■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.
Shohei Ohtani and Clayton Kershaw on Friday joined their Los Angeles Dodgers teammates in sticking their fists out to show off their glittering World Series rings at a ceremony. “There’s just a lot of excitement, probably more than I can ever recall with the Dodger fan base and our players,” manager Dave Roberts said before Los Angeles rallied to beat the Detroit Tigers 8-5 in 10 innings. “What a way to cap off the first two days of celebrations,” Roberts said afterward. “By far the best opening week I’ve ever experienced. I just couldn’t have scripted it any better.” A choir in the
The famously raucous Hong Kong Sevens are to start today in a big test for a shiny new stadium at the heart of a major US$3.85 billion sports park in the territory. Officials are keeping their fingers crossed that the premier event in Hong Kong’s sporting and social calendar goes off without a hitch at the 50,000-seat Kai Tak Stadium. They hope to entice major European soccer teams to visit in the next few months, with reports in December last year saying that Liverpool were in talks about a pre-season tour. Coldplay are to perform there next month, all part of Hong Kong’s
Shohei Ohtani, Teoscar Hernandez and Tommy Edman on Thursday smashed home runs to give the reigning World Series champions the Los Angeles Dodgers a 5-4 victory over Detroit on the MLB’s opening day in the US. The Dodgers, who won two season-opening games in Tokyo last week, raised their championship banner on a day when 28 clubs launched the season in the US. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts shuffled his batting lineup with all four leadoff hitters finally healthy as Ohtani was followed by Mookie Betts, then Hernandez and Freddie Freeman in the cleanup spot, switching places with Hernandez. “There’s a Teoscar tax to
Matvei Michkov did not score on Monday, but the Philadelphia rookie had a hand in both goals as hosts the Flyers earned a 2-1 victory over the Nashville Predators. Ryan Poehling and Jamie Drysdale got the goals for the Flyers (31-36-9, 71 points), who won their third straight. Michkov and Travis Konecny assisted on both. Ivan Fedotov stopped 28 shots to earn his first win since March 1, ending a personal six-game losing streak. Zachary L’Heureux got the lone goal for Nashville. Michael McCarron and Brady Skjei got the assists for the Predators (27-39-8, 62 points), who have just four goals in their
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