Thu, Jul 24, 2008 page18

• Sport Briefs

  • AGENCIES
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  ■NEW ZEALAND

  Kiwis bring barista to Beijing

  New Zealand’s Olympic team have brought their own barista to Beijing to satisfy athletes’ caffeine cravings. New Zealand chef de mission Dave Currie said a New Zealand Olympic Committee sponsor had released one of their employees, Julianne Frith, to help satisfy the 182-strong team’s caffeine cravings. “The feedback we got from the last couple of games is that athletes want good coffee,” he said. “Getting good coffee in Athens [in 2004], you just couldn’t, so one of the sponsors ran a competition and this young woman had to have a test and face a selection panel and she came up trumps.” Currie said he did not expect any problems with caffeine being on the World Anti-Doping Agency’s monitoring list after previously being a banned substance. “If you inject yourself with a hell of a lot of it, it is going to come up, but they tell me you wouldn’t be competing if you were drinking enough cups of coffee to be over the limit. It is an extraordinary amount and athletes are very sensitive to what may produce a positive test. We have had no concerns in the past and have no concerns now that somebody will drink 55 cups of coffee, or whatever it is, before competing.”

  ■SLOVENIA

  Ottey to miss eighth Games

  Jamaican-born sprinter Merlene Ottey has failed in her final attempt to achieve the 100m qualifying time that would have enabled her to become the first athlete to compete in eight Olympic Games. Ottey, 48, finished second at a meeting in the Slovenian city of Maribor on Tuesday, said Robert Rudelic of the Athletic Club Poljane which organized the meeting. “Conditions were bad, she had wind in her chest and she missed the qualifying time by 28 hundredths of a second,” Rudelic said. Ottey has taken part in every Olympics since the 1980 Games in Moscow. She competed for Slovenia at the 2004 Games in Athens after six Olympics with Jamaica. Her Slovenian coach Srdjan Djordjevic said Ottey was determined to continue training so she could participate in big international athletics events. “She will still train simply because she can still run very fast,” he said.

  ■SWEDEN

  Olympic champ withdraws

  Sweden’s Olympic triple jump champion Christian Olsson said on Tuesday he will miss next month’s Beijing Games after reinjuring his thigh. “The Olympics is gone, the season is gone,” Olsson was quoted as saying on the daily Expressen’s Web site after injuring his thigh muscle during a jump. The 28-year-old was making a comeback after a long injury layoff forced him to miss the indoor season and last year’s world championships in Osaka, having undergone thigh surgery.

  ■UNITED KINGDOM

  Romero eyes history books

  Rebecca Romero hopes to create a piece of history in Beijing by becoming the first British woman to win Olympic medals in two summer sports. A rowing silver medalist in Athens in the quadruple sculls, Romero has switched sports and is now one of the world’s best track cyclists. She won titles at the world track championship in March in the individual and team 3,000m pursuit just two years after first trying the sport.

  “Having already competed at one Olympic Games and won a silver medal, and being the competitive so-and-so and greedy guts that I am, I would like to raise the barrier and aim to become the first athlete to win Olympic medals in two different sports,” Romero wrote on her Web site.
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