Olympic organizers continued to use heavy-lift helicopters, dump trucks and a fleet of snow-grooming machines on Monday to deal with the meltdown at the resort hosting the snowboarding and freestyle skiing events at the Vancouver Games. As the US moguls team set off in the afternoon for the first practice runs, questions loomed over the state of the site.
The persistent lack of snow forced organizers to reduce athletes’ practice time at Cypress Mountain and move some training sessions to Whistler, the site for downhill skiing, which has ample snow cover.
The problem at Cypress stems from its location. Most of the events are taking place at its lowest elevations, where temperatures have been unseasonably warm, forcing organizers to fly, truck and push snow down from stockpiles higher up the resort’s slopes.
But at a news conference on Monday, Jacques Rogge, the International Olympic Committee president, dismissed widespread speculation that the events might have to be moved elsewhere.
“There is no concern and there is no Plan B,” Rogge said.
The local organizing committee would not allow members of the news media access to Cypress on Monday, citing vague safety concerns.
“We do not have anything to hide,” Tim Gayda, the Vancouver Organizing Committee’s vice president for sport, said at a news conference on Sunday.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
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