TABLE TENNIS
Taiwanese pair make final
Taiwan’s Cheng I-ching and Li Yu-jhun yesterday advanced to the final at the WTT Star Contender Bangkok, beating Japanese pair Miyuu Kihara and Miyu Nagasaki 3-2 (11-6, 10-12, 9-11, 11-6, 11-5). They face Chinese pair Chen Xingtong and Kuai Man in the final at the Huamark Indoor Stadium. Cheng and Li, the world No. 6 women’s pair, have achieved outstanding results this year, winning at the Amman Challenge in February and taking second at the Goa Star Challenge last month.
Photo: Taipei Times, courtesy of the WTT
BASKETBALL
Wang Nan-kuei dies
Retired Taiwanese basketball player Wang Nan-kuei died in a car crash on the Sun Yat-sen Freeway (Freeway No. 1) early yesterday, the National Highway Police Bureau said. He was 39. Wang’s sedan crashed into a heavy truck at about 1:30am near the 106.4km mark southbound between the Toufen and Touwu interchanges in Hsinchu’s Xiangshan District. The truck had earlier collided with a light truck, with both trucks stopping on the roadway, police said. The freeway section is unlit and the driver of the heavy truck did not place a warning triangle on the road following the first collision, police said. The driver and a passenger in the light truck sustained minor injuries, police said. Wang played in the Super Basketball League from 2007 to 2014. He won the league’s All-Star three-point contest in 2013.
BASEBALL
Yu Chang injured
Taiwan’s sole active MLB player, Yu Chang, is expected to miss six weeks due to a left wrist fracture that requires surgery. The Boston Red Sox utility infielder was pulled from Monday’s game against the Baltimore Orioles following a swing and a miss against a Bryan Baker slider at the top of the seventh inning. The Red Sox on Tuesday placed Chang on the 10-day injured list due to a left hamate fracture. In a social media post on Wednesday, Chang said the injury was “the last thing an athlete wants,” adding that he was scheduled to undergo wrist surgery yesterday. Chang said he was “very touched” by the concern and encouragement he had received, adding that he “can’t wait to challenge Green Monster again.”
SOCCER
“Pele” made an adjective
The word “pele” on Wednesday was added to the more than 167,000 words in the Michaelis Portuguese dictionary printed in Brazil, denoting something or someone extraordinary — the sense in which it is already employed informally in Brazil. “The expression already used to refer to someone who is the best at what they do has been eternalized on the pages of the dictionary,” the Pele Foundation wrote on Instagram. Under the new entry, the word is defined as “exceptional, incomparable, unique” — qualities associated with Pele, who was known as “The King.” He died in December last year at the age of 82.
Shohei Ohtani and Clayton Kershaw on Friday joined their Los Angeles Dodgers teammates in sticking their fists out to show off their glittering World Series rings at a ceremony. “There’s just a lot of excitement, probably more than I can ever recall with the Dodger fan base and our players,” manager Dave Roberts said before Los Angeles rallied to beat the Detroit Tigers 8-5 in 10 innings. “What a way to cap off the first two days of celebrations,” Roberts said afterward. “By far the best opening week I’ve ever experienced. I just couldn’t have scripted it any better.” A choir in the
The famously raucous Hong Kong Sevens are to start today in a big test for a shiny new stadium at the heart of a major US$3.85 billion sports park in the territory. Officials are keeping their fingers crossed that the premier event in Hong Kong’s sporting and social calendar goes off without a hitch at the 50,000-seat Kai Tak Stadium. They hope to entice major European soccer teams to visit in the next few months, with reports in December last year saying that Liverpool were in talks about a pre-season tour. Coldplay are to perform there next month, all part of Hong Kong’s
After fleeing Sudan when civil war erupted, Al-Hilal captain Mohamed Abdelrahman and his teammates have defied the odds to reach the CAF Champions League quarter-finals. They are today to face title-holders Al-Ahly of Egypt in Cairo, with the return match in the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott, on Tuesday next week. Al-Hilal and biggest domestic rivals Al-Merrikh relocated to Mauritania after a power struggle broke out in April 2023 between the Sudanese army and a paramilitary force. The civil war has claimed tens of thousands of lives and displaced more than 12 million people, according to the UN. The Democratic Republic of the Congo-born Al-Hilal
Shohei Ohtani, Teoscar Hernandez and Tommy Edman on Thursday smashed home runs to give the reigning World Series champions the Los Angeles Dodgers a 5-4 victory over Detroit on the MLB’s opening day in the US. The Dodgers, who won two season-opening games in Tokyo last week, raised their championship banner on a day when 28 clubs launched the season in the US. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts shuffled his batting lineup with all four leadoff hitters finally healthy as Ohtani was followed by Mookie Betts, then Hernandez and Freddie Freeman in the cleanup spot, switching places with Hernandez. “There’s a Teoscar tax to
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