WOODBALL
Friendship tourney planned
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is organizing a game of woodball later this month that will be attended by foreign diplomats, in an effort to promote the Taiwanese-invented game, derived from golf and croquet. The Diplomatic Woodball Friendship Tournament, scheduled for Oct. 31 in Taipei, is aimed at facilitating sports exchanges and promoting the sport, Department of NGO International Affairs Deputy Director-General Shen Wen-chiang said at a news briefing. “We’ve invited foreign diplomats based in Taiwan, members of international chambers of commerce, local politicians and woodball players,” Shen said. The sport, which requires players to hit balls through narrow gates with wooden mallets, was invented by Weng Ming-hui in 1990 when he attempted to reinvent the game of golf in his garden.
SOCCER
Eritrea players seek asylum
Ten players from the Eritrea are seeking asylum in Botswana, the latest in a series of defections by athletes from a nation under investigation by the UN for human-rights violations. The Eritrea national team was in Botswana to play a FIFA 2018 World Cup qualifyier. The players on Wednesday refused to board their plane home and were detained by police. Similar mass defections occurred in Kenya in 2009, Tanzania in 2011 and Uganda in 2012. They were fleeing a nation where slavery-like practices are routine and torture widespread.
SOCCER
Five arrested for fixing
Nepalese police arrested five former and current national team players, including the captain, on Wednesday on charges of match fixing, in another blow to the nation’s embattled soccer association. Captain Sagar Thapa, Sandip Rai, Ritesh Thapa, Bikash Singh Chhetri and Anjan K.C. were arrested on charges of alleged match fixing from 2008, S.S.P. Sarbendra Khanal of the Metropolitan Police Crime Division said. “From preliminary examinations of the players’ accounts, we found connections to known match-fixers in Malaysia and Singapore,” Khanal said. “It seems that these players were involved in a deep network of brokers and fixers in other countries.”
BOXING
Lee Selby retains crown
Welsh fighter Lee Selby retained his International Boxing Federation featherweight crown in Phoenix, Arizona, on Wednesday with a unanimous decision over former three-division champion Fernando Montiel in a 12-round fight. Selby, who improved to 22-1 with eight knockouts, won on all three judges’ scorecards — 119-109, 118-110 and 116-112 — at the Gila River Arena. Montiel, who dropped to 54-4-2 with 39 knockouts, cut Selby over the right eye in the sixth round, but the bigger Selby was able to outbox and outsmart Mexico’s Montiel throughout much of the fight.
TENNIS
Bouchard files lawsuit
Eugenie Bouchard filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against the US Tennis Association that alleges the sport’s national governing body was negligent, leaving her to slip and fall in a locker room during the US Open. Bouchard has suffered severe pain and economic loss after the Sept. 4 incident, she said in the federal lawsuit filed in the US District Court in Brooklyn that seeks unspecified monetary damages. The 21-year-old had just played in a mixed doubles match when she returned to the locker room shortly after 10pm. Minutes later, she slipped and fell on the tile floor, slamming her head against the ground.
RECORD DEFEAT: The Shanghai-based ‘Oriental Sports Daily’ said the drubbing was so disastrous, and taste so bitter, that all that is left is ‘numbness’ Chinese soccer fans and media rounded on the national team yesterday after they experienced fresh humiliation in a 7-0 thrashing to rivals Japan in their opening Group C match in the third phase of Asian qualifying for the 2026 World Cup. The humiliation in Saitama on Thursday against Asia’s top-ranked team was China’s worst defeat in World Cup qualifying and only a goal short of their record 8-0 loss to Brazil in 2012. Chinese President Xi Jinping once said he wanted China to host and even win the World Cup one day, but that ambition looked further away than ever after a
‘KHELIFMANIA’: In the weeks since the Algerian boxer won gold in Paris, national enthusiasm is inspiring newfound interest in the sport, particularly among women In the weeks since Algeria’s Imane Khelif won an Olympic gold medal in women’s boxing, athletes and coaches in the North African nation say national enthusiasm is inspiring newfound interest in the sport, particularly among women. Khelif’s image is practically everywhere, featured in advertisements at airports, on highway billboards and in boxing gyms. The 25-year-old welterweight’s success in Paris has vaulted her to national hero status, especially after Algerians rallied behind her in the face of uninformed speculation about her gender and eligibility to compete. Amateur boxer Zougar Amina, a medical student who has been practicing for a year, called Khelif an
Crowds descended on the home of 17-year-old Chinese diver Quan Hongchan after she won two golds at the Paris Olympics while gymnast Zhang Boheng hid in a Beijing airport toilet to escape overzealous throngs of fans. They are just two recent examples of what state media are calling “toxic fandom” and Chinese authorities have vowed to crack down on it. Some of the adulation toward China’s sports stars has been more sinister — fans obsessing over athletes’ personal lives, cyberbullying opponents or slamming supposedly crooked judges. Experts say it mirrors the kind of behavior once reserved for entertainment celebrities before
GOING GLOBAL: The regular season fixture is part of the football league’s increasingly ambitious plans to spread the sport to international destinations The US National Football League (NFL) breaks new ground in its global expansion strategy tomorrow when the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers face off in the first-ever grid-iron game staged in Brazil. For one night only, the land of Pele and ‘The Beautiful Game’ will get a rare glimpse into the bone-crunching world of American football as the Packers and Eagles collide at Sao Paulo’s Neo Quimica Arena, the 46,000-seat home of soccer club Corinthians. The regular season fixture is part of the NFL’s increasingly ambitious plans to spread the US’ most popular sport to new territories following previous international fixtures
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