The Morung ExpressSPORTSMonday14 February 201110 Dimapur

MADRID, FEBRUARY 13 (AGENCIES) : League leaders Barcelona saw their record winning run come to an end with a shock 1-1 draw at Sporting Gijon and it could have been worse had David Villa not scored a brilliant 79th-minute equaliser to salvage a point.

Barcelona had won 16 consecutive league games to beat the old mark of the great Real Madrid side of 1960/61. But the champi-ons saw their historical se-quence broken yesterday and the two dropped points are a real boost for title ri-vals Real. Barcelona are now eight points ahead of Real in the Spanish first di-vision and Jose Mourinho's side will want to capitalise on the rare slip by winning at Espanyol on Sunday.

Unfashionable Sport-ing, two points above the relegation zone, took the lead through David Barral after 16th minutes and Bar-celona needed a delightful chip from Villa late on to snatch a point.

It was the first away points dropped all season for Barcelona, who had won all 10 of their away games prior to this game, and coach Pep Guardiola will hope for a better display on Wednesday when his side travel to Arsenal for the first

Barcelona see record run ended by strugglers Gijon

Barcelona's David Villa, center, is congratulate by his fellow teammate after scored against Sporting de Gijon during their Spanish La Liga soccer match at El Molinon stadium in Gijon northern, Spain Saturday February 12. (AP Photo)

leg of their last 16 Champi-ons League tie.

A fired-up Sporting started the better of the two sides and took a surprise 16th-minute lead as Barral cut inside from the left flank and left Gerard Pique in his wake before firing low into the corner. Barcelona don't often go behind and found it difficult to respond against hosts who defended deep in numbers. The champions didn't have a noteworthy ef-fort on goal until just after

the half hour mark when Andres Iniesta dribbled past his marker and shot across goal but goalkeeper Ivan Cuellar saved well.

On 53 minutes Brazil-ian right back Dani Alves nipped past his man and cut the ball back for Xavi but the Spanish international scuffed his shot and Cuellar smothered the effort.

Two minutes later Li-onel Messi was foiled by Cuellar at his near post and the outstanding Alves al-

most scored a minute later.Sporting could bare-

ly get out of their half but Barcelona did not make the breakthrough until the 79th minute with Vil-la showing great vision to float a delightful chip over Cuellar. Villa did not cele-brate the goal out of respect for hometown club Gijon where he began his career before going on to become a world superstar.

Elsewhere the future of Atletico Madrid coach

Quique Sanchez Flores is hanging by a thread after a Joaquin brace helped Va-lencia to a 2-1 comeback win at the Vicente Calderon on Saturday.

Joaquin scored an 86th minute winner to pun-ish Atletico, who have won just once in 2011 under Flores, and Valencia move two points above Villarreal into third place. Atletico are seven points off the top six, with the the pre-season tar-get of Champions League football out of sight, and Flores could face the axe with his old team Valen-cia, where he played for 10 years and who he managed for two seasons, possibly putting the final nail in his coffin. "The fans cheer me up because they appreciate things and that's why I will do everything I possibly can to turn things around," said Flores.

Atletico got the perfect start with Jose Antonio Reyes putting them ahead after just three minutes, however, Joaquin levelled for Valencia on 41 minutes.

Uruguayan World Cup star Diego Forlan missed a crucial penalty on 56 min-utes and Joaquin scored a fine winner curling in a right-footed shot from just outside the area with four minutes left.

GARMISCH-PARTENKIRCHEN, FEB-RUARY 13 (AFP): Austria's Elisabeth Go-ergl won the women's world downhill title on Sunday with Lindsey Vonn of the Unit-ed States taking silver and Germany's Ma-ria Riesch taking bronze. Goergl scorched down the twisting Kandahar course to set a winning time of 1min 47.24sec and claim her second gold medal of the world cham-pionships after her super-G victory on Tuesday. Vonn, the defending Olympic and world downhill champion, finished second at 0.44sec while Riesch, the current World Cup leader, was third at 0.60 behind.

Goergl's gold continues the domina-tion of Austria's women at these champi-onships after compatriot Anna Fenninger also won Friday's super combined.

Having struggled with the after-effects of a head injury recently, Vonn was in con-tention for gold all the way down as she fought to retain her crown. She has strug-gled to recover from the head injury she suffered in training ten days ago and failed

to defend her world super-G title on Tues-day, when she finished seventh.

Complaining of headaches and trouble concentrating, the US starlet then treated Friday's downhill of the super combined as a training run to put all her effort into pre-pare for the downhill. For Garmisch-born Riesch this was her second bronze of the world championships after she finished third in the super-G.

Having also struggled with a heavy dose of 'flu, Riesch was strong throughout her run, but was always slightly behind Goergl's split times before Vonn muscled her way into silver. Switzerland's Lara Gut brushed off a heavy fall in the slalom of the super combined, which saw her tumble down the Gudiberg course, to finish fourth at 0.94sec off the pace.

