Beijing Olympic Games

Bolt to run 100m and 200m at Games - coach

BEIJING, Aug 2 (Reuters) - Jamaican 100 metres world record holder Usain Bolt will run both the 100 and 200 metres at the Beijing Olympics, his coach said on Saturday.

“He will run both,” Glen Mills said in an e-mail to Reuters.

(Writing by Gene Cherry; editing by Miles Evans)

(For more stories visit our multimedia website “Road to Beijing” at http://www.reuters.com/news/sports/2008olympics; and see our blog at http://blogs.reuters.com/china)

Hockey-CAS dismisses Azerbaijan appeal against Spain

MADRID, Aug 2 (Reuters) - Azerbaijan’s appeal for Spain’s women to be disqualified from the Olympic hockey competition because of doping violations has been dismissed by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).

The CAS panel said that Azerbaijan’s case arguing that they should replace Spain in the competition had no standing.

The Azerbaijan Hockey Federation had appealed to CAS against the International Hockey Federation (FIH) decision to allow Spain to compete in the Olympics after exonerating the team following an alleged doping case involving two Spanish players in the qualifying tournament in Baku in April.

The FIH found one player guilty of a doping violation without significant fault or violation and the other was exonerated of any offence.

Spain, who qualified ahead of Azerbaijan in the tournament, argued the cases were the result of a possible attempt to sabotage the team’s chances during the Olympic qualifying tournament.

Players and coaching staff complained about the organisation of the event on their return from Azerbaijan.

They said four members of the team had collapsed in the hotel prior to their match against Kenya having inhaled gas that had escaped from the air conditioning system.

They also complained that players were unable to sleep after being bombarded by telephone calls in their hotel rooms. Others felt ill after drinking water given to them by organisers during matches. Spain qualified for the Olympics after beating hosts Azerbaijan 3-2 in the final. (Reporting by Simon Baskett; editing by Miles Evans in Beijing)

Table tennis-Zhang looks on formidable route to gold

By Simon Rabinovitch

BEIJING, Aug 2 (Reuters) - It would require a huge upset to stop Zhang Yining winning another Olympic title in Beijing.

Born and raised in the Chinese capital, Zhang, 27, has barely put a foot wrong since Athens where she won both the singles and doubles table tennis golds.

Her toughest opponent will be compatriot Guo Yue, although her skills and mental toughness put Zhang in a class of her own.

Number one in the world since January 2002, apart from a single month, she is the most successful player, male or female, in the history of the International Table Tennis Federation Pro Tour.

“Zhang is still the best female player in the world. I think she is still the favourite in the women’s singles,” said Wang Tao, doubles champion at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.

After hitting a bumpy patch in the first half of 2007, Zhang put the pieces back together in September and has won a record seven successive Pro Tour titles.

Zhang, who first played in the national team at the age of 11, takes to the table in different coloured socks out of superstition.

The combination of Zhang, Guo and veteran Wang Nan should be unbeatable in the team competition in Beijing and the top brass in the government will be cheering for Zhang with extra fervour.

A handful of athletes are invited to the five-yearly Communist Party Congress, and Zhang was a delegate at the most recent gathering where she attributed her playing success partly to her political studies.

Despite missing 10 training days because of the Congress, Zhang won the next tournament, dropping only one game.

Zhang may be even more dominant playing in front of a home crowd at the Beijing Olympics. (Additional reporting by Liu Zhen; editing by Robert Woodward and Ralph Gowling)

China’s darling Liu prepares to “fly”

By Nick Mulvenney

BEIJING, Aug 2 (Reuters) - If the hopes of a nation can ever really be said to weigh on the shoulders of a single athlete then Liu Xiang will be carrying a hefty burden on his slender frame at the Beijing Olympics.

In a survey of more than a million Chinese carried out at the end of last year, the top Olympic dream was to witness Liu winning gold at the “Bird’s Nest” stadium.

Cuba’s Dayron Robles shaved a hundredth of a second off his 110 metres hurdles world record in June, but Liu remains defending Olympic champion and world title holder.

His dash to glory at the Athens Games four years ago made him his country’s first male Olympic gold medallist on the track and proved, he said, that the “yellow man” could run as fast as the “black or white man”.

It brought him fame and fortune in China rivalled only by basketball player Yao Ming but has also made his life more like that of a rock or film star than a track athlete.

“Liu has several cars but is not allowed to drive for fear of getting injured,” a source close to the athlete, who preferred not to be named, told Reuters recently.

“Nobody asks him out for a meal in case the food has something bad in it. There is a group of men following him for 24 hours. He can’t even drink a bottle of water if he doesn’t know exactly where it comes from.”

