■ Soccer
Sports agency plan dropped
The world's leading sports organizations endorsed on Friday a decision by EU sports ministers to drop controversial plans for a new European Sports Agency. Soccer's governing body FIFA and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) welcomed Thursday's announcement from British Sports Minister Richard Caborn that the proposal was dead. In September, FIFA and the IOC sent a joint letter to the 25 ministers and the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, outlining their opposition to the proposal which was included in an EU-backed Independent European Sport Review in May. "It is very encouraging to see this is no longer considered a viable option," FIFA president Sepp Blatter said.
■ Cycling
Seized blood shows EPO
High levels of EPO were found in some of the bags of blood seized by Spanish authorities who were investigating doping in cycling, the Spanish daily El Mundo reported on Friday. A total of 224 bags of blood, blood products and plasma were seized by police last May as part of "Operation Puerto" and 90 of the bags have been analyzed chemically. Eight of the bags tested at a Barcelona laboratory showed traces of the hormone EPO, or erythropoietin, which stimulates the production of red blood cells to improve endurance. The Barcelona lab confirmed that it was working on the case.
■ Formula One
Zanardi shrinks feet to fit
Alex Zanardi has a simple solution to the problem of squeezing into a tight-fitting Formula One car -- he puts on smaller feet. "We couldn't improve the size of the tub [cockpit], so I said we can make my feet smaller. I'm the only driver on Earth who can do that," the Italian told Reuters in Valencia on Friday. Zanardi, twice a CART champion and a former F1 driver with Jordan, Minardi, Lotus and Williams, had both legs amputated after nearly bleeding to death in a 320kph collision at Germany's Lausitzring in a CART race in September 2001. He has since made a remarkable comeback in the world touring car championship with BMW.
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