SOCCER
Rising star shot dead
Gasan Magomedov, a defender with Russian second-division club Anzhi Makhachkala, has been shot dead in the volatile North Caucasian region of Dagestan, the club confirmed. The club said that the 20-year-old player was hit by a hail of bullets while driving close to his home in Novokuli village on Saturday night. “He was one of the club’s youth team main players,” the team said of Magomedov, who had played in 16 matches this season. Reports said that Magomedov died in the ambulance while being taken to hospital. No arrests have been made so far and the motive for the attack is still unclear.
OLYMPICS
IOC administrator dies
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) on Sunday announced that veteran Chinese sports administrator He Zhenliang, credited with playing a major role in China’s return to the Olympic fold, had died aged 85. “A career politician, Mr He was instrumental in bringing China back into the Olympic movement,” an IOC statement said. He started his career in 1964 as deputy secretary-general of the Chinese Gymnastics Association, and later served as the secretary-general of the nation’s table tennis association as well as the head of the secretariat of the All-China Sports Federation. In 1979, he was promoted to the position of deputy secretary-general of the All-China Sports Federation and the Chinese Olympic Committee (COC). He went on to become COC president between 1989 and 1994.
UNITED STATES
Commentator passes away
ESPN sportscaster Stuart Scott, whose use of pop culture references and wordplay earned him a loyal following among US fans and the athletes he covered, died on Sunday aged 49. ESPN, the network he joined in 1993, said Scott died of cancer, having battled recurrent bouts of the disease since he was first diagnosed in 2007. Scott’s signature expression, “Booyah,” spread beyond the sports world and he peppered his reports and commentary with lively phrases, such as: “As cool as the other side of the pillow,” and “Just call him butter ’cause he is on a roll.” Scott anchored ESPN’s flagship SportsCenter shows, hosted the NFL pre-game show Monday Night Countdown and served as the lead host for NBA coverage on ESPN and the ABC network. Scott was ESPN’s most prominent black sportscaster, and although it prompted criticism from some quarters he infused his reports not only with references to Shakespeare, but also with hip-hop slang. “What u did for our culture, bringing that Swag to reporting can only be copied,” LeBron James wrote on Instagram on Sunday. “Thank you so much for being u and giving us inner city kids someone we could relate to that wasn’t a player but was close enough to them,” James added.
SOCCER
Torres set for second debut
Atletico Madrid’s prodigal son Fernando Torres could make his return in a heated derby with Real Madrid tomorrow in the last 16 of the King’s Cup if he looks sharp in training, coach Diego Simeone said. The former Atletico captain, who played 244 games for his hometown club where he debuted aged 17, has signed an 18-month loan deal from AC Milan which became effective when the Italian transfer market opened yesterday. “He will train with us, play a bit of football and we will see how he is,” Simeone told a news conference.
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