GOLF
Li secures one-stroke lead
Local favorite Li Haotong yesterday rode a wave of home support to grab the first-round lead at the WGC-HSBC Champions in Shanghai. Li, one of seven Chinese players in the field, carded an eight-under-par 64, capping off his day by sinking a 12-foot, par-saving putt at his final hole as the gallery roared in approval at Sheshan Golf Club. He holds a one-shot advantage over Frenchman Victor Perez, while American defending champion Xander Schauffele was among a group two behind in the World Golf Championships event. Northern Ireland’s Rory McIlroy recovered from a bogey at his first hole to card a five-under 67 to finish tied for seventh.
SOCCER
Brandt lifts Dortmund to win
Julian Brandt on Wednesday struck twice as Borussia Dortmund came from behind to beat Bundesliga leaders Borussia Moenchengladbach 2-1 in the second round of the DFB Pokal. Neither side could force a breakthrough until ’Gladbach striker Marcus Thuram was left free to head in the opener in the 71st minute. However, Brandt equalized with a twice-deflected shot six minutes later, before former ’Gladbach player Thorgan Hazard crossed for him to head in the winner. Hazard had earlier struck the crossbar in the closest either side had come to scoring. There was a bad-tempered end to the game, with visiting coach Marco Rose shown a red card for protesting. Dortmund’s win eases the pressure on coach Lucien Favre. The Swiss tactician, who appeared to injure himself while celebrating a goal, was under fire after claiming just two wins in the previous eight games across all competitions. Elsewhere, RB Leipzig routed VfL Wolfsburg 6-1 away, Eintracht Frankfurt beat FC St Pauli 2-1, Werder Bremen defeated second-division FC Heidenheim 4-1 and Fortuna Dusseldorf won 2-1 against second-division FC Erzgebirge Aue. Hertha BSC defeated second-tier Dynamo Dresden 5-4 on penalties. Hertha defender Jordan Torunarigha scored in injury-time to level the game 2-2 and send it to the penalty shoot-out. Third-division FC Kaiserslautern and fourth-tier side SC Verl had shoot-out wins over second-division sides FC Nurnberg and Holstein Kiel respectively.
SOCCER
Marseille ousted from Coupe
Olympique de Marseille’s season suffered another setback on Wednesday when they were knocked out of the Coupe de la Ligue 2-1 at the hands of AS Monaco, just days after they endured a 4-0 defeat by Paris Saint-Germain in Ligue 1. With just one win in their past seven matches, the pressure is on coach Andre Villas-Boas, with a cup exit compounding Marseille’s modest seventh position in the league table, which sees them already 11 points behind champions PSG in the title race. Despite making seven changes from the side that started a 1-0 win over Nantes at the weekend, Monaco coach Leonardo Jardim still had enough firepower to see off Marseille. Both Monaco’s goals came in the first half. On-loan striker Jean-Kevin Augustin opened the scoring in the 25th minute from a cross from Ruben Aguilar. Aguilar added the second goal five minutes from the interval. Marseille grabbed a consolation in the 77th minute, when Monaco goalkeeper Benjamin Lecomte scored an own-goal.
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