BASEBALL
Tanaka struck by ball
Japanese pitching ace Masahiro Tanaka was transported to a New York hospital on Saturday after being drilled in the head by a line drive during a New York Yankees training session. Tanaka was felled by a hard shot up the middle off the bat of Giancarlo Stanton and was transported to New York Presbyterian Hospital for further evaluation. The incident happened on the MLB team’s first official day of workouts ahead of the start of the delayed US baseball season. The 31-year-old walked off the field at Yankee Stadium after being down on the turf for about five minutes while the team trainer attended to him. The Yankees said that Tanaka was “alert, responsive and walking under his own power.”
CRICKET
Mendis arrested after crash
Sri Lanka batsman Kusal Mendis was arrested yesterday after allegedly being involved in a fatal crash with a cyclist, who died instantly, just outside the country’s capital, Colombo, police said. The 25-year-old batsman was driving an SUV in Panadura before dawn when the incident happened, police said. Mendis had been named in the 16-player squad for a two-match home Test series against England in March, but the tour was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
SOCCER
Bayern II win 3. Liga
Bayern II, Bayern Munich’s reserve team, won the 3. Liga, the German third division, on their first attempt on Saturday, but will not be promoted due to league rules. The team coached by Sebastian Hoenes finished one point ahead of the Wurzburger Kickers and Eintracht Braunschweig, despite losing against Kaiserslautern in the final round, when none of the top three won their games. Bayern II are the first reserve team to win the division, one season after they earned promotion from the fourth-tier Regionalliga Bayern. However, they cannot progress any further, as Bayern is already represented in the top two divisions. Second-placed Wurzburger and third-placed Eintracht were promoted to the second division 2. Bundesliga.
HOT DOG EATING
Chestnut, Sudo dominate
The COVID-19 outbreak moved the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest from the Coney Island boardwalk in New York to an undisclosed indoor location, but the results were familiar: Joey Chestnut and Miki Sudo repeated as men’s and women’s champions of the annual gluttony fest on Saturday. Chestnut downed 75 wieners and buns in 10 minutes and Sudo downed 48.5 in the same span, setting new world records for the men’s and women’s events. “I’m always pushing for a record,” Chestnut said before the contest started. “I know that’s what the fans want.” The annual July 4 hot dog contest normally takes place outside Nathan’s flagship shop in Brooklyn, but was held indoors without in-person spectators on Saturday. Just five women and five men competed and clear plastic barriers separated them as they chowed down. “Minute six is where I really missed the crowd, and I hit a wall and it took me a little bit more work to get through it,” Chestnut said on ESPN, which broadcast the competition. It was Chestnut’s 13th Nathan’s Famous win and Sudo’s seventh. They each won US$10,000.
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