CRICKET
IPL plans 20,000 virus tests
More than 20,000 COVID-19 tests are to be carried out during the virus-hit Indian Premier League (IPL), the Twenty20 tournament’s medical partner said yesterday. The world’s richest cricket league is on Saturday next week to start in the United Arab Emirates. Most of the 200 players from the eight teams last month arrived and spent six days in isolation in their hotel rooms. They were tested for COVID-19 on their arrival and then again two days later. After a final test two days after that they moved into a secure “bio-bubble.” The organizers got off to a rocky start last month with two players and 11 officials and staff from the Chennai Super Kings testing positive.
OLYMPICS
Vaccines no ‘silver bullet’
Amid uncertainty about planning the postponed Tokyo Olympics, International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach on Wednesday said that progress with vaccines and rapid testing for COVID-19 would not be the complete answer for staging the rescheduled games. “They will not be the silver bullet, but they can greatly facilitate the organization of the games,” Bach said at a news conference after an IOC board meeting. Bach declined to speculate on the Tokyo Olympics being held without fans. “We don’t know how the world looks like tomorrow,” Bach said. “So how can you expect from us to know how the world looks in 320 days from today?”
SUMO
Outbreak in stable
A COVID-19 outbreak at a sumo stable in Tokyo has infected 19 people, the governing body said yesterday, adding that a tournament would go ahead this week as planned. The Japan Sumo Association said one wrestler and 18 trainees at the Tamanoi stable have tested positive for the virus, with 12 of those infected sent to hospitals. The cases follow the death in May of a 28-year-old sumo after contracting COVID-19, the sport’s first fatality from the virus.
FOOTBALL
No headdresses for fans
Kansas City Chiefs fans who filed into Arrowhead stadium yesterday for a masked and socially distanced start to the NFL season were not allowed to wear headdresses or face paint amid a nationwide push for racial justice following the police-custody death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in May. The move by the reigning Super Bowl champions has pleased Native Americans as a good first step, but frustrated some of the 17,000 fans who planned to attend the game, the first in front of a crowd this season.
SOCCER
USA players signed
Manchester United Women Football Club have confirmed the signing of two-time World Cup winner Tobin Heath for the 2020-2021 season. She would be joined at the club by her USA teammate Christen Press. Heath, 32, has been a key player in a USA team that has won two World Cups and two Olympics titles. She has won two National Women’s Soccer League titles in the US with the Portland Thorns. Press, 31, played alongside Heath in the US women’s national team’s victorious World Cup campaigns in 2015 and 2019.
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