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.
Former reality TV star Jessie Holmes on Tuesday night cruised to a repeat victory in the Iditarod, the about 1,609km sled dog race in Alaska. Holmes guided his dog team across the finish line in the old Gold Rush town of Nome, a Bering Sea coastal community. The race started on March 8 in Willow, a day after the ceremonial start in Anchorage. The course took dog teams and their mushers over two mountain ranges, along the frozen Yukon River and across the unpredictable Bering Sea ice. Holmes, a former cast member on the National Geographic reality show Life Below Zero, is the
Taiwanese boxer and Olympic gold medalist Lin Yu-ting has been approved to compete in the Asian Boxing Elite Championships, the Chinese Taipei Boxing Association (CTBA) said yesterday. The championships start on Saturday next week in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. At the 2024 Paris Olympics, Lin became entangled in a gender controversy, despite the International Olympic Committee confirming her eligibility to compete as a female boxer. In August last year, World Boxing mandated a new regulation that required all athletes to undergo a polymerase chain reaction. genetic test to determine their sex at birth and their eligibility. Since the introduction of the test, Lin has missed several
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