Australia’s women two-man bobsleigh team of Astrid Loch-Wilkinson and Cecilia McIntosh were celebrating on Tuesday after they successfully appealed against their exclusion from the Winter Olympics.
The Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) lodged their case after the International Bobsleigh Federation (FIBT) decided not to allocate Australia a continental quota place.
The AOC argued the FIBT erred in its decision and took their case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), which ruled in their favor.
“We won. The outcome means that Oceania will be represented in the Women’s Two-Man Bobsleigh,” said Fiona De Jong, the AOC’s director of sport. “We are bloody stoked, obviously. I had the opportunity to speak to the girls and they squealed for about two minutes and did a happy dance.”
Ireland’s two-man team could have been omitted as a consequence of Australia getting the green light, but CAS recommended to the International Olympic Committee that a 21st sled be included into the existing field.
Although the decision is yet to be ratified by the IOC, the ruling ensures that the 20th sled qualified, that of Irish pair Aoife Hoey and Claire Bergin, will remain, as suggested by the AOC’s representatives at the CAS hearing.
“To be honest, it’s a CAS situation and we clearly support any decision taken by CAS,” IOC spokesman Mark Adams said.
Driver Loch-Wilkinson and brakeman McIntosh had been waiting nervously at a Vancouver hotel for days, and particularly the 20 hours between the end of the five-hour CAS hearing and the notification of the panel’s recommendation.
“Our first argument was always that a 21st sled was the preferred remedy,” De Jong said.
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
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier