Organizers of three ocean swimming races are concerned about the safety of competitors after a 6m shark was sighted in the area and as a remarkable escape from an attack elsewhere in Australia made headlines.
Government officials ruled out letting water police carry rifles when patrolling the area where the races will be held off the coast of southern Victoria state, saying the great white shark -- the most threatening to humans -- was a protected species and could not be harmed.
Greg Scott, a spokesman for Lifesaving Victoria, said yesterday a great white had been sighted three or four times over the past week around Cowes, a popular tourist area on Phillip Island about 140km south of Melbourne.
The races, which are expected to attract several hundred competitors, are two 500m events on Feb. 3 and Feb. 18 and a 1.2km swim from the Cowes pier to the beach on Feb. 17.
beaches evacuated
"We have had to do some surveillance in the area after the shark was spotted," Scott said. "We evacuated the beaches as we would normally do."
Scott said surf lifesaving officials would make a decision on the day of each race on whether safety issues would prevent them from being held.
"Obviously there would be some concerns if there was a shark sighting around the time of the race," Scott said. "We would send out our surveillance aircraft and shore craft ahead of the race, as we always do, and report anything to the organizers."
But Scott said he doubted the shark will interfere with the races -- "usually the noise of the craft would scare it away."
Graeme Burgan, a senior ranger at the Phillip Island Nature Park, was quoted in the Age newspaper as saying police with rifles could shoot the shark if it became a problem during the races.
firepower
"The police representative said he had a pistol, which won't stop anything," Burgan said. "I suggested a .22 [rifle] with blunt-head ammunition, because to kill a shark that big you would need an explosive to go off in its head."
Victoria's Environment Department issued a statement that didn't directly address the suggestion of rifles, but said there would be a range of other measures to protect competitors, including aerial surveillance, and boats and jet skis that could be used to ward of the shark.
"It is important that people realize this is the shark's natural habitat -- it is usual that they frequent the waters around Phillip Island," the statement said.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier