World record holder Haile Gebreselassie has confirmed in an interview with a Spanish newspaper that he will not run in the Beijing Olympics marathon because of the climatic conditions in the Chinese capital.
"I have no intention of committing suicide in Beijing," the Ethiopian, who suffers from asthma, told El Pais. "I know that several other athletes are starting to have doubts about this."
"It's purely a personal decision that I have taken to protect my health. I do not want to endanger my future. I do not want to kill myself in Beijing.
"The marathon will be impossible because of the pollution, heat and humidity," he said before confirming that he intended to focus instead on the 10,000m.
"I want to be an Olympic champion once again and also to compete in Beijing. That's why I have been trying to find a solution and that would be to once again compete in the 10,000m as I did at Atlanta, Sydney and Athens."
To do so, however, he will first have to secure his qualification as one of the three Ethiopian runners eligible to run in Beijing.
Meanwhile, Steve Redgrave, Britain's most successful Olympian, will run in the London leg of the Beijing torch relay.
The former rower's participation as one of the 80 runners in the relay, which will be held on April 6, was announced on Monday by Olympic sponsor Samsung. Redgrave, who won his fifth consecutive Olympic gold medal at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, also ran in the Athens torch relay.
"With the Olympics in 2012 getting ever closer there is no better time for the general public to engage with the Olympic spirit, customs and tradition -- and the torch is a big part of that," said Redgrave, referring to the 2012 London Games.
Samsung said Chelsea chief executive Peter Kenyon will also run, along with four competition winners.
Only three other runners have been announced -- two-time Olympic champion Kelly Holmes, British broadcaster Trevor McDonald and actress Amara Khan.
TITLE CAMPAIGN: The victory sent the Monkeys to the Taiwan Series for the third time in the past four seasons as they seek their first championship since 2019 The stage is set for the Taiwan Series after the Rakuten Monkeys on Monday beat the Uni-President Lions 4-3 in Game 5 of the CPBL Challenger Series in Kaohsiung. The Monkeys, who entered the top of the ninth scoreless, tied the game with a three-run blast by Lin Chih-ping and scored the winning run in the 10th on an RBI single by Lin Li, a three-time batting champion in the CPBL. Both players entered the game as pinch hitters. “The coach told me to stay prepared as a pinch hitter in the later part of the game. My teammates had
The Ministry of Sports on Wednesday night called for the Chinese Taipei Football Association (CTFA) to address issues in Taiwanese soccer after national manager Huang Che-ming on Tuesday resigned following Taiwan’s elimination in AFC Asian Cup qualifiers. Taiwan on Tuesday were thrashed 6-1 by Thailand in their Group D tie at Taipei Municipal Stadium. Taiwan finished with no points, after losing all four of their matches, eliminating them from qualifying for the 2027 AFC Asian Cup. Huang made his surprise resignation at a post-match news conference, following three losses since he took over the team from English coach Gary White in August. Huang
HIT AND RUN: Toronto manager John Schneider got his wish that his team ‘find some slug in the air out here,’ as the Blue Jays combined to total 611m of homers Tired in Toronto, the Blue Jays slugged in Seattle. Vladimir Guerrero Jr and George Springer on Wednesday woke up the Jays, as Toronto hit five home runs to rebound from an early deficit, routing the Mariners 13-4 and closing to 2-1 in the American League Championship Series (ALCS). Toronto had 18 hits — all within the first three pitches of each at-bat. “If they give us a first pitch, the pitch that we’re looking for, we’re going to attack and we’re going to be aggressive,” Guerrero said. Seattle starter George Kirby gave up eight of the hits. “I wasn’t really executing when they got
For a second straight day, protests by La Liga players against staging a regular-season game in Miami, Florida, in December were censored or not fully broadcast for television audiences. The television feed of Barcelona’s home game against Girona switched right before kickoff to an exterior view of the stadium, which only showed part of the field from a distance. That impeded home audiences from seeing the teams’ players standing still for the first 15 seconds in opposition to La Liga’s plan to hold the Barcelona-Villarreal game across the Atlantic on Dec. 20. The broadcasts of the initial moments after kickoff of the
RSS