When US President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama challenged Britain’s Prince Harry on social media on Friday, he responded by bringing in a big gun: Queen Elizabeth II.
The Obamas posted a video of themselves on Twitter promoting the Invictus Games, an international sports event for wounded, disabled and sick military personnel and veterans.
“Hey, Prince Harry. Remember when you told us to ‘bring it’ at the Invictus Games?” Michelle Obama playfully challenged.
Photo: @KENSINGTONROYAL via AP
“Careful what you wish for,” the president said, as military officers stood behind the first couple with mock menace on their faces.
“Boom!” one of the guards said, dropping an imitation bomb to add emphasis to the good-natured taunt.
Prince Harry, fifth in line to the throne and a patron of the Invictus Games, responded to the US president and his wife in kind.
“Unfortunately for you, @FLOTUS and @POTUS, I wasn’t alone when you sent me that video,” the prince tweeted to the Obamas at their Twitter handles.
He added a smiley-face emoticon and a video of his own, showing him chatting amiably with his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, while they thumbed through an Invictus Games brochure, just as the Obamas’ challenge landed in his cellphone.
“Boom?” the queen said to her grandson after watching the video.
“Really, please!” she added in amusement.
Turning to the camera, Harry smiled triumphantly, and said, “Boom!”
The Invictus Games, first held in London in September 2014, are scheduled to take place this year in Orlando, Florida from next Sunday to May 12.
Prince Harry visited the White House in October last year, when Barack Obama said the games were a way to make sure people see not only the sacrifices wounded warriors have made, “but also the incredible contributions, strength and courage that they continue to display.”
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