■SWIMMING
Doting dad gets time tattoo
The father of Serbian swimmer Nadja Higl has celebrated his daughter’s surprise win at the world championships in Rome by having her winning time tattooed on a bald patch of his head, Serbian media reported yesterday. Higl was the winner in the women’s 200m breaststroke at the world championship, swimming a record time of 2:21.62. Her father, Dragan, told Serbian media he had a dream earlier this year that his daughter would swim 2:21 and made a promise to her that he would tattoo it on his head if she swam in that time. Upon her return home to Pancevo, some 30km northeast of Belgrade, he did just that.
■FOOTBALL
Grand jury indicts Burress
Former New York Giants star Plaxico Burress was indicted by a grand jury on weapons charges for shooting himself in the thigh at a Manhattan nightclub and faces a minimum prison sentence of three-and-a-half years if convicted, prosecutors said on Monday. The indictment charged the 31-year-old Burress with two counts of criminal possession of a weapon and one count of reckless endangerment, Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau said. He said the accidental shooting at the Latin Quarter nightclub on Nov. 29 was treated “like any similar case against any other defendant.” “When you have the mayor and the district attorney both publicly demanding a maximum prison sentence,” Burress’ lawyer Benjamin Brafman said in a statement, “it was perhaps too much to hope for the grand jury to conduct a sympathetic review of the unique facts of this sad case.” Burress’ former teammate Antonio Pierce, who was with Burress in the club and drove him to the hospital, was not indicted. The panel also did not indict the nightclub security guard who carried the gun to Pierce’s car or the hospital staff members who failed to notify police that Burress had been shot.
■BOXING
Hundreds remember Forrest
Three-time boxing champion Vernon Forrest was remembered on Monday by some 1,500 friends, family and fellow athletes as a soft-spoken, modest competitor defined more by his work helping others than his victories in the ring. The 38-year-old Forrest, a former two-division champion who gained notoriety when he became the first boxer to defeat “Sugar” Shane Mosley, was shot and killed on July 25 in Atlanta. Police have said he exchanged gunfire with at least two robbery suspects before being shot several times in the back.
“We want justice fulfilled to the fullest within the law. It will happen,” his brother Alfonso Forrest told about 1,500 people at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, just east of Atlanta. Notable athletes in attendance included former heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield and boxers Antonio Tarver, Robert Allen and Buddy McGirt. Former NFL players Ray Buchanan and Jamal Anderson also attended.
■CRICKET
PCB suspicious of bookies
The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has informed the game’s governing body (ICC) that they suspect bookmakers are staying on the same floor as the Pakistan players in the team hotel in Colombo. Salim Altaf, the PCB’s chief operating officer, said the Anti-Corruption and Security Unit of the ICC had a representative in Sri Lanka who was looking into it. ICC spokesman Brian Murgatrord confirmed that the body was aware of the issue at the hotel and would “deal with it as appropriate.”
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