A summary of sports events and persons who made news on Friday
Teen shooting sensations Manu Bhaker and Saurabh Chaudhary shattered the junior world record on their way to winning the 10m air pistol mixed team gold medal in the 11th Asian Airgun Championships in KuwaitCity on Friday.
On the concluding day of the tournament, the Indians got the better of the Chinese pairing of Wang Xiaoyu and Hong Shuqi in the final.
India's junior shooting squad thus ended the championship with a tally of 11 medals, including four gold.
Youth Olympic Games champions Manu and Saurabh finished with a score of 485.4 in the final, well ahead of the Chinese who managed 477.9.
A second Chinese team won bronze.
Another Indian pair in the finals, Abhidnya Patil and Anmol Jain, finished fourth.
In the qualifying, the pair of Manu and Saurabh were second among five teams, with a combined score of 762 out of 800. They logged the same score as the table topping Chinese pair of Wang and Hong, but lost out due to lesser inner 10s.
Abhidnya and Anmol were third with a total score of 760.
This was Saurabh's third gold medal in two days having won the team and individual 10m air pistol events on Thursday, while Manu bagged the team silver.
Sathiyan shocks World No 16, moves to pre-quarters of Austrian Open
Star Indian paddler G Sathiyan knocked out World No 16 Marcos Freitas after a gripping battle to move to the pre-quarterfinals of the ITTF Austrian Open in Linz.
Ranked 35 in the world and the lone Indian in the main draw, Sathiyan had to play out of his skin to down Freitas 4-3 in the elite Platinum tournament.
The Indian lost the first game 4-11 but fought back in his usual aggressive way, winning the next games 11-9, 11-9.
But the Portuguese was not ready to give up, clawing his way back into the contest by clinching the next two games 11-8, 11-6.
A valiant Sathiyan managed to level the match 3-3, battling to a 11-9 victory. With everything to play for in the decider, he showed great temperament to race to a 11-7 win for a sensational victory.
"It was a wonderful victory and I am very satisfied with the way I performed today. I just hope to continue my streak and go as deep as possible in the tournament," Sathiyan said after the match.
He next plays China's World No. 2 Xu Xin for a place in the quarter-finals.
Czech Kvitova to miss first day of Fed Cup final
World No 7 Petra Kvitova will miss the opening day's action of her Czech team's Fed Cup final against the United States in Prague due to sickness.
Barbora Strycova of the CzechRepublic will take on Sofia Kenin in the opening match, followed by Katerina Siniakova against American Alison Riske in the second rubber of the opening day on Saturday, according to the draw made on Friday.
Twice Wimbledon champion Kvitova, whose training has been limited this week due to a high temperature, could still play on Sunday.
The Czech team was heavily favoured going into the final with the defending champions US fielding a squad without Serena and Venus Williams, Sloane Stephens and Madison Keys.
Yet Czech world number eight Karolina Pliskova has already pulled out with a calf injury and it is now uncertain whether Kvitova will be appear for a Czech team looking to capture its sixth Fed Cup title since 2011.
"After announcing the (original) nominations we felt that we were big favourites, but now it is far more even. It will be an interesting match," Czech captain Petr Pala said after training, according to the CTK news agency.
The final this year features the two most successful teams in the tournament's history, with the US lifting the trophy 18 times. The Czech squad has won 10 times, including five times as Czechoslovakia.
The US have dominated the Czechs in Fed Cup play and hold a 10-2 record against their final opponents. The nations have met twice in the final -- with Czechoslovakia winning in 1985 and the US winning in 1986.
The US have three players -- Danielle Collins, Kenin and Nicole Melichar -- making their Fed Cup debut.
Russian anti-doping body fears missing WADA's deadline
The head of Russia's anti-doping body, RUSADA, is worried that authorities in Moscow will prevent it meeting a World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) deadline in order to stave off a renewed sporting ban, TASS news agency reported on Friday.
WADA in September restored RUSADA's accreditation, in theory paving the way for Russia's readmittance to major international sports events, after suspending it in 2015 following evidence of extensive and systematic state-sponsored doping and cover-ups.
Russia's readmission angered numerous sports bodies around the globe, but WADA stressed that a failure to allow access to stored urine samples at Moscow's discredited anti-doping laboratory by year-end would lead to a renewed ban. Russian Sports Minister Pavel Kolobkov agreed to the condition, and WADA is due conduct an audit on December 11-12.
But RUSADA director Yuri Ganus said on Friday he was "concerned by developments around the access to the Moscow laboratory", according to the TASS news agency.
RUSADA has no control over the stored urine samples because the federal investigators of Russia's Investigative Committee are holding them for their own doping investigation.
The Committee has previously said it will cooperate with WADA, but was not immediately reachable for comment on Friday.
Ganus appealed to it to release the samples quickly: "We still have more than a month and a half but I don't think it's right to delay the decision until the last days of the year."
He said if Russia failed to meet the condition, it would lose trust for a long time, and face renewed bans from international competitions.
Most Russian competitors were barred from this year's Winter Olympics in South Korea, as well as last year's World Athletics Championships.
RUSADA's reinstatement had no immediate effect on current bans on the Russian athletics, weightlifting and paralympics federations, but opened the door for their return in the future.
