■OLYMPICS
Tokyo head defends remark
The governor of Tokyo defended his controversial remark that “invisible dynamics” were behind the decision to award the 2016 Olympics to Rio de Janeiro. He made the claim hours after returning home last Sunday from Copenhagen, where the International Olympic Committee (IOC) chose the Brazilian city ahead of Chicago, Madrid and Tokyo. It drew an angry response in Brazil. “Whether they protest it or not, what I said was true. I was not saying it was bad,” Shintaro Ishihara told reporters on Friday. “I was only speaking the truth and it was not criticism of Rio. What I was saying was that I regretted that Japan could not give our all-out effort.” The one-time novelist had alleged that Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva made secret deals to secure votes over the other three candidate cities. The organizing committee for Rio’s winning bid labeled the claims “regrettable.”
■ATHLETICS
ASA want heads to roll
Three South African provincial athletics associations have called for the country’s top officials in the sport to resign over the gender row involving Caster Semenya. The South African Press Association reported on Friday that the associations have called on the Athletics South Africa (ASA) board and senior management to “take collective responsibility for the Semenya gender row fiasco and resign with immediate effect.” The three ASA affiliates are Boland, Eastern Province and Western Province. ASA president Leonard Chuene has admitted he lied about the tests performed on the 18-year-old athlete. Semenya won the 800m at the Berlin world championships in August. Before the final, the IAAF said it had ordered gender tests.
■BASKETBALL
Huang may buy Tigers
Cleveland Cavaliers shareholder Kenny Huang is awaiting approval to become the first foreign owner of a Chinese Basketball Association (CBA) club, local media reported on Friday. The Chinese-born American financier, who works with baseball’s New York Yankees and bought a minority share in the NBA’s Cavaliers earlier this year, had agreed to buy the Jilin Northeast Tigers, who are valued at US$80 million, Xinhua said. Foreign enterprises are banned from holding shares in any professional basketball team in China and so the deal would have to be approved by the CBA, the Titan Sports newspaper said. Huang’s prospects of getting the nod will be improved by the parlous financial state of the CBA league, which lost US$17 million last season, with the Tigers among the teams losing the most money.
■FORMULA ONE
Massa’s vision recovered
Felipe Massa’s vision has recovered fully after his life-threatening accident in July and he will get back behind the wheel of a Formula One car tomorrow, Ferrari said on Friday. The Brazilian, who fractured his skull at the Hungarian Grand Prix, returned to Ferrari’s Maranello factory last Monday and has been working in a Formula One simulator for much of the week. He flew to Paris on Friday for neurological and ophthalmological tests at the Pitie Salpetriere hospital. “The first outcomes are positive: especially the ophthalmological exam confirmed that Felipe, who arrived with his personal doctor Dino Altmann, has recovered the functions of his left eye by 100 percent,” Ferrari said on their Web site. The Brazilian was hit on the head, just over his left eye, by a metal spring that fell off compatriot Rubens Barrichello’s Brawn and bounced down the track in qualifying at the Hungaroring.
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