■SOCCER
Bottle-throwing striker fined
Hamburg SV striker Paolo Guerrero was fined on Monday for throwing a plastic bottle at a fan after the previous day’s 0-0 draw at home to Hanover 96 in the Bundesliga. The club described the Peruvian’s behavior as “absolutely unacceptable” and said he would face a heavy fine. “I had a blackout,” Guerrero told the club’s Web site after the latest incident in an unhappy season in which he has also suffered a knee injury and battled against a fear of flying. “I was insulted and I overreacted. I’m really sorry for it. I hope I have the chance to meet the fan in person to apologize. I’ve already apologized to HSV. Naturally, I will accept any fine from the club.” Chairman Bernd Hoffmann said: “Paolo’s behavior was absolutely unacceptable. That sort of thing should not happen. Paolo will be punished by us with a big fine.” Kicker magazine said the fine could be between 50,000 and 100,000 euros (US$67,150 to US$134,300) and would be donated to charity. It was only Guerrero’s second league match since he tore cruciate knee ligaments in September. In January, he was forced to delay his return from a stay in Peru due a fear of flying, media reports saying that he had made several failed attempts to board an aircraft.
■CRICKET
Jamshed nabbed red-handed
Police have arrested Pakistan international Nasir Jamshed for cheating during a school exam. Senior police official Haider Ashraf said that Jamshed was caught “red-handed” on Monday while doing a ninth-grade English exam. Jamshed, 20, played the last of his 12 one-day internationals against Sri Lanka at Dambulla in August. He’s scored 353 runs at an average of 35.30. Jamshed — a left-handed opening batsman — was ignored by the Pakistan Cricket Board when it gave one-year central contracts to 37 players last month.
■FORMULA ONE
Malaysian GP targets fans
Fans will be able to get cheaper tickets for next year’s Malaysian Grand Prix as organizers target a race day audience of at least 100,000 at the Sepang International circuit. Nearly 98,000 watched Sebastian Vettel lead Mark Webber to a Red Bull one-two in Sunday’s race at the track, which can hold up to 130,000 spectators. “Now we have to start planning for next year and we will review all ticket prices,” circuit chief executive Razlan Razali told yesterday’s Star newspaper. “It is to make the Malaysian GP more accessible to everybody and we want to ensure more Malaysians get in touch with the sport,” Razlan said. “My hope was to get 100,000 to come on race day and we were just a bit short of reaching the target. We have to work on volume to get the fans in and my hope is to see the stands filled in future Malaysian GPs.”
■BASKETBALL
S Korea recruit Wilkens
Hall of Fame coach Lenny Wilkens has been recruited by South Korea to help prepare their team for this year’s Asian Games in Guangzhou. The 72-year-old was inducted into the Hall of Fame both as a player and a coach and set the record for the most coaching wins in the NBA with 1,332 victories. “We reached a settlement with Wilkens in cooperation with the US National Basketball Association,” the committee that runs the South Korean team told the Yonhap news agency. South Korea won gold on home soil at the 2002 Asian Games but finished fifth in Qatar four years ago. The 16th Asian Games take place in southern China from Nov. 12 to Nov. 27.
SS Lazio on Monday fired the far-right sympathizer who handles their eagle mascot after he posted online a series of videos and pictures of his erect penis. Falconer Juan Bernabe, who has been present at Lazio home matches with Olimpia the eagle since the 2010-2011 season, posted the footage on social media after having surgery on Saturday to implant a penile prosthesis to improve his sexual performance. Lazio said that they had “terminated, with immediate effect” their relationship with Bernabe “due to the seriousness of his conduct,” adding that they were “shocked” by the images. The Serie A club added that Bernabe’s dismissal
‘TOUGH TO BREATHE’: Tunisian three-time Grand Slam finalist Ons Jabeur suffered an asthma attack in her 7-5, 6-3 victory over Colombia’s Camila Osorio Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei yesterday cruised into the second round of the women’s doubles at the Australian Open, while Iga Swiatek romped into a third-round women’s singles showdown with Emma Raducanu and Taylor Fritz was just as emphatic in his pursuit of a maiden Grand Slam title. Hsieh and Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia, the third seeds, defeated Slovakia’s Tereza Mihalikova and Olivia Nicholls of Britain 7-5, 6-2 in 90 minutes in Melbourne. Ostapenko and Hsieh — who won the women’s doubles and mixed doubles at the Australian Open last year — hit 25 winners and converted five of nine break points to set
Doping fears prevented former US Open champion Emma Raducanu from treating insect bites on the eve of the Australian Open, she said, with players increasingly wary about ingesting contaminated substances. The British player was speaking in the wake of high-profile doping cases involving Iga Swiatak and Jannik Sinner. “I would say all of us are probably quite sensitive to what we take on board, what we use,” the 22-year-old said, recalling an incident on Friday. “I got really badly bitten by, I don’t know what, like ants, mosquitoes, something. I’m allergic, I guess,” she added. The bites “flared up and swelled up really a
Dubbed a “motorway for cyclists” where avid amateurs can chase Tadej Pogacar up mountains teeming with the highest concentration of professional cyclists per square kilometer in the world, Spain’s Costa Blanca has forged a new reputation for itself in the past few years. Long known as the ideal summer destination for those in search of sun, sea and sand, the stretch of coast between Valencia and Alicante now has a winter vocation too. During the season break in December and January, the region experiences an invasion of cyclists. Star names such as three-time Tour de France winner Pogacar, Remco Evenepoel and Julian Alaphilippe