OLYMPICS
Iran calls 2012 logo racist
Iran said on Monday it might boycott next year’s London Olympics because of the event’s “racist” logo, which resembles the word Zion, the official Irna news agency reported. The secretary-general of the National Olympic Committee said Iran had made the complaint in a letter to International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge and was waiting for a response. The London logo shows the numbers 2012 in four jagged multi-colored figures and was launched in 2007. Zion is a term that refers to the city of Jerusalem and Iran does not recognize Israel. “Certainly other countries, including Islamic nations, will react to this racist logo and this would jeopardize the goals of the Olympic games in the world,” Bahram Afsharzadeh told Irna.
BASKETBALL
Pistons stand behind coach
The Detroit Pistons are standing behind head coach John Kuester despite a season of conflict and turmoil, the team said in an official statement on Monday. With the Pistons (22-39) five-and-a-half games out of a playoff spot in the Eastern Conference and some of the team’s disgruntled players having seemingly turned on their second-year coach, there was speculation Kuester could soon be fired. However, president of Basketball Operations Joe Dumars seemed to diffuse that notion with Monday’s statement. “First of all, John Kuester has my full support as we try to make a push towards the post-season over these last 21 games,” Dumars said in a release on the Pistons’ Web site.
ATHLETICS
Politics hampers hurdler
Chinese hurdler Liu Xiang’s hopes of a return to Olympic gold medal-winning form are being hampered by political obligations to the communist state, his coach has said. Liu, the 2004 Olympic 110m hurdles champion and a former world champion, must attend two sessions of China’s top legislature and political advisory body this year. “Xiang will go to Beijing for this year’s two sessions next week,” Liu’s coach, Sun Haiping, told the China Daily newspaper. “But to keep his condition, he’ll receive training while attending the sessions in Beijing.” Liu became a member of the 11th National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference four years ago, according to China’s state-run media. He missed his debut advisory session in 2008 because of an overseas competition. Last March, he submitted a proposal at the session, but later confessed his bill calling for better rewards for sports coaches was written by someone else.
ATHLETICS
Ennis out because of injury
World and European heptathlon champion Jessica Ennis has withdrawn from this week’s European indoor athletics championships because of an ankle injury, British team officials said on Monday. Ennis had been due to compete in the pentathlon at the March 4-6 event in Paris, but an MRI scan on an ankle injury sustained two weeks ago showed that it had not completely recovered. “I have thought long and hard about whether to compete and if I am really honest, I just don’t want to risk any further damage to my ankle and calf,” Ennis said in a statement. “As it is, the inflammation and fluid build up is reducing, and I could potentially get through the pentathlon with medication, but there is no guarantee that it will not worsen as a result and then mess up the start of my outdoor season.”
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