-winning Australian trainer Darren Weir was banned for four years from racing in Victoria State for possessing similar electronic devices, known as “jiggers.” Queensland Racing Integrity commissioner Ross Barnett late on Friday said in a statement that an investigation into Currie Racing began in April last year. Currie already faces 28 alleged rule breaches stemming from the probe and four alleged illegal substance breaches. He is to face a steward’s inquiry tomorrow to determine whether he should be suspended from training horses in Queensland.
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