RUGBY LEAGUE
Devils to be chipped
The Salford Red Devils are to wear mouthguards containing microchips that monitor the impact of collisions in the new Super League season to aid research into concussion. The system, designed by Welsh company Sports & Wellbeing Analytics, is to send data to pitch-side coaching and medical staff in real-time. Salford director of operations Ian Blease said in a statement that player welfare was of utmost importance to the club. “The effects on players from rugby collisions alone is an area of research that is gathering pace ... and for Salford to be at the forefront of this research is an extremely important addition to our own research and development programs,” Blease said.
AUSTRALIAN RULES
Coroner seeks brains
Melbourne-based coroner Paresa Spanos has called on Australian Rules players to pledge to donate their brains to science after death to aid research into chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), local media reported yesterday. Spanos made the appeal after giving her findings in the death of former player Danny Frawley, who was discovered after his death in September 2019 to have had the concussion-related disease. CTE, a degenerative brain disease caused by repeated concussions, can only be detected when the brain is examined after death. It has been linked to mental health issues. Spanos said that players should be encouraged to donate their brains to the Australian Sports Brain Bank after death to enable more studies on the links between CTE and neurological dysfunction, ABC reported.
MIXED MARTIAL ARTS
One eyes US listing
One Championship is considering options including seeking a listing in the US via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company, people familiar with the matter said. The Singaporean sports media company has picked Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs to help prepare for the potential listing, the people said. The firm has held preliminary discussions with several acquisition companies, they said, asking not to be identified because the deliberations are not public. Discussions are preliminary and no final decision has been made, the people said.
BASEBALL
Mariners’ Mather resigns
Seattle Mariners president and chief executive officer Kevin Mather resigned on Monday following the emergence of video in which he expressed opinions about organizational strategy and his views on some players. At one point in the video, Mather was asked about Japanese pitcher Hisashi Iwakuma, who played with the club for six seasons before returning in a coaching role. “Wonderful human being, his English was terrible,” Mather said. “He wanted to get back into the game, he came to us, we quite frankly want him as our Asian scout, interpreter, what’s going on with the Japanese league. He’s coming to spring training. And I’m going to say, I’m tired of paying his interpreter. When he was a player, we’d pay Iwakuma X, but we’d also have to pay [US]$75,000 a year to have an interpreter with him. His English suddenly got better, his English got better when we told him that.” Mather issued an apology late on Sunday for his comments, which were made on Feb. 5 to the Bellevue, Washington, Breakfast Rotary Club.
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