SOCCER
Haaland sets goals record
Erling Haaland on Wednesday set a Premier League goals record by scoring his 35th of the season in Manchester City’s 3-0 win against West Ham United. The 22-year-old Norway striker struck in the 70th minute at the Etihad Stadium to give the defending champions a 2-0 lead. Haaland had equaled the previous record jointly held by Alan Shearer and Andy Cole on Sunday against Fulham with his 34th of the season. “It was a nice feeling, as with every single goal I score,” Haaland said. “”Especially to win the game is really important.” Haaland has now scored 51 in all competitions in a remarkable first year at City. He has five more matches to extend his record. Nathan Ake and substitute Phil Foden also scored in the win that moved City back to the top of the standings, one point above Arsenal.
RUGBY UNION
Fiji board in trouble
A temporary administrator has been put in charge of the troubled Fiji Rugby Union, a spokesman said yesterday, after its board resigned five months before the World Cup. Fiji are to begin their World Cup campaign in France against Wales on Sept. 10 before also facing Australia, Georgia and Portugal in Group C. However, off-field distractions have led to lawyer Simione Valenitabua taking charge of the union as “interim administrator,” media officer Vashneel Prasad said. Valenitabua has been appointed by Fijian Minister of Justice Siromi Turaga after the board resigned en masse last week because of administrative irregularities. Turaga told directors that the union had been run illegally as a charitable trust, sparking the resignations. The union’s constitution had not been registered correctly, rendering it illegal, he said. Despite the off-field ruckus, Prasad said that Fiji’s national teams are unaffected.
BROADCASTERS
Commission targets piracy
Sports events organizers such as Sky, Canal+ and FIFA should be allowed to secure injunctions against online piracy of live events, the European Commission said yesterday, following calls from companies for action against a problem that they say costs them billions of dollars annually. The non-binding recommendation from the EU executive falls far short of broadcasters and events organizers’ calls for binding legislation. “The recommendation encourages the use of blocking injunctions tailored to live events and, in the case of live sports events, encourages member states to grant legal standing to sports event organizers to seek an injunction where it is currently not possible,” the commission said in a statement. It also urged providers of hosting services to take measures to minimize illegal streaming, and events organizers to boost the availability and affordability of their commercial offers.
BROADCASTERS
Telefonica faces F1 probe
Spain’s antitrust watchdog yesterday said that it had started disciplinary proceedings against Telefonica over an agreement with streaming and cable TV channel DAZN to air Formula 1 races in 2021, last year and this year. CNMC, as the watchdog is known, would investigate whether the agreement between the Spanish telecom and DAZN contravenes the commitments made by Telefonica in 2015 to preserve competition after it bought cable TV operator DTS.
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