SOCCER
Lippi resigns as China coach
China are searching for a third coach this year after the Chinese Football Association (CFA) accepted Marcello Lippi’s resignation following a damaging loss to Syria in FIFA World Cup qualifying. A clearly infuriated Lippi, a 71-year-old Italian World Cup winner, made a brief but angry appearance in front of the media after the 2-1 defeat in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, on Thursday. “My pay is very high and I take all the blame. I am quitting as China coach,” Xinhua news agency quoted him as saying. “We could beat weaker opponents like Maldives and Guam, but when we encountered stronger teams like the Philippines and Syria, we could not play our own football.” Lippi then abruptly left the news conference, walking out before translators had even finished interpreting what he was saying. Hours later, the association said in a statement that it accepted Lippi’s resignation. “We are really sorry that the unsatisfactory results disappoint all Chinese fans,” the CFA said. “The CFA will seriously reflect, rebuild the team, and try our best in the following World Cup qualifiers.” Syria’s victory left them comfortably atop Group A in qualifying for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. China are five points behind in second, only above the Philippines on goal difference, putting their World Cup hopes in peril.
GOLF
Flawless Oosthuizen leads
South Africa’s Louis Oosthuizen on Thursday defied pain from a kidney stone to shoot a record-equaling nine-under-par 63 in the first round of the Nedbank Golf Challenge at the Gary Player Country Club. Oosthuizen opened a three-shot lead over Belgium’s Thomas Detry with a flawless round, which included nine birdies. Guido Migliozzi of Italy was third on 67, with three other players, including defending champion Lee Westwood and veteran Ernie Els, on 68. Oosthuizen, the 2010 Open champion, on Wednesday withdrew from the pro-am because of the kidney stone and spent time in a hospital in Rustenburg, 50km from the resort in Sun City, South Africa. “At 3am this morning I didn’t think I was going to tee it up,” Oosthuizen said. “I was very uncomfortable, but at 6, 7 o’clock it started getting better.” Oosthuizen said that “it wasn’t that bad” while he was on the course, although he added that he walked slowly between shots to minimize his discomfort.
GOLF
No play at rain-hit Mayakoba
Heavy rain and thunderstorms on Thursday forced PGA Tour officials to scrap play in the first round of the Mayakoba Golf Classic. After several delays to a scheduled early morning start, tournament officials abandoned attempts to get the first round under way at El Camaleon Golf Club in Playa del Carmen, south of Cancun, Mexico. Heavy downpours drenching the course had left many areas of the layout unplayable, tour officials said. “The bottom line is we just don’t have a golf course that’s playable,” PGA Tour rules official Slugger White said. “We’ve got situations out there where we could lose balls in areas that we have no virtual certainty where it was.” With more poor weather forecast for yesterday, White warned of the possibility of a Monday finish for the tournament. The washout is the first time since 2013 that the opening round of a PGA Tour event has been suspended without any play being possible.
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