Thierry Neuville’s opening day on the Rally of Portugal on Friday came to a premature end when he damaged his Hyundai in a crash on stage seven.
The Belgian was lying second in the world championship behind Sebastien Ogier arriving at this fourth leg of the season.
Neuville pushed the car upright after the accident before retiring with a broken suspension.
Photo: AFP
“We started off at a great pace this morning... Everything was under control, but we were caught out by stage seven,” he said.
Neuville said he went into a corner too fast and as he tried to correct it “there was something like a tree stump that pulled us onto our side.”
“We tried our best to fix things on the road section, but sadly the suspension was damaged, so it was game over for the day,” he added.
“The team will pick up the car and bring it back to the service park,” Hyundai added.
Neuville’s teammate Ott Tanak was leading ahead at the day’s conclusion with Ogier, a winner here last year, in fifth after having to “sweep” the road due to his status as series leader.
The last stage of the day was a short super-special on a rallycross circuit.
“It was a demanding day, a lot of things happened with a lot of worries,” said 2019 world champion Tanak who won in Portugal last season.
“I can’t wait to rest before starting tomorrow,” added Tanak, who started the weekend at fourth place in the championship having won in Finland last time out.
Toyota’s Elfyn Evans was second overall, just six seconds behind the Estonian, with Dani Sordo, in another Hyundai, back in third, nine seconds off the lead.
Ogier admitted having to open the race on Portugal’s sandy gravel tracks did him few favors as he stood 24 seconds off the pace.
“The day was hard. We will see what we can do tomorrow with a few cars in front of us,” the Frenchman said.
In the third tier WRC3, former Chelsea and Olympique de Marseille soccer manager Andre Villas-Boas made it to the end of the first leg of his debut WRC rally in his Citroen C3. The 43-year-old was 15th of 24 in the category.
Sordo won two of the opening three gravel stages to lead at the midpoint with new codriver Borja Rozada, but he then stalled in the day’s penultimate test and Tanak, who had a puncture in the afternoon, went in front.
New Taipei Kings guard Jeremy Lin on Friday was named the Taiwan Professional Basketball League’s (TPBL) Player of the Month, the first domestic player to win the award, while the Hsinchu Toplus Lioneers are to welcome their third head coach in less than a year. Lin averaged 22 points, 5.4 rebounds and 6.6 assists over five games in October and last month, helping the Kings to second in the standings with a 4-2 record as of Friday. The Kings last night defeated the Lioneers 96-78 to move level with the top-of-the-table Formosa Dreamers (5-2), while in the night game, the New Taipei
TO NO AVAIL: The Denver Nuggets’ Serbian center Nikola Jokic surpassed his 53-point performance in the 2023 Western Conference semi-finals against Phoenix The Washington Wizards withstood a 56-point explosion from Denver star Nikola Jokic to beat the Nuggets 122-113 on Saturday and snap their 16-game NBA losing streak. Jokic, who won his third NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP) award last season, posted a career scoring high — surpassing a 53-point performance in game four of the 2023 Western Conference semi-finals against Phoenix and a 50-point regular-season best against Sacramento in 2021. The Serbian big man added 16 rebounds and eight assists, but it was all to no avail as Washington, buoyed by 39 points from Jordan Poole, won for the first time
Taiwan on Wednesday finished with 15 medals at the World Taekwondo Poomsae Championships in Hong Kong, taking home four gold, five silver and six bronze medals across the age group divisions. Taiwan ranked third on the medal table after South Korea with 17 golds and the US with eight golds at the five-day competition. “Your athletes have proven themselves as the best in the world,” World Taekwondo president Choue Chung-won said at the closing ceremony of the martial art contest that was attended by a record 1,727 athletes from around the world. On the first day of the competition at the Hong Kong
Taiwan’s Lin Cheng-jing won a bronze medal in the clean and jerk in the women’s under-49 kg division at the 2024 IWF World Weightlifting Championships in Bahrain on Saturday. Lin won her first medal at a World Weightlifting Championships for lifting 107kg in the clean and jerk in her weight class, 2kg more than Rosegie Ramos of the Philippines. However, Ramos won bronze for the combined lift after topping Lin by 5kg in the snatch. Ri Song-gum of North Korea won gold in the division’s combined lift with a total of 213kg, while Xiang Linxiang of China took silver with
RSS