Perdita Felicien stood out amid Canada’s top track and field athletes at the Olympic team unveiling on Monday as the only one not wearing the black team jacket.
Instead the former world champion wore a white Nike T-shirt with “CAN” in big red letters. It was a short form for Canada, but could just as easily have represented Felicien’s single-minded focus these past few weeks.
Felicien is in a race against the clock in her bid to compete in the Beijing Olympics, sidelined by a foot injury she suffered in February.
Felicien has been granted an extension to achieve the Olympic qualifying standard. She must run the 100m hurdles in 13.11 seconds by July 22 — her Canadian record is 12.46.
The 27-year-old attended the Canadian athletics championships and Olympic trials that wrapped up on Sunday, but didn’t race. She was there to meet with sponsors, national team staff and doctors.
She presented the medals to the top three in the women’s 100m hurdles, a Canadian title that had been hers for the previous seven years, and attended the Olympic team unveiling, applauding as each athlete was announced.
“It was actually nice to be a spectator for once, I can’t be selfish, I’ve won seven national titles, someone else is winning — that’s OK,” she said. “It was harder to watch them get their jackets and pose for pictures, but what can you do?”
Felicien was coming off a silver-medal performance in the 100 hurdles at last year’s world championships in Japan, and in the winter happily boasted that she was more fit and focused than ever. But she suffered a small break in her left foot in a practice in February, and hasn’t raced since.
Felicien said her agent and former Olympic hurdler Renaldo Nehemiah is looking at races in Europe, provided she’s ready to run.
Taiwanese world No. 1 women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei on Saturday overcame a first-set loss to win her opening match at the Madrid Open. Top seeds Hsieh and partner Elise Mertens of Belgium, with whom she last month won her fourth Indian Wells women’s doubles title, bounced back from a rocky first set to beat Asia Muhammad of the US and Aldila Sutjiadi of Indonesia 2-6, 6-4, 10-2. Hsieh and Mertens were next to face Heather Watson of the UK and Xu Yifan of China in the round of 16. Thirty-eight-year-old Hsieh last month reclaimed her world No. 1 spot after her Indian
EYES ON THE PRIZE: Armed with three solid men’s singles shuttlers and doubles Olympic champions, Taiwan aim to make their first Thomas Cup semi-final, Chou Tien-chen said Taiwanese badminton star Tai Tzu-ying yesterday quickly dispatched Malaysia’s Goh Jin Wei in straight sets, while her male counterpart Chou Tien-chen beat Germany’s Kai Schaefer, as Taiwan’s women’s and men’s teams won their Group B opening rounds of the TotalEnergies BWF Thomas and Uber Cup Finals in Chengdu, China. World No. 5 Tai beat Goh 21-19, 22-20 in a speedy 33 minutes, her fourth straight victory over the world No. 24 shuttler since they first faced each other in the quarter-finals of the 2018 Malaysia Open, where Tai went on to win the women’s singles title. Malaysia followed up Tai’s opening victory
Chen Yi-tung (陳奕通) secured a historic Olympic berth on Sunday by winning the senior men’s foil event at the 2024 Asia Oceania Zonal Olympic Fencing Qualifiers in United Arab Emirates. Chen defeated Samuel Elijah of Singapore 15-4 in the final in Dubai to secure the only wild card in the event, making him the first male Olympian fencer from Taiwan in 36 years and only the sixth Taiwanese fencer to ever qualify for the quadrennial event. The last appearance by a Taiwanese male fencer at the Olympics was in 1988, when Wang San-tsai (王三財) and Cheng Ming-hsiang (鄭明祥) competed in Seoul. The
Rafael Nadal on Tuesday lost in straight sets to 31st-ranked Jiri Lehecka in the fourth round at the Madrid Open, while Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei advanced to the semi-finals in the women’s doubles. Nadal said that he was feeling good about his progress following his latest injury layoff. Nadal called it a “positive week” in every way and said his body held up well. “I was able to play four matches, a couple of tough matches,” Nadal said. “So very positive, winning three matches, playing four matches at the high level of tennis. I enjoyed a lot playing at home. I leave here with