■ Asian Games
Koreas to field unified team
The two Koreas have agreed in principle to field a unified team at next year's Asian Games. The agreement came during a meeting between the heads of the North and South Olympic organizations in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, the South's Korean Olympic Committee said in a statement yesterday. Further details will be hammered out at working-level talks in the near future. North and South Korea also tentatively agreed to form a unified Korean soccer team to compete in friendly matches against Brazil next spring in Pyongyang and Seoul.
■ Rugby
Blue Bulls player killed
South African police opened a culpable homicide docket on Wednesday following the death of popular Blue Bulls center Ettienne Botha, who was killed in a car accident in the early hours of the morning, a spokesman said. Botha, 26, was killed when his car crashed and overturned on a highway outside his home city Pretoria, police spokesman Lucas Sithole said. "The investigation is still at an early stage but I can confirm that a case of culpable homicide has been opened," Sithole told the SAPA news agency. Meanwhile condolences have been pouring in for Botha, who had 30 Super 12 and 84 provincial caps (44 for the Blue Bulls) and who had scored a total of 390 points in the two competitions. "Ettienne was an outstanding young talent and a very popular young man. He was well liked by friends and opponents alike," SA Rugby chief executive Johan Prinsloo said.
■ Golf
Garcia fined for kicking
World number six Sergio Garcia has been fined by the European Tour following an incident at last week's European Masters at Crans-sur-Sierre in Switzerland. The 25-year-old Spaniard, who went on to win the title by a shot, was punished after being reported for kicking an advertising board after he three-putted the 17th during the third round. Although the level of the fine was not disclosed by the European Tour on Wednesday, it is believed to be in the region of US$9,000. It is the second large fine Garcia has received for bad behavior since he turned professional in 1999. He was also penalized after he kicked a buggy and berated a tour official at the 2001 Greg Norman Holden International in Australia. It is Garcia's third misdemeanor on tour. At the 1999 World Match Play Championship at Wentworth, he was reprimanded for throwing a shoe and hitting a tournament official in a fit of pique after he slipped on the tee.
INJURY TURMOIL: Despite stunning French Open champions Paolini and Errani to advance, Chan was forced to pull out after her partner’s tearful women’s singles defeat Last year’s mixed doubles champions Hsieh Su-wei of Taiwan and Poland’s Jan Zielinski on Monday crashed out of the quarter-finals at Wimbledon, leaving the Taiwanese star focused on pursuing a fifth women’s doubles title in London, while a partner injury forced compatriot Chan Hao-ching to give up on her doubles campaign. Hsieh and Zielinksi, who last year also won the Australia Open title, narrowly lost their opening set 7-6 (9/7), before Britain’s Joe Salisbury and Brazil’s Luisa Stefani stunned the former champions 6-3 at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. The Taiwanese-Polish duo had been dominant in the first two
The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has overturned French Olympic fencer Ysaora Thibus’ four-year suspension for doping, ruling that her positive test for a banned substance was caused by kissing her then-boyfriend, American fencer Race Imboden. Thibus, a silver medalist in team foil at the Tokyo Games, had tested positive for ostarine, a prohibited muscle-building substance, during a competition in Paris in January last year. However, CAS concluded there was no intentional wrongdoing, finding it scientifically plausible that repeated kissing over several days with Olympic medalist Imboden — who was taking ostarine at the time — led to accidental contamination. The court
‘SU-PENKO’: Hsieh and Ostapenko face a rematch against their Australian Open final opponents, the same duo Hsieh played in last year’s Wimbledon semi-finals Taiwanese women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei and Latvian partner Jelena Ostapenko on Wednesday survived a near upset to the unseeded duo of Sorana Cirstea of Romania and Russia’s Anna Kalinskaya, setting up a semi-final showdown against last year’s winners. Despite losing a hard-fought opening set 7-6 (7/4) on a tiebreak, the fourth seeds turned up the heat, losing just five games in the final two sets to handily put down Cirstea and Kalinskaya 6-3, 6-2. Nicknamed “Su-Penko,” the pair are next to face top seeds Katerina Siniakova of the Czech Republic and Taylor Townsend of the US in a reversal of last
Switzerland’s Riola Xhemaili on Thursday scored a last-gasp goal to salvage a dramatic 1-1 draw with Finland that sent the joyous hosts through to the quarter-finals at Euro 2025, and heartbroken Finland home. Switzerland, who needed only a draw to advance based on goal-difference, finished second in Group A behind Norway to go through to the knockout round for the first time and are to face the winners of Group B, which would be world champions Spain as things stand. “I think we set ourselves a goal on the pitch, to write history, to go into the knockout stages, which we’ve never
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