■SOCCER
‘Dead’ player still alive
An English club held a minute’s silence for one of their former great players — only to find that he was still alive. Bishop Auckland printed tributes to former England amateur international Tommy Farrer in the club program and arranged a death notice in the local paper. But when club chairman Terry Jackson phoned the 86-year-old’s wife, Gladys, to offer his condolences, she stunned him by saying he would be coming back soon — not from the afterlife, but from shopping. Farrer played in three FA Amateur Cup finals at Wembley with northeastern side Bishop Auckland, who were among the top non-professional clubs of the 1940s and 1950s. “We are not upset, but we did think it was a bit of a joke at first,” he told the Northern Echo regional daily newspaper. “Whoever it was who told people I had died obviously contacted the football club and they decided to go the whole hog by arranging the silence. I’m very moved that they went to such trouble.”
■SWIMMING
Manaudou in photo mix-up
A look-alike of former Olympic swimming champion Laure Manaudou appeared on the front page of L’Equipe this week with the woman in question claiming on Friday it had been an invasion of privacy. Manaudou on Wednesday announced she would not be competing this year and a front page photo of the other woman was published by the French sports daily the following day. The paper on Friday said on its front page that Manaudou had contacted them to say it wasn’t her in the photo. They said if that were the case, then they were sorry. The woman, who wanted to remain anonymous but called herself “Claire,” faced the media on Friday with her lawyer. “Apparently, I am the spitting image of Laure Manaudou and I am deeply shocked. The publication of this photo is an invasion of my private life and I learned about the photo from my best friend,” she told journalists. “The problem is that there is now information about me on the Internet and I have learned that I have been followed or risk being followed for several months,” she said.
■SOCCER
Wigan snap up Mido
Wigan on Friday sold Emile Heskey to Aston Villa for £3.5 million (US$4.8 million) and immediately snapped up Egypt striker Mido on loan from Middlesbrough as cover until the end of the season. England forward Heskey’s move to Villa was completed after he passed a medical and agreed personal terms while Mido was being lined up to form an Egyptian double act with compatriot Amr Zaki.
■CRICKET
Smith returns to Windies
Left-hander Devon Smith was recalled to the West Indies squad on Friday for next month’s first test against England while Barbados opener Dale Richards earned his first call-up. Smith, who has opened the batting and filled in a lower middle order slot, was omitted from the recent tests in New Zealand but earned his latest recall thanks to a double century for the Winward Islands in a regional game against Guyana.
Richards, a late developer at 32, has shown consistent form in the regional competitions but will have caught the eye of the selectors with his century against Trinidad and Tobago. There is no place in the squad for Guyana opening bat Sewnarine Chattergoon. Seamer Lionel Baker, of Montserat, retains his place after debuting in the drawn test series in New Zealand.
When Joan Monfort took photographs of Lionel Messi with a baby for a charity calendar almost 17 years ago, he knew the long-haired young man would make it big in soccer. He could not have imagined the little boy would as well. The baby in the photos — which have gone viral — was none other than Lamine Yamal, the Spanish wunderkind, who at 16 is showing such promise that he is already being compared with the greats. He is the youngest person to have played for Spain and the youngest to compete in the European Championship. The long-forgotten photo from 2007
Taiwanese tennis ace Hsieh Su-wei and partner Jan Zielinski of Poland on Friday advanced to the mixed doubles final at Wimbledon, just one step away from clinching their first mixed doubles title at the tournament. Hsieh and Zielinski, who won the Australian Open title earlier this year and who had reached the semi-finals at the French Open, battled past second seeds Michael Venus and Erin Routliffe of New Zealand 7-6, (7/0), 6-3. In the first set, the Taiwanese-Polish duo saved a set point, pushing the set into a tiebreaker. They clinched the set by winning the tiebreaker with seven straight points. The duo
CHALLENGE SET: Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei and Poland’s Jan Zielinski are to play against New Zealand’s Michael Venus and Erin Routliffe in the mixed doubles semi-finals Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei and her Polish partner, Jan Zielinski, on Thursday advanced to the mixed doubles semi-final at Wimbledon in a tight battle that ended in a super tiebreaker. The seventh-seeded duo, who won the Australian Open mixed doubles title earlier this year and reached the semi-finals of the French Open, needed 125 minutes to beat Britain’s Jamie Murray and the US’ Taylor Townsend 7-6, 6-7 (10-5). Hsieh and Zielinski took the first set with a 7-2 win in the tiebreaker and seemed poised to close out the match in the second set tiebreaker when they took a 4-0 lead. With the Taiwan-Poland
Modern pentathlon has obstacles ahead as it bids farewell to the horse at the Paris Olympics and prepares for a future more familiar to fans of Ninja Warrior and Tough Mudder. The blend of fencing, freestyle swimming, show jumping, pistol shooting and cross-country running caused a commotion at the 2021 Tokyo Games when a German coach struck a horse that refused a fence. The sport was dropped from the initial list for the 2028 Los Angeles Games, but reinstated after the governing Union Internationale de Pentathlon Moderne (UIPM), led by 77-year-old German Klaus Schormann, decided the equestrian element would be replaced by