Top female golfers head to Xiamen

XIAMEN: China's top female golfers look to wrap up a wonderful year of golf in victorious fashion by taking the title of the year-end Orient China Ladies Open, which tips off today in Xiamen, southeast China's Fujian Province.

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Runners hit with bib fine

A top Chinese athletics official warned national athletes to show respect to sponsors, while slapping four promising marathon runners with fines for obscuring the logos of sponsors on their number bibs during October's Beijing International Marathon.

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Benfica striker comes home to boost offense

Portuguese league giant Benfica's Chinese striker, Yu Dabao, has returned home and will likely be a main cog in the offense during the Olympic team's tune-up match today against the United States in Changsha, central China's Hunan Province.

A crisis of leadership

Yao Ming hardly recognizes his team anymore. Going into the season, they were the Houston Rockets, a playoff-bound team expected to boast one of the most potent offenses in the NBA under new coach Rick Adelman. Twenty-two games later, they still don the same red and white jerseys, but have somehow morphed into a mediocre .500 team struggling to stay out of the basement of the Southwest Division. After an embarrassing blowout at the hands of the 76ers earlier this week, Yao told the Houston Chronicle, "I feel like they traded me to another team."

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Tournaments more than just tests

Chinese paddlers will try to underline their ping-pong domination and gain a psychological edge over their main rivals ahead of the Beijing Olympics in two year-end tournaments beginning this weekend in Beijing.

IN BRIEF (Page 22)

2009 race will rival Tour de France, says UCI president

With his eyes firmly set on China's already colossal but still fast-growing market, world cycling boss Pat McQuaid promises to give China a new race that is "as popular as the Tour de France".

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