CYCLING
Aussie Porte wins stage
Richie Porte of Australia won the fifth and penultimate stage of the Tour of the Basque Country on Friday, moving into second place behind Sky teammate Sergio Henao. Porte finished the 166km mountain leg featuring 10 summits between Eibar and Beasain in 4 hours, 40 minutes, 43 seconds. Last year’s winner, Samuel Sanchez, came in second at the head of a group, four seconds off the pace. Porte and Nairo Quintana are both six seconds behind Henao in the overall standings, with Alberto Contador another four seconds behind the Colombian leader.
CRICKET
Sehwag gets the chop
India’s selectors yesterday left out dashing batsman Virender Sehwag from a 30-man preliminary squad for the Champions Trophy in England in June. Seasoned off-spinner Harbhajan Singh and veteran seamer Zaheer Khan were also missing from the list, which has to be shortened to 15 players a month before the one-day tournament opens on June 5. Sehwag’s 219 against the West Indies in 2011 is the highest individual score in one-day internationals. However, he was dropped due to recent poor form. Off-spinner Parvez Rasool was included in the squad, making him the first cricketer from Jammu and Kashmir to join the senior ranks.
SOCCER
Kewell joins Qatari club
Former Leeds and Liverpool winger Harry Kewell has signed a short-term deal with Qatar’s Al-Gharafa, ending a year-long spell without a club. Kewell left Melbourne Victory at the end of last year’s A-League season for family reasons. Al-Gharafa, which announced the deal on its Web site, said Kewell had been recruited only until the end of the current Qatar Stars League season which ends next month. Kewell had hoped to find a club in England over the past year to stay close to his family home in Cheshire.
RUGBY UNION
Biarritz squad quarantined
Biarritz have put their entire first team squad in quarantine after an outbreak of the mumps, the French Rugby League (LNR) said on Friday. Flyhalf Julien Peyrelongue has caught the mumps while backrow Benoit Guyot is suspected of also being infected. The squad has been placed in quarantine until Thursday while their Top 14 clash with Perpignan has been pushed back from April 13 to April 14. “Following Biarritz’s statement that they have two cases of the mumps, the league’s medical commission has, as a precautionary measure, banned the club’s players and coaches from meeting up from April 5 to April 11, inclusive,” the LNR said in a statement. Mumps, a common viral disease in childhood, causes swelling of the glands and can be rather more serious when contracted in adulthood, with occasional complications.
SOCCER
Hoffenheim beat Fortuna
With a new coach in charge, TSG 1899 Hoffenheim seized a lifeline in their fight for Bundesliga survival with a 3-0 win over fellow-relegation candidates Fortuna Duesseldorf on Friday. The home side got off to a great start in Markus Gisdol’s first game when Roberto Firmino crashed his shot in off the underside of the crossbar in the 11th minute. The visitors were dealt a blow when Duesseldorf’s Andreas Lambertz headed Sejad Salihovic’s corner into his own net with 15 minutes remaining. Kevin Volland rounded off the scoring on a counterattack in injury time.
North Korea’s FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup-winning team on Saturday received a heroes’ welcome back in the capital, Pyongyang, with hundreds of people on the streets to celebrate their success. They had defeated Spain on penalties after a 1-1 draw in the U17 World Cup final in the Dominican Republic on Nov. 3. It was the second global title in two months for secretive North Korea — largely closed off to the outside world; they also lifted the FIFA U20 Women’s World Cup in September. Officials and players’ families gathered at Pyongyang International Airport to wave flowers and North Korea flags as the
Taiwan’s top table tennis player Lin Yun-ju made his debut in the US professional table tennis scene by taking on a new role as a team’s co-owner. On Wednesday, Major League Table Tennis (MLTT), founded in September last year, announced on its official Web site that Lin had become part of the ownership group of the Princeton Revolution, one of the league’s eight teams. MLTT chief executive officer Flint Lane described Lin’s investment as “another great milestone for table tennis in America,” saying that the league’s “commitment to growth and innovation is drawing attention from the best in the sport, and we’re
Coco Gauff of the US on Friday defeated top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka 7-6 (7/4), 6-3 to set up a showdown with Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen in the final of the WTA Finals, while in the doubles, Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching was eliminated. Gauff generated six break points to Belarusian Sabalenka’s four and built on early momentum in the opening set’s tiebreak that she carried through to the second set. She is the youngest player at 20 to make the final at the WTA Finals since Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki in 2010. Zheng earlier defeated Wimbledon champion Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic 6-3, 7-5 to book
For King Faisal, a 20-year-old winger from Ghana, the invitation to move to Brazil to play soccer “was a dream.” “I believed when I came here, it would help me change the life of my family and many other people,” he said in Sao Paulo. For the past year and a half, he has been playing on the under-20s squad for Sao Paulo FC, one of South America’s most prominent clubs. He and a small number of other Africans are tearing across pitches in a country known as the biggest producer and exporter of soccer stars in the world, from Pele to Neymar. For
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