Wang Wei-hsuan makes it second time lucky in Macau, beats Im Sung-jae to claim Open crown

Former Olympic champion Mima Ito has been dropped from Japan’s latest national table tennis squad, replaced by 28-year-old breakthrough player Hitomi Sato, who finished runner-up at the recent WTT China Smash. Across the border, meanwhile, followers of rival powerhouses China have focused their attention on widely circulated Chinese media reports that the Japan Table Tennis Association plans to dismantle the high-profile mixed-doubles pairing of Sora Matsushima and Miwa Harimoto. Under the...

Golf’s Asian Tour has postponed the Saudi International indefinitely and cycling’s Urban World Championships have been cancelled following a deadly attack on Riyadh, although local organisers said next year’s Asian Cup football tournament remained on track. Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi movement claimed ‌responsibility for Saturday’s strike on Riyadh’s international airport that killed at least 12 people and wounded more than 300. The Urban Cycling World Championships had been scheduled for...

Hong Kong will host a World Fencing League event next year, bringing the sport’s best and brightest to the city for one day in April, sources have told the South China Morning Post. The brainchild of 2016 US Olympic team foil bronze medallist Miles Chamley-Watson, WFL staged its inaugural event in Los Angeles earlier this year, and featured the likes of Hong Kong’s Ryan Choi Chun-yin, who captained Team Shield. Sources said the league was being pencilled in for the penultimate week of April, a...

Chad Schofield rates Ka Ying Rising “probably one of the best we’ve ever seen”, but the former Hong Kong-based jockey is confident his The Everest mount Tempted has what it takes to beat the world’s best galloper at Randwick on Saturday. Hong Kong champion Ka Ying Rising chases a 22nd straight victory in the world’s richest turf race, but a rain-affected track and Tempted’s hot form has boosted Schofield’s confidence. Since running second to Ka Ying Rising in The Everest (1,200m) 12 months ago,...

The 0.1 second that stood between Yvette Kong Man-yi and qualifying for the 2012 Olympics was “unbearable”, the Hong Kong swimmer writes in her newly published memoir, The Unmeasured Human. It was, the 33-year-old recalls years later, “too small to feel and too large to survive unchanged”. Fourteen years on, Kong is grateful for the heartbreaking experience, telling the South China Morning Post that “challenge is fundamental to human growth and spirit”. “I needed to find the courage to try again...

After their season was torched by “the biggest crash in SailGP history”, New Zealand’s Black Foils team are already plotting to use Hong Kong as the launch pad for a historic and redemptive 2027 season. Despite boasting the Olympic gold medal and multiple America’s Cup-winning pair of Blair Tuke and Pete Burling as crew mainstays and co-CEOs, the Kiwi boat is still waiting for its first SailGP title. The 10½-month championship features 13 race weekends, where 13 identical F50 catamarans – up to...

Hyrox has warned fans that a group calling itself the Hyrox Association of Macau is not part of the global fitness brand and has no authority to run races in the city. The rapidly growing company said it had already taken official steps to stop the upstart organisation from copying it. According to local media, the new group hosted a dinner on Tuesday in the casino hub to mark its official launch, during which it reportedly unveiled plans for an inaugural “Macau Fitness Run Challenge” at the...

Streetwise Lion City Sailors condemned Tai Po to a 1-0 AFC Champions League 2 defeat at Mong Kok Stadium on Thursday, but victorious boss Mark Jackson accused the hosts of “crossing a line” in their attempts to ruffle the Singaporean team. A husk of the side that was unbeaten at home in last season’s competition, following a summer firesale, Tai Po nevertheless ran themselves into the ground in a vain attempt to recover from the blow of Matthias Phaeton’s strike shortly after half-time. While...

Chinese referee Ma Ning shared details about his “harrowing” journey after officiating an AFC Champions League Elite fixture in Saudi Arabia on social media on Wednesday. Amid escalating tensions in the region following a recent attack on Riyadh’s international airport, the six-member Chinese officiating crew led by Ma completed their match assignment despite severe travel disruptions and uncomfortable conditions in the host city. The officials were in Riyadh for the AFC Champions League Elite...

Seven years after Covid-19 put the brakes on Indonesia’s new women’s football league, Zahra Naqiyyah will finally return to the field with “high hopes” for the women’s game in the country. Sunday’s matches in the Indonesia Women’s League will be the first since 2019 and a new chapter for women’s football in the Muslim-majority country of 290 million people. “I really believe that if Indonesia’s women’s football is properly managed, we can become a powerhouse in Asia,” Zahra said at a training...

Frankie Lor Fu-chuen is hoping last season’s Classic Cup winner Stormy Grove can pass his first test on the road to the Group One Hong Kong Mile when he tackles Monday’s Group Two Sha Tin Trophy (1,600m). The Toronado galloper soared from the back of the field to collect the second leg of last season’s Classic Series, before running a mighty race to finish third in the Hong Kong Derby (2,000m) behind Invincible Ibis. His season ended prematurely on his next start, however, as he bled from both...

A top American high school snapping up a talented Chinese teen basketball player once deemed “too short” to represent the national team has sparked debate online about the country’s rigid training and selection criteria. Zhang Yuchen, who has drawn similarities to Golden State Warriors star Stephen Curry, left Guangzhou for Phoenix on Wednesday to join the CIA Bella Vista’s men’s basketball team. Winning both the Chipotle High School Basketball Nationals and the EYBL Scholastic titles last...