The Swiss teenager was the fastest of the early racers on the 3km-long course, but Goergl produced another near-flawless race to shave nearly a second off her time to claim another Austrian gold.

Austria's Goergl beats Vonn to claim downhill gold

Austria's Elisabeth Goergl speeds down the course to win the women's downhill, at the Alpine World Skiing Championships in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany on February 13. (AP Photo)

ROME, FEBRUARY 13 (AGENCIES): AC Milan bounced back to winning ways with a 4-0 thrashing of Parma at the San Siro to maintain their grip on the Serie A lead-ership. Coming into the game off the back of two straight draws and only two wins in their previous six league games, Milan were starting to come under pressure from the chasing pack, notably a revitalised Inter Mi-lan and surprise package Napoli yesterday.

And second-placed Napoli remained hot on their heels three points back as league top scorer Edinson Cavani bagged a brace to down Roma 2-0.

Milan coach Massimiliano Allegri claimed, though, that the rossoneri have never been under pressure. "Obviously (the last two draws) added weight to the voices talking about a crisis and gave hope to those chasing us," he said. "But there was never a critical moment because in both those games the only thing lacking was the result. "The lads did really well." First half goals from Clarence Seedorf and Antonio Cassano, his first for the club, put this game to bed before the break. Substitute Robin-ho then scored a second half brace to em-phasise Milan's superiority.

"We played well and played a great game and I'm also happy because my goals helped us win," Robinho said before look-ing ahead to Tuesday's Champions League clash against Tottenham. "They're a great team but we want to win everything, we're not looking at other teams.” "We're only thinking about playing well and I think we can win the title."

Milan were on the charge from the off with Seedorf forcing visiting goalkeeper Antonio Mirante into a diving save from a rasping drive in the first minute. Parma could not handle Milan's attacking flair and on eight minutes Zlatan Ibrahimovic played Seedorf in behind the defence to round Mirante and slot home on the slide.

The second came on 17 minutes after

a delightful exchange with Cassano com-ing in from the left, playing the ball inside to Gennaro Gattuso and taking his dinked reverse pass over the Parma defence to slot slow into the corner on the half volley. Mi-lan were rampant and it could have been more just after the half hour mark. Ibrahi-movic nodded the ball back down for Cas-sano but his shot was tipped away for a cor-ner. Cassano then chipped the ball over the defence for Ibrahimovic to take down on his chest and volley goalwards but Mirante came to his side's rescue. Parma offered almost nothing in attack with only a mis-directed header from Milan centre-back Thiago Silva troubling his own goalkeeper Christian Abbiati just before half-time.

Parma were a much improved out-fit in the second period with Sebastian Giovinco's shot being charged down by the returning Alessandro Nesta. Blerim Dze-maili then had a fierce shot from distance parried by a diving Abbiati before Massi-mo Pacci failed to make contact from eight yards with a goal begging. But just as the visitors were enjoying their best period of the game, Milan made it four.

Robinho arrived unmarked on 61 min-utes to finish from 15 yards after Cassano tried to tee up Ibrahimovic.

The Brazilian then fluffed his lines when running on to a cross from Ibrahi-movic but he made no mistake moments later as Cassano ran at the defence and slippped him in for another precise and clinical finish. Napoli all but mathemati-cally ended Roma's title chances by claim-ing their first win away to the giallorossi in 17 years. Cavani opened the scoring on 49 minutes from the penalty spot after Juan had clipped Marek Hamsik's heel in the area. And the Uruguayan finished things off seven minutes from time as he stabbed home Paolo Cannavaro's cross from six yards. Roma now trail Milan by 13 points, although with a game in hand.

Milan back to winning ways in Parma stroll

AC Milan Brazilian forward Robinho , dances as he celebrates after scoring during a Serie A soccer match between AC Milan and Par-ma at the San Siro stadium in Milan on Feb-ruary 12. Robinho scored twice in Milan's 4 - 0 victory. (AP Photo)

MUMB AI, FEB 13 (AGENCIES): More than 7,000 people participated in the 'Mumbai Cyclothon - Tour de Mumbai 2011' here Sunday, two days after the Nashik leg of the race.

The second edition of

the cyclothon kicked off from Bandra Reclamation near the Bandra-Worli Sealink here in the morn-ing and it saw Maharash-tra Public Works Minister Chhagan Bhujbal and sev-eral television personalities

take to cycles.Several children aged

8-13 also took part in the three-kilometre 'Kids Race'.

Apart from the 'Elite International Men' race, which covered a distance

of 104 km, the other cat-egories included the 14-km 'Corporate Challenge Ride' and the 12-km 'Green Ride'. The total prize money of Rs.500,000 will be distrib-uted among the top 20 win-ners of the cyclothon.

