BADMINTON
Taiwan lose to Malaysia
Tai Tzu-ying yesterday won Taiwan’s only victory in their 4-1 defeat to Malaysia in their Group C tie of the Sudirman Cup Finals. The world No. 3 star dominated Goh Jin Wei in the women’s singles 21-8, 21-10. In the opening match of their final group tie, Ye Hong-wei and Lee Chia-hsin won just one game of their mixed doubles showdown with Chen Tang Jie and Toh Ee Wei, losing 17-21, 21-19, 21-17. That set the tone for the rest of the day, with Chou Tien-chen losing 21-14, 21-23 to world No. 8 Lee Zii Jia in the second match. In men’s doubles, Lu Ching-yao and Yang Po-han lost straight games 21-8, 23-21 to Ong Yew Sin and Teo Ee Yi, while Hsu Ya-ching and Teng Chun-hsun eked out a win in their 21-15, 19-21, 21-15 defeat to Pearly Tan and Thinaah Muralitharan in the women’s doubles.
RUGBY UNION
Kit switched for color blind
Saracens and Sale Sharks are to wear their away jerseys in the Premiership Rugby final this month to avoid a clash that would have posed a problem for color blind fans, the league said yesterday. Saracens traditionally would have worn their black home jerseys as top seeds, while Sale play in red-maroon, but Colour Blind Awareness said that fans with a vision deficiency would not be able to tell them apart. Saracens would now play in their white away jerseys, while Sale play in maroon after the league were told that one in 12 men and one in 200 women are color blind. “It is important that the accessibility needs of these groups are recognized to enable all fans of the sport to have a positive viewing experience that isn’t limited by avoidable color clashes,” Colour Blind Awareness CEO Kathryn Albany-Ward said.
ATHLETICS
Kenyan runner suspended
Kenyan distance runner Rhonex Kipruto, who won a bronze medal in the 10,000m at the 2019 World Athletics Championships, has been suspended for suspected doping, the Athletics Integrity Unit said yesterday. Kipruto has been notified of a charge relating to irregularities in his athlete biological passport, it said. The biological passport can detect possible irregularities in blood values assessed over time without an athlete testing positive for a banned substance. Kipruto was 19 when he finished third in the 10,000m in Doha. Months later, he set a record for a 10km road race in Valencia, Spain, and placed ninth in the 10,000m at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.
CYCLING
Virus knocks out more riders
The Giro d’Italia yesterday lost six more cyclists, four of them from former race leader Remco Evenepoel’s team, owing to positive COVID-19 tests taking the total of withdrawals due to the virus to 15 since the race began on May 6. Race favorite Evenepoel withdrew late on Sunday due to a positive test and despite the race organizers implementing stricter rules on Monday, COVID-19 continued to affect the peloton. “Soudal Quick-Step is disappointed to announce that four more riders from its Giro d’Italia squad have tested positive for COVID-19 and will leave the race,” read a team statement. “Following the positive test of Remco Evenepoel on Sunday, a further round of tests were made on the riders and staff that remained in Italy, with Jan Hirt, Josef Cerny, Louis Vervaeke and Matteo Cattaneo unfortunately unable to continue.”
The qualifying round of the World Baseball Classic (WBC) is to be held at the Taipei Dome between Feb. 21 and 25, Major League Baseball (MLB) announced today. Taiwan’s group also includes Spain, Nicaragua and South Africa, with two of the four teams advancing onto the 2026 WBC. Taiwan, currently ranked second in the world in the World Baseball Softball Confederation rankings, are favorites to come out of the group, the MLB said in an article announcing the matchups. Last year, Taiwan finished in a five-way tie in their group with two wins and two losses, but finished last on tiebreakers after giving
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
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
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
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