OLYMPICS
Blame swimmers: D’Arcy
Nick D’Arcy believes his fellow swimmers have to take responsibility for Australia’s disappointment in the London Olympics last year, rather than coaches and team management. The 25-year-old, who swam well outside his personal best to crash out of the 200m butterfly in the semi-finals, said the review of team culture released on Tuesday was deliberately inflammatory. The Bluestone review said team management had failed to prevent a “toxic culture” from developing in the swimming squad, which produced Australia’s worst Olympic results in 20 years. The review said abuse of alcohol and prescription drugs, flouting of curfews and bullying, went unchecked. “I think we’re just trying to look for excuses and trying to pass the buck. I certainly didn’t perform the way I would have liked to. I take full personal responsibility for that,” D’Arcy told Triple M radio yesterday.
SOCCER
arton dismisses Beckham
Sunday’s Ligue 1 clash between Paris Saint-Germain and Olympique de Marseille could also feature a tasty battle between English midfielders David Beckham and Joey Barton, who have little in common apart from their home country. “We are totally opposite characters, Beckham and I. I take it as a compliment,” Barton told reporters on Tuesday. Barton has become a regular starter for Marseille after joining on loan from Queens Park Rangers this season, while former England captain Beckham looks set to make his PSG debut on Sunday at the Parc des Princes following his high-profile arrival last month. “I don’t mean no disrespect, but he [Beckham] is not as scary as when he was playing in the Premier League,” Barton said. “PSG have a lot of stars, Beckham is the latest, but on the pitch he is not our main concern. It would be naive of us to focus on him.”
SOCCER
Luton manager resigns
Luton Town manager Paul Buckle has left the club just days after their FA Cup defeat by Millwall, the non-league side announced on Tuesday, citing “personal reasons.” Buckle, who took charge at Kenilworth Road in April last year, oversaw impressive FA Cup wins over Wolverhampton Wanderers and Premier League Norwich City, before the Hatters’ march to Wembley was halted by a 3-0 loss at home to Championship side Millwall on Saturday.
BOXING
India expects lift of ban
Indian International Olympic Committee member Randhir Singh is confident the world amateur boxing federation (AIBA) will soon lift its ban on the country’s pugilists, the official said yesterday. The AIBA suspended the Indian Amateur Boxing Federation in early December last year for “possible manipulation” of its elections, in the wake of a wider Olympic ban that has sent shockwaves through sport in the South Asian country. Randhir, Indian Olympic Association secretary-general during the previous regime, said he asked AIBA president Wu Ching-kuo of Taiwan to lift the ban on the country’s boxers when he spoke to the official on Tuesday. “I spoke to Wu and told him that the boxers should not be made to suffer for no fault of theirs,” Randhir said. Vijender Singh, whose middleweight bronze at the 2008 Beijing Olympics helped raise boxing’s profile in India, was glad to hear news of a development. “That’s great news, all our boxers will be very happy. I have always said that the boxers should not be penalized,” Vijender said. “We never stopped training, hoping there will be some solution some day.”
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