■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.
Bologna on Thursday advanced past Empoli to reach their first Coppa Italia final in more than half a century. Thijs Dallinga’s 87th-minute header earned Bologna a 2-1 win and his side advanced 5-1 on aggregate. Giovanni Fabbian opened the scoring for Bologna with a header seven minutes in. Then Viktor Kovalenko equalized for Empoli in the 30th minute by turning in a rebound to finish off a counterattack. Bologna won the first leg 3-0. In the May 14 final in Rome, Bologna are to face AC Milan, who eliminated city rivals Inter 4-1 on aggregate following a 3-0 win on Wednesday. Bologna last reached the
If the Wild finally break through and win their first playoff series in a decade, Minnesota’s top line likely will be the reason. They were all over the Golden Knights through the first two games of their NHL Western Conference quarter-finals series, which was 1-1 going back to Minnesota for Game 3 today. The Wild tied the series with a 5-2 win on Tuesday. Matt Boldy had three goals and an assist in the first two games, while Kirill Kaprizov produced two goals and three assists. Joel Eriksson Ek, who centers the line, has yet to get on the scoresheet. “I think the biggest
From a commemorative jersey to a stadium in his name, Argentine soccer organizers are planning a slew of tributes to their late “Captain” Pope Francis, eulogized as the ultimate team player. Tributes to the Argentine pontiff, a lifelong lover of the game, who died on Monday at the age of 88, have been peppered with soccer metaphors in his homeland. “Francisco. What a player,” the Argentine Football Federation (AFA) said, describing the first pope from Latin America and the southern hemisphere as a generational talent who “never hogged the ball” and who showed the world “the importance of having an Argentine captain,
Noelvi Marte on Sunday had seven RBIs and hit his first career grand slam with a drive off infielder Jorge Mateo, while Austin Wynn had a career-high six RBIs as the Cincinnati Reds scored their most runs in 26 years in a 24-2 rout of the Baltimore Orioles. Marte finished with five hits, including his eighth-inning homer off Mateo. Wynn hit a three-run homer in the ninth off catcher Gary Sanchez. Cincinnati scored its most runs since a 24-12 win against the Colorado Rockies on May 19, 1999, and finished with 25 hits. Baltimore allowed its most runs since a 30-3 loss to
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