Baseball

The leadership of Ciego de Ávila, the winning pace of Las Tunas and Artemisa, and the critic results of the monarch Pinar del Río, were the major surprises at the close of the 1st third of the initial round of the 54th National Baseball Series.

This Friday, Las Tunas' Los Leñadores climbed to 2nd place by beating Pinar del Río in two games, with scores 6-4 and 4-0, to accentuate the debacle of the current champions, who filed only 4 wins and 8 losses.

The Avilanians' Los Tigres kept the top spot despite losing 5-9 against the battered Cienfuegos, while Artemisa remained on the hunt for the privileged places to beat for narrow margin of 2-0 to Villa Clara.

In other results, Matanzas beat Isla de la Juventud by a score of 8 to 1, Holguín 9-3 against Sancti Spiritus, Granma 4-1 against Industriales, Camagüey 8-1 against Santiago de Cuba, and Guantanamo beat Mayabeque by a score of 6 to 2.

With these results, Ciego de Avila continues to lead the Table with 11 and 4, escorted by Las Tunas (9-5), then Artemisa, Industriales and Matanzas (9-6), Granma (7-5), and closes with Guantánamo and Villa Clara (8-7).

Finally, the so-called Classification Zone to the 2nd Phase, Sancti Spiritus (7-7), Holguín, Isla de la Juventud, and Santiago de Cuba (7-8), Cienfuegos (6-9), the champion Pinar del Río (4-8), Camaguey (5-10), to close with Mayabeque (3-12).

After the break on Saturday, the National Series will be resumed tomorrow, Sunday, with games between Artemisa-Holguin, Isla de la Juventud-Villa Clara, Santiago de Cuba-Isla de la Juventud, Guantánamo-Industriales, Pinar del Rio-Sancti Spiritus, Mayabeque-Camagüey, Matanzas-Las Tunas, and Granma-Ciego de Ávila.

 U-23 Volleyball (m)

Cuba won unbeaten the II U-23 Pan-American Men's Volleyball Cup after getting its 6th consecutive victory in the final match against Mexico by 3-0 (25-23, 25-14, 25-23) in front of their fans at the Sports City Coliseum in the Cuban capital.

The hosts were higher to the visitors for 2nd day, this time with rebound advantage (39-32), block (7-4) and aces (8-4), and pretty even in fouls (20-21); nevertheless, both teams got tickets for the NORCECA area to attend the World Volleyball Cup in 2015.

Local offensive was led by the opposite Osniel Rendón (13), then selected as the MVP, Most Valuable Player, of the Cup, followed by Liván Osoria and Lázaro Fundora, both with 11, but the Mexican Alexis Garay was the top scorer of the game with 21 points.

The Cuban coach Rodolfo Sánchez, congratulated the visiting team and classified the game as a pretty good one, but noted that they all will keep on shaping their many errors to face Veracruz 2014, words that were also reciprocated by Roberto Vilches, the Cuban coach who advises the Mexican team.

Badminton

Badminton will make its Paralympics debut in Tokyo 2020 after the International Paralympic Committee included it in the first batch of approved sports for the event.

Badminton, hugely popular in Asia, is already an Olympic sport, and I congratulate all people who were involved in this process, said IPC President Philip Craven, after a governing board meeting in Berlin.

"The IPC looks forward to working with the Badminton World Federation (BWF) over the coming years to manage their smooth transition into the 2020 official sports program."

The IPC approved 16 sports, including athletics, archery, equestrian, powerlifting, rowing and wheelchair basketball among other, as part of the Tokyo Paralympics.

Eight other sports, including cycling, whose federation applied too late to be considered at the Berlin meeting, and football, will be reviewed early next year for inclusion. Both these sports are part of the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Paralympics sports program.

"For the 8 sports still in the running, we identified a number of issues with their submissions, or, in the case of UCI, it was submitted too late to be assessed at this meeting," Craven said.

"The IPC Governing Board will re-evaluate these applications when it meets in Abu Dhabi (in January) and will make its final decision on the number of sports, and which sports will be included in the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics sports program."