Over 7,000 participate in Mumbai Cyclothon

Robert Hunter, center, of team RadioShack reacts after finishing the race in the Mumbai Cyclothon - Tour de Mumbai 2011 in Mumbai on February 13. South African Hunter finished first in Sunday's race, winning a cash prize of Euro 6,000. (AP Photo)

DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES, FEBRUARY 13 (AP) : Alvaro Quiros (FSY) of Spain won the Dubai Desert Classic with a wild final round on Sunday that included a hole-in-one and triple bogey as Tiger Woods' (FSY) bid to win his first tournament in 15 months collapsed. On a day when the leaderboard con-stantly changed, the 70th-ranked Quiros shot 68 to end with a total of 11-under 277.

Woods is still seeking his first tournament trophy in more than a year after falling well short with a final round 3-over 75 and ending tied for 20th with a total of 4-under 284. Quiros had an eagle on the second hole to move into the lead before a triple bogey on the eighth left him tied with Anders Hansen (FSY) of Denmark who briefly took the lead soon after.

Quiros responded with a birdie on the ninth and then a hole-in-one on the par-3 No. 11 to get back into the lead. He fell back

Woods falls short with 75; Quiros earns victory in Dubai

again with a bogey on the 14th but a birdie on the 16th gave him the lead for good. Hansen briefly took the lead with an eagle on No. 13 but gave it up with a bogey

on the 15th, finishing the round on 2-under 70.

James Kingston (FSY) of South Africa was also sec-ond with a final round 67.

Coming into the final

round a shot off the lead, Woods had two early bo-geys on the second and third holes due to bad put-ting and chipping. Woods managed to claw a shot back when his approach shot on the 6th ended up a few feet from the pin. However, Woods alternated two bird-ies with two bogeys on the back nine and then double bogeyed the 18th.

"There were quite a few positives this week but a couple of glaring examples of what I need to work on," Woods said. "It's like any-thing. All my old feels (for the clubs) are out the window when the winds blow. That's the thing when you are mak-ing change. It's fine when the wind is not blowing. But when you have to hit a shot when the wind blows ... the new swing patterns get exposed." Woods, who won in Dubai in 2006 and 2008, is now in the middle of his longest drought without a victory. His last vic-tory came at the Australian Masters in November 2009.

Tiger Woods from U.S. reacts after he finishes on the 18th hole during the final round of Dubai Desert Classic golf tour-nament at the Emirates Golf Club in Dubai, United Arab Emir-ates, Sunday February 13. (AP Photo)

PARIS, FEBRUARY 13 (REU-TERS): New world number one Kim Clijsters refused to blame a slight neck injury for a 6-4, 6-3 defeat by Czech fourth seed Petra Kvitova in the Paris Open final on Sunday. Top seed Clijsters, who retained her US Open title in Sep-tember and won the Australian Open last month before helping Belgium into the Fed Cup last four, secured her place as the new num-ber one by reaching the semifinals at the Stade Coubertin.

However, her winning streak came to a sudden halt as the tall, ponytailed Kvitova took her third career title thanks to sheer power and superb returns on the fast hard-court. "It's nice to win today against Kim because she is world number one, I think it's my biggest achieve-ment," Kvitova, 20, said in a court-side interview. "It's not logical, I lost my last two matches against Kim so I'm glad I won today." Clijsters had come back from adversity in the previous rounds of the $618,000 tournament, now run by former French world number one Amelie Mauresmo, but she had no answer to the Czech world number 18. "I'm not surprised. I know she can play like that," Clijsters said. "I had a little bit of a neck problem but it's not an excuse. She deserved to win."

As French tennis officials were deciding just up the road that the French Open should stay at a reno-vated Roland Garros, Kvitova was instead intent on overturning the

Powerful Kvitova beats Clijsters to Paris title

Petra Kvitova of Czech Republic poses with her trophy after she defeat-ed Belgium's Kim Clijsters during the final match at the Gaz de France WTA Open 2011 tennis tournament at Coubertin stadium in Paris, Sun-day, February 13. Kvitova won 6-4, 6-3. (AP Photo)

status quo. She broke Clijsters in the first game, thanks to a lucky netcord, only for the Belgian to break back immediately with a su-perb backhand down the line.

Clijsters began to get her serve working but she could do nothing to stop Kvitova's flashing return to break again and go 3-2 up before securing the set when Clijsters netted. The favourite settled more into her rhythm in the second set

but sent an easy volley into the net to be broken in the seventh game and Kvitova, one of the best return-ers on the circuit and a name to watch, sealed the title with another break. An emotional Kvitova said she had lost her grandfather just last week while Clijsters has decid-ed not to spend Valentine's Day in Paris because her young daughter needs to be back at school in Bel-gium on Monday.