E-SPORTS
Taiwanese wins title
Taiwan’s Neal Liu on Saturday finished first in the second season of a South Korean professional video game go-kart racing league, becoming the first foreign competitor to clinch the championship title. Liu was part of a four-member Taiwanese team, “Formosa Beast,” who placed second in the Crazyracing Kartrider World Championship Final in South Korea in 2019. In June, he was recruited by the South Korean e-sports team Liiv Sandbox.
TENNIS
Nishioka wins Korea Open
Yoshihito Nishioka yesterday stunned fourth seed Denis Shapovalov 6-4, 7-6 (7/5) to win the Korea Open for his second ATP title. The Japanese player is set to rise to a career-high 41 after adding the Seoul crown to his triumph at the 2018 Shenzhen Open in China. Nishioka defeated world No. 2 Casper Ruud on the way to the final and he was neck-and-neck in the first set against Canada’s Shapovalov, until he broke in the 10th game to take the first set. Shapovalov, who was also chasing a second title, took the upper hand early in the second set, but the 27-year-old Nishioka bounced back, leveling the set and then powering on to win the match and the title on the tie-break.
BASEBALL
Ohtani signs US$30m deal
Shohei Ohtani has agreed to a US$30 million deal with the Los Angeles Angels for next season in the two-way superstar’s final year of arbitration eligibility before free agency. The Angels on Saturday announced the deal, avoiding a potentially complicated arbitration case with last year’s American League Most Valuable Player. Ohtani’s deal is fully guaranteed, with no other provisions. It is the largest one-year contract ever given to an arbitration-eligible player, surpassing the US$27 million given to Mookie Betts by the Boston Red Sox in January 2020, a month before he was traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers. Ohtani’s US$24.5 million raise from his salary is by far the largest for an arbitration-eligible player in major league history. He shattered the previous record of US$9.6 million set by Cy Young Award winner Jacob deGrom of the New York Mets when his pay was bumped from US$7.4 million to US$17 million before the 2019 season.
FORMULA ONE
Hamilton keeps nose stud
Lewis Hamilton was allowed to keep wearing his nose stud at the Singapore Grand Prix for medical reasons, but his team were yesterday fined 25,000 euros (US$24,500) for failing to notify stewards. The FIA slapped Mercedes with the penalty for submitting a self-scrutineering form that said the British driver had removed all jewelry and piercings in line with regulations. Seven-time world champion Hamilton told reporters that he was wearing the stud again on the advice of doctors after he got an infection when he removed it. “One of the best excuses I was given a long time ago was about heat, and if you are in a fire metal conducts heat, but our zip is metal, our buckle around our helmet is metal, we’ve got the wires with aluminum metal in them,” he said of the rule. “It’s crazy that we’re having to talk about something so small. It’s all a bit silly.”
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