■SKELETON
Strictly business for racers
French racer Gregory Saint-Genie spends a lot of time traveling around the world with a pretty American blonde, but he knows he had better behave. When Tristan Gale, the 2002 skeleton Olympic champion, agreed to coach Saint-Genie just over two years ago, her husband was caught off guard. “He was surprised when I first told him I would coach the French men’s team,” the 30-year-old Gale told reporters on Thursday. “But he [my husband] is now perfectly OK with the fact that we spend a lot of time together.” Saint-Genie, himself a married man with two children, met Gale 10 years ago when they would hang around together during World Cup events. But nothing more. “My husband is a helicopter pilot in the Marine Corps. He can shoot well,” Gale said.
■PAIRS SKATING
Match made online
The online ad said he was looking for a skinny girl to share his dreams and now Yannick Bonheur is confident he has met his perfect match to skate with at the Olympics. The Frenchman turned to a Web site that specializes in finding partners for pairs skaters and ice dancers (icepartnersearch.com) and after a few unsuccessful meetings with respondents from across the world found Vanessa James. Three years later, they are taking part in the Olympic pairs competition after James, who competed for Britain in singles skating, was granted French citizenship last year.
■SKIING
Paralympian bridges gap
Brian McKeever, who will be the first man to ski in the Winter Olympics and Paralympics, says he has been inspired by training near the site of the World War II internment camp where his grandparents were held. Having won two gold medals at the 2006 Winter Paralympics in Turin, the 30-year-old partially-sighted Canadian is now preparing for the men’s Olympic 50km cross-country race on Feb. 28. He has been training in Sandon, in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, where his Japanese grandparents were interned from 1942. McKeever will compete in the 50km race despite having only partial vision after losing his sight at the age of 19 to a degenerative disorder known as Stargardt’s disease. The disease leaves a blind spot in the center of his line of vision, but McKeever qualified for the Olympics last December. As a Paralympian, McKeever says he is hoping to bridge the gap of perception and prove disabled athletes can compete in the Olympics.
■SNOWBOARDING
Fashion rebel raises frowns
Japan’s Kazuhiro Kokubo has been chided for transforming his sober, official Winter Olympics team suit into a hip-hop fashion statement when he arrived for the Vancouver Games. He could also be in the firing line for dismissing the Olympics as “nothing special.” Kokubo, who tours the prize-carrying, professional circuits abroad, had said: “For me, the Olympics is just another snowboarding event. It’s nothing special.” The Japan Ski Association barred Kokubo from attending an arrival ceremony at the Olympic Village on Wednesday after they received complaints about the way he wore the suit when he traveled with the snowboard squad. In addition to his trademark deadlocks and sunglasses, the 21-year-old was seen at Tokyo and Vancouver airports with his tie loosened, shirt hanging out and his trousers worn low down off his hips. Japanese Olympic Committee secretary general Noriyuki Ichihara said: “It is not the way the Japanese delegation should dress themselves while taxpayers’ money is spent on them.”
Bayer 04 Leverkusen go into today’s match at TSG 1899 Hoffenheim stung from their first league defeat in 16 months. Leverkusen were beaten 3-2 at home by RB Leipzig before the international break, the first loss since May last year for the reigning league and cup champions. While any defeat, particularly against a likely title rival, would have disappointed coach Xabi Alonso, the way in which it happened would be most concerning. Just as they did in the Supercup against VfB Stuttgart and in the league opener to Borussia Moenchengladbach, Leverkusen scored first, but were pegged back. However, while Leverkusen rallied late to
If all goes well when the biggest marathon field ever gathered in Australia races 42km through the streets of Sydney on Sunday, World Marathon Majors (WMM) will soon add a seventh race to the elite series. The Sydney Marathon is to become the first race since Tokyo in 2013 to join long-established majors in New York, London, Boston, Berlin and Chicago if it passes the WMM assessment criteria for the second straight year. “We’re really excited for Sunday to arrive,” race director Wayne Larden told a news conference in Sydney yesterday. “We’re prepared, we’re ready. All of our plans look good on
The lights dimmed and the crowd hushed as Karoline Kristensen entered for her performance. However, this was no ordinary Dutch theater: The temperature was 80°C and the audience naked apart from a towel. Dressed in a swimsuit and to the tune of emotional music, the 21-year-old Kristensen started her routine, performed inside a large sauna, with a bed of hot rocks in the middle. For a week this month, a group of wellness practitioners, called “sauna masters,” are gathering at a picturesque health resort in the Netherlands to compete in this year’s Aufguss world sauna championships. The practice takes its name from a
When details from a scientific experiment that could have helped clear Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva landed at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the leader of the organization’s reaction was unequivocal: “We have to stop that urgently,” he wrote. No mention of the test ever became public and Valieva’s defense at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) went on without it. What effect the information could have had on Valieva’s case is unclear, but without it, the skater, then 15 years old, was eventually disqualified from the 2022 Winter Olympics after testing positive for a banned heart medication that would later