BADMINTON
Chou advances to quarters
Taiwan’s Chou Tien-chen yesterday advanced to the final eight of the men’s singles at the China Open in Changzhou after defeating Kantaphon Wangcharoen of Thailand in straight sets in just 27 minutes. Chou took a 15-14 lead in the first set and scored six consecutive points to finish the set 21-14. He then took a commanding 6-0 lead at the beginning of the second set and went on to win 21-11. Chou last month defeated Wangchareoen at the Asian Games in Indonesia. In the women’s singles on Wednesday, world No. 1 Tai Tzu-ying of Taiwan was upset by unseeded Gao Fangjie of China, who won 21-17, 21-16. In other competitions, Taiwanese Lee Yang and Lee Jhe-huei crashed out in the men’s doubles, as did Hsu Ya-ching and Wu Ti-jung in the women’s doubles.
BASEBALL
Red Sox banner returned
The Boston Red Sox have not clinched this year’s American League East division championship, but a banner marking the accomplishment has already been accidentally unveiled. Boston-area friends Louie Iacuzzi, James Amaral and Randy Baldasarri said they found the banner on a road on Monday morning after it apparently fell off a delivery truck in Somerville, Massachusetts. However, the trio held onto the banner for two days, hoping they would be rewarded with game tickets or a chance to meet their favorite players. Instead, the men took the banner to Fenway Park on Wednesday afternoon and went home empty-handed, the Boston Globe reported. Iacuzzi said he always intended to return the banner and rejected accusations that he stole it.
FOOTBALL
Ravens fined US$200,000
The NFL on Wednesday fined the Baltimore Ravens US$200,000 for pre-season breaches of the league’s coach-to-player communications policy. The Ravens were fined because several players wore helmets with coach-to-player communications while on the field at the same time, NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport said. “The Ravens’ equipment staff misunderstood that this league rule applied in the preseason. Ravens coaches were unaware that multiple players had communication devices in their helmets while on the field at the same time,” Baltimore said on Twitter. In June, an undisclosed infraction forced the team to forfeit two organized team activities and owner Steve Bisciotti and coach John Harbaugh were fined US$100,000 and US$50,000 respectively.
SOCCER
Sampdoria, Fiorentina draw
UC Sampdoria and ACF Fiorentina on Wednesday both missed out on taking second in the Serie A table, as Gianluca Caprari secured a 1-1 draw for the hosts in a match delayed due to a bridge collapse in Genoa, Italy. The match was originally scheduled for the opening weekend of the season, but was pushed back after the incident, which killed 43 people on Aug. 14. The two teams went into the game with two wins from three matches and hoping to cut the gap to early leaders and reigning champions Juventus, who have won all four of their games. Giovanni Simeone headed the visitors into a 13th-minute lead in Genoa, but Caprari picked out the top corner on the hour mark to level. Sampdoria are fourth in the early table, ahead of Fiorentina on goal difference, two points adrift of SPAL and SSC Napoli.
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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