■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.
Spain are the favorites to win the UEFA Women’s Euro 2025, but star player Aitana Bonmati’s illness ahead of the tournament raises another question mark around a side which, despite their obvious quality, are not unstoppable. Having claimed the last two Ballon d’Or awards, Barcelona midfielder Bonmati is the game’s biggest star at present, so her absence in the final days before the start of Euro 2025 is a major setback. The 27-year-old came down with a fever in training last week, and was subsequently hospitalized and diagnosed with viral meningitis. Bonmati was discharged on Sunday and joined up with
HSIEH ADVANCES: In the women’s doubles, Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei was to play in the second round last night, but Taiwan’s Ray Ho exited in the men’s doubles It is more than 10 years since Grigor Dimitrov reached his sole Wimbledon semi-final and back then it still seemed a reasonable bet that the Bulgarian once dubbed “Baby Federer” would win a Grand Slam title. There were semi-final runs at the US Open and Australian Open after that, but it has never quite happened and despite him still being ranked No. 21, it most likely never will. Dimitrov, 34, remains one of the most stylish players on the circuit though, with his elegant single-handed backhand and smooth all-court game a rare reminder of how tennis was before the power merchants turned
TAIWANESE WIN: Chan Hao-ching and Wu Fang-hsien and their partners won their first-round matches in the women’s doubles at the All England Lawn Tennis Club Late-night finishes and five-set matches are becoming a habit for Taylor Fritz at Wimbledon this year. On Wednesday, he wrapped up his win over Gabriel Diallo before the match was suspended — making sure the fifth-seeded American would not have to come back on court for a fourth straight day. Fritz overcame a bloodied elbow to win 3-6, 6-3, 7-6 (7/0), 4-6, 6-3 on No. 1 Court a day after he finished off another five-set win over Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard in a match that was halted on Monday at about 10:15pm after Fritz forced a fifth set with Wimbledon’s 11pm curfew looming. He
Real Madrid’s FIFA Club World Cup quarter-final against Borussia Dortmund had taken three crazy turns during nine minutes of second-half stoppage time when Marcel Sabitzer chested the ball and sent a right-footed volley toward Thibaut Courtois’ post. Courtois leapt to his right, extended the long arm on his 2m frame and just managed to get his gloved fingertips on the ball, knocking it down. Courtois hit the ground as the ball bounded up. He looked skyward, planted his right hand to regain his balance, grabbed the ball with both hands on the second bounce and fell onto it with his chest. Sabitzer turned
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