■ Olympics
Chefs battle for gold
Master chefs from 36 countries are battling for the gold in disciplines ranging from making hors d'oeuvres to baking wedding cakes at the third Olympic Games this year -- the Culinary Olympics. After the Summer Olympics and the Paralympics, the five-day gourmet tournament has invited 1,100 top cooks and pastry chefs to whip up their best national specialities in the eastern German city of Erfurt. The chefs laboring in glass-walled kitchens are judged by a jury on preparation, nutritional value, degree of difficulty, "harmony of the courses," aesthetic flair and, of course, taste. Yesterday's highlights included sauteed scallops, rock lobster in sage, cuts of springbok and a ship made entirely of pasta. The medals will be handed out on Thursday with 2000 national winner Sweden hoping to defend its title.
■ Tennis
Champ to launch perfume
Wimbledon champion Maria Sharapova is to follow in the footsteps of Andre Agassi and Gabriela Sabatini and launch a perfume in her name. "I'll have my perfume next year, and I'm excited because it is so different to what I've done in the past," said the 17-year old in Zurich where she is competing in a US$1.3 million WTA event. "It's going to be my own design and something I love to smell. The company that I'm working with, we always keep in touch by e-mail because I travel so much. You tell them the smells you like, if you want it to be sweet, things like that. And then the bottle, the colors, the shape. It's a very interesting process. I haven't had a `sniffing test' yet, but I will," Sharapova said yesterday.
■ Soccer
Angry fans strip players
Dinamo Zagreb fans angry at their team's poor league showing stripped the players of their shirts at a training session, local media reported yesterday. Some 50 members of Dinamo's hard-core supporters' club, the Bad Blue Boys, showed up at training on Monday and demanded the players handed over their blue shirts, saying they were not were worthy of wearing the team's colors. The players finished training in plain shirts. "I understand our supporters and their disappointment, but this is definitely too much," one of the players, who wished to remain anonymous, told daily newspaper Novi List. Dinamo, who have earned seven league titles since Croatia's independence in 1991, have won only three of their 11 matches and are eighth in the table, eight points behind leaders Inter Zapresic.
■ Racing
Driver on child sex charges
A famous Hong Kong racing driver has appeared in a Hong Kong court on two counts of child sex. Michael Lui Man-ho, 44, who won a string of Formula Three-level races around the world in the 1980s, was arrested by police investigating vice operations in Cyber Cafes in Macau. Lui was charged with unlawful sexual intercourse with a girl under the age of 16 and indecent conduct towards another girl aged under 16. He is accused of having sex with a 15-year-old girl in the Cyber Heart Cafe in Jordan in October last year and committing an act of gross indecency with another girl at the same cafe. Lui, now a racing commentator, pleaded not guilty to both charges at an appearance in Kowloon City Court on Monday, the South China Morning Post reported. He was released on bail until November.
Bayer 04 Leverkusen go into today’s match at TSG 1899 Hoffenheim stung from their first league defeat in 16 months. Leverkusen were beaten 3-2 at home by RB Leipzig before the international break, the first loss since May last year for the reigning league and cup champions. While any defeat, particularly against a likely title rival, would have disappointed coach Xabi Alonso, the way in which it happened would be most concerning. Just as they did in the Supercup against VfB Stuttgart and in the league opener to Borussia Moenchengladbach, Leverkusen scored first, but were pegged back. However, while Leverkusen rallied late to
If all goes well when the biggest marathon field ever gathered in Australia races 42km through the streets of Sydney on Sunday, World Marathon Majors (WMM) will soon add a seventh race to the elite series. The Sydney Marathon is to become the first race since Tokyo in 2013 to join long-established majors in New York, London, Boston, Berlin and Chicago if it passes the WMM assessment criteria for the second straight year. “We’re really excited for Sunday to arrive,” race director Wayne Larden told a news conference in Sydney yesterday. “We’re prepared, we’re ready. All of our plans look good on
The lights dimmed and the crowd hushed as Karoline Kristensen entered for her performance. However, this was no ordinary Dutch theater: The temperature was 80°C and the audience naked apart from a towel. Dressed in a swimsuit and to the tune of emotional music, the 21-year-old Kristensen started her routine, performed inside a large sauna, with a bed of hot rocks in the middle. For a week this month, a group of wellness practitioners, called “sauna masters,” are gathering at a picturesque health resort in the Netherlands to compete in this year’s Aufguss world sauna championships. The practice takes its name from a
When details from a scientific experiment that could have helped clear Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva landed at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the leader of the organization’s reaction was unequivocal: “We have to stop that urgently,” he wrote. No mention of the test ever became public and Valieva’s defense at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) went on without it. What effect the information could have had on Valieva’s case is unclear, but without it, the skater, then 15 years old, was eventually disqualified from the 2022 Winter Olympics after testing positive for a banned heart medication that would later