■ ATHLETICS
Blonska stripped of medal
Lyudmila Blonksa has been stripped of her Olympic silver medal in the heptathlon for doping. The Ukrainian athlete has been disqualified and kicked out of the Beijing Games by the International Olympic Committee. Blonska tested positive for a steroid after finishing second in the heptathlon last Saturday. She was temporarily suspended on Thursday, and her medal was officially removed yesterday. Blonksa faces a lifetime ban because it was her second doping offense. She is the biggest name among the five athletes who have tested positive so far at the Games.
■ SYNCHRO SWIMMING
Russia nearly perfect
Russia placed first in the technical routine of the synchronized swimming team event yesterday, staying on course to sweep both the duet and team event for the third straight Olympics. The team was awarded a near-perfect 49.500 points. Spain was second with 48.917 points and China was third with 48.584. The team event concludes today with the free routine. Anastasia Ermakova and Anastasia Davydova won gold in the duet on Wednesday and are also part of Russia’s eight-woman squad for the team event. Wearing suits with red hearts on the front and silver-sequined lightning bolts on the backs, the Russians showed off their superior throws, lifts and splits to the Spanish Suite by Albenise. The music choice may have been a response to the decision by the Spanish duet to use traditional Russian music in their technical routine on Monday. Russia earned all 9.9s and one 9.8 for both execution and overall impression. Spain performed to the Happy Feet soundtrack and won a big applause for a unique windmill move. Gemma Mengual and Andrea Fuentes won Spain’s first Olympic synchro medal when they claimed silver in the duet. Japan, which has medaled in synchro in every Olympics since the discipline was introduced at the 1984 Los Angeles Games, placed fourth. Canada and the US tied for fifth. The Americans wore yellow suits with a large, brown Chinese knot design on the front to appeal to the local audience.
■ GREAT BRITAIN
Team plane gets nose job
The plane bringing Britain’s Olympic team home next week is to get a golden nose job in honor of the team’s record gold medal haul in Beijing, British Airways said on Thursday. Britain has had its best Olympics for a century, taking its 17th gold on Thursday and staying in third place in the overall medals table, behind China and the US. “Team GB has led the opposition home in event after event at this golden Olympics,” said British Airways chief Willie Walsh, announcing the golden respray for the normally dark-blue nose-cone of the Boeing 747 which will bring them home. “It is right that a gold nose cone should adorn the aircraft that brings the team home to the UK. We salute our Olympians.” Meanwhile BA refused to comment on a report that London mayor Boris Johnson had been refused an upgrade to business class in the plane which took him to Beijing this week.
■ DIVING
Zhou leads 10m prelims
Zhou Luxin led after the men’s 10m platform preliminaries yesterday, putting China in position for a sweep of the eight diving gold medals at the Beijing Olympics. Zhou totaled 539.80 points, earning a perfect 10 on his toughest dive in the fourth round. Matthew Mitcham of Australia was second with 509.60, followed by platform world champion Gleb Galperin of Russia. The top 18 divers advance to today’s semi-finals.
Japan captain Wataru Endo on Thursday was ruled out of the FIFA World Cup with injury and announced his international retirement, three days before his team’s opener against the Netherlands. The Liverpool midfielder pulled out of the tournament after failing to recover from a foot injury and was replaced in Japan’s squad by Shuto Machino. The 33-year-old Endo said on social media that he was “frustrated” at not being able to play, but backed his team to impress in Group F, where they face the Netherlands, Tunisia and Sweden. “There will definitely come a time in the future when Japan win the World
FIFA on Friday blamed the empty seats during the FIFA World Cup match between South Korea and the Czech Republic in Guadalajara, Mexico, on fans who watched from the concourses. There were many visible empty spots at the 45,664-capacity Guadalajara Stadium, with sections in the middle of the stands showing many unoccupied spaces and with other empty seats scattered around the venue. The announced attendance was 44,985 — including FIFA president Gianni Infantino. “Official attendance figures reflect the number of tickets scanned and spectators present within the stadium footprint, rather than visual assessments of seating occupancy at any given moment
About 100 people gathered at a bar in Taipei to watch the FIFA World Cup kick off in Mexico, despite the early hour of 3am last night. All seats had been reserved before the game started, said a clerk at Brass Monkey, a bar in Taipei where customers can watch live sports broadcasts. The Group A clash between Mexico and South Africa drew supporters from multiple continents to the venue. For Misael Alanis, a Mexican student who has lived in Taiwan for two-and-a-half years, the atmosphere was just as important as the game itself. "There are a lot of Mexicans here and you can
A rotting body was found on Friday in the trunk of a car parked near the stadium where Iran’s FIFA World Cup team is training in Mexico. The gruesome discovery came with games under way in the tournament, which is being jointly hosted by Mexico, the US and Canada. Reporters watched as police in Tijuana opened the trunk of the gray Toyota SUV, which had California plates, in the parking lot of a supermarket directly across from the Caliente Stadium, where Team Melli are training as they prepare for three games in the US. Specialists in white protective suits worked
RSS