A confident performer in front of the cameras with a ready smile and a dry wit, Liu plays down the weight of expectation.

“The pressure has nothing to do with others,” he said. “It’s all about how I treat it. I think I am the best psychologist for myself.”

Of course, fame has positive side.

Liu’s face is everywhere in China, advertising for Nike, Coca Cola and Cadillac as well as domestic brand Yili dairies and controversially a foundation run by one of China’s biggest cigarette manufacturers, Baisha.

Forbes, which ranked Liu second behind Yao in its Chinese entertainers rich list, estimated his income at $23.8 million in 2007.

GUIDING FORCE

Despite his wealth, Liu shares a modest flat in Shanghai with his coach, mentor and frequent mouthpiece Sun Haiping, the man who has guided his career for the last 12 years.

Liu was born in Shanghai on July 13, 1983 to Liu Xuegen and Ji Fenhua, who somewhat prophetically named him Xiang, which means “fly”.

With his parents both working, Liu was brought up largely by his grandmother and still professes a taste for the braised pork in brown sauce that she fed him to fatten him up.

“He was too thin and seemed to walk in a strange way,” his father said.

At the age of seven, Liu was selected as a future high jumper under a project where youngsters had their bones measured and were allocated sports depending on their anticipated growth.

Later tests, however, predicted he would not grow tall enough and, although he clearly had athletic talent, his career might have been over had Sun not turned up.

“One coach had a good eye and picked him out but he asked Liu’s mother for money. The mother was angry and stopped sending Liu to the sports school,” said the source.

“Later, Sun Haiping visited Liu’s parents and said ‘I don’t want money and I will let your child eat the best and most nutritious food’ and his mother was persuaded to let him go back.”

With Sun improving his technique, Liu made rapid progress and set world best times for his age group from 16 to 18. He finished fourth at the 2000 world juniors and the next year was a world university games and China national champion.

From a semi-final spot at the 2001 world championships, he graduated to a bronze medal two years later. Both races were won by American Allen Johnson, from whom Liu had requested an autograph the first time they raced.

Four-times world champion Johnson fell in the heats in Athens the following August but that took nothing away from Liu’s electric performance in the final that saw him claim gold and match Colin Jackson’s world mark of 12.91 seconds.

After missing out on the 2005 world title to Ladji Delacoure, he was out injured for while but emerged fit in 2006 to win the world record outright with a run of 12.88 seconds in Lausanne. He finally clinched the world title at his lucky track in Osaka last year.

(Additional reporting by Liu Zhen and Benjamin Kang Lim)

Diving-“Springboard diva” Guo prepares for final dive

By Nick Mulvenney

BEIJING, Aug 2 (Reuters) - Guo Jingjing, China’s “springboard diva”, will have a final chance to make headlines for her sporting prowess rather than her celebrity lifestyle at the Beijing Olympics.

The 26-year-old, who made her debut aged 15 in Atlanta in 1996, said two years ago that defending her individual and synchronised 3-metre Olympic titles at her fourth Games would be the final act of her career.

“To finish my career at home in 2008 is something very, very significant and emotional,” the Hebei-born diver said at the Asian Games when announcing her plan to retire.

Guo’s good looks have made her a fixture on advertising billboards and in magazines but her high profile has also had its downside.

She was kicked off the diving team the year after the Athens Games along with another Olympic diving champion Tian Liang for undertaking too many commercial activities.

Guo apologised and was allowed back, but this year has been subject to attacks from domestic media for being “supercilious” by ignoring the press and rude for describing one of her rivals as “the fat Canadian”.

Her love life has long been an obsession with the Chinese media, although she has neither confirmed nor denied any relationships.

She was initially linked with Tian, who retired in 2007 rather than cut down on his commercial activities and has since married a finalist from China’s hugely popular “Supergirl” talent contest.

Since then Guo has been frequently pictured with Kenneth Fok, the grandson of late Hong Kong tycoon Henry Fok whose $25 million donation helped fund the “Water Cube” aquatics centre where Guo will make her valedictory performances.

Despite all the glamour, attention and criticism, though, there is no doubt that Guo is an exceptional diver as her two Olympic gold medals and eight world titles attest.

RARE MISTAKE

“She has good physical co-ordination, follows instructions well, trains very hard and can endure high pressure,” Yu Fen, who scouted 10-year-old Guo into the national team in 1992 and coached her for the following six years, told Reuters.

Even without the media problems, her preparations for the Games have not been perfect with a rare mistake at the FINA Diving World Series in Nanjing in May.

“It’s not bad to reveal some problems before the Games since we have time to correct them,” said Chinese national team manager Zhou Jihong.

The successful defence of her individual title is by no means assured, according to Yu, although the importance of an athlete’s mental state in the sport should give Guo an edge.

“There are several divers at the same level of difficulty,” she added. “The result at the Olympics depends on their on-site performance. Guo has more experience and that might be an advantage.”

The media attacks on Guo must have been unsettling too - an Olympic champion being branded a troublemaker by Chinese state media is still unusual and would have been sanctioned by the ruling Communist Party.

The media, led by state news agency Xinhua, pounced after Guo lost out to her partner Wu Mingxia at the Olympic test event in the Water Cube in February and then gave one or two word answers to the written media before fiddling with her mobile phone at a press conference.

“It is unbelievable that at the same time when all the Chinese people are improving their manners and athletes receive comprehensive scientific, physical and psychological training, some stars are still short of the basic education on how to treat others,” said the Xinhua article.

Guo’s coach later appealed to the media for understanding, saying the diver was “under great pressure”.

But the response merely drew another critical article from Xinhua, which accused the coach of overprotecting her divers.

Her comments about the weight of Canadian Blythe Hartley also caused a stir and will be sure to add an edge to the competition.

Guo herself, though, sounds confident that her two decades competing at the highest level will allow her to produce the goods when the time comes.

“I don’t feel too much pressure,” she said recently. “I will only have to compete with myself. It’s my fourth Olympics, and my only goal is to defend my titles.”

(Additional reporting by Liu Zhen, editing by Miles Evans)

(For more stories visit our multimedia website “Road to Beijing” at http://www.reuters.com/news/sports/2008olympics; and see our blog at http://blogs.reuters.com/china)

US men's 4×400 relay team stripped of Sydney gold

BEIJING (AFP) - The International Olympic Committee said Saturday it has stripped the United States' 4×400-metre men's relay team of the gold medal it won at the Sydney 2000 Olympics for doping.

The decision was made after team member Antonio Pettigrew admitted in May to doping as far back as 1997 and agreed to return his Sydney gold medal, IOC spokeswoman Giselle Davies said.

The announcement was made during an IOC meeting here on Saturday.

The Nigerian team, who were second, could now be in line to receive the gold medal.

Pettigrew's teammates, brothers Alvin and Calvin Harrison had already been suspended for using performance enhancing drugs.

Jerome Young, the fourth member, had also been caught doping.

Michael Johnson, the five-time Olympic champion and the only relay team member not linked to banned substance use, said after Pettigrew's admission that he would return his Sydney gold medal.

Hammon loses first game for Russia

By DOUG FEINBERG, AP Sports Writer

HAINING, China (AP)—Becky Hammon began her Russian national career with a loss.

Anete Jekabsone scored 34 points to lead Latvia to a 75-69 victory over Russia on Saturday afternoon in the opening game of the FIBA Diamond Ball tournament, a tuneup for the Olympics.

Hammon scored just three points—all from the foul line—and missed all six of her shots from the field.

The 31-year-old point guard, who plays for the WNBA’s San Antonio Silver Stars, wasn’t in the 29-player pool used to select the U.S. Olympic team. So she chose another option: playing for Russia.

Hammon, a South Dakota native, competes for a Russian club team during the winter and became a naturalized citizen there. Since she hadn’t played for the United States in any major FIBA-sanctioned international events, she was allowed to compete for Russia in the Olympics.

Russia’s next game is Monday night against the U.S. The Russians beat the Americans in the semifinals of the 2006 World Championships without Hammon.

Hammon didn’t start Saturday, entering the game midway through the first quarter. She missed her first three shots before finally scoring on two free throws with 2.3 seconds left in the first half. Russia scored the last six points of the half to close a 13-point deficit to seven.

Russia rallied in the third to close within 51-50. The Russians took a brief lead in the fourth, but Jekabsone’s scoring put latvia in front.

The game was tied at 64 with 3:26 left before Latvia closed the game with a 11-5 spurt. Jekabsone scored five points during the run, including a 3-pointer with 50 seconds left that sealed the game.

Ilona Korstin and Maria Stepanova each scored 16 points to lead Russia.

Latvia qualified for the Olympics by finishing in the top four of last June’s FIBA tournament. The women’s basketball team became the first Latvian team to qualify for a Summer Olympics since the men’s team played in the 1936 Berlin Games.

Latvia will close out its Diamond Ball pool play Sunday night against the United States.

The tournament features four of the top teams in the world—the U.S., Russia, Australia and China. The Chinese team played Mali later Saturday night.