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Phelps joins exclusive club of Games greats

AFP, Beijing

US swimmer Michael Phelps joined an elite list of Olympic greats Tuesday becoming only the fifth competitor in history to win nine gold medals at the summer Games.

Phelps added his name to the prestigious group of Paavo Nurmi, Carl Lewis, Mark Spitz and Larysa Latynina when he won the men’s 200m freestyle, and he appears destined to surpass them as his quest for an unequalled eight gold medals in one Games continues.

The 200m free, won with a world record performance, was his third gold in Beijing to go with the six gold medals he won in Athens four years ago.

In Beijing, he has already won gold in the 400m individual medley and 4x100m freestyle relay both in world record time, while ahead of him are the 200m individual medley, 200m butterfly, 100m butterfly, 4x200m free relay and 4x100m medley relay.

“That’s great,” said Phelps as he emerged from the water after leading all the way in the 200m final to post a new world record mark of one minute 42.96.

“I just wanted to be out on my own which I had done by the 100 metres mark, that was my goal,” Phelps said.

“I was out in open water and I was in the middle, which makes it difficult for the other guys to see me.”

Phelps freestyle victory launched a dominant morning for the United States in the pool.

Aaron Peirsol lowered his own world record in winning the men’s 100m backstroke, setting a new mark of 52.54sec, and Natalie Coughlin defended her women’s 100m backstroke crown.

Australian Liesel Jones broke the US stranglehold when she won the women’s 100m breaststroke title.

There are 15 other gold medals on offer Tuesday, and hosts China will be looking to strengthen their grip at the head of the table.

They have nine golds, ahead of the US on six, and are leading contenders in the women’s synchronised 10m diving where Chen Ruolin and Wang Xin start as clear favourites in a sport dominated by China.

The Chinese men’s gymnastics team are also strong favourites for gold after topping the qualification standings.

Hong Kong stages the opening equestrian finals where Germany are vying for their first gold at the games in both the team and individual sections of the three-day eventing competition.

Neither Brazil nor France have gold yet in Beijing but that could change on Tuesday.

France’s Lucie Decosse is a leading contender in the women’s

63kg as is Brazil’s Tiago Camilo in the men’s -81kg division.

India’s first ever individual gold medal, Abhinav Bindra’s victory Monday in the men’s 10m Air Rifle event, is being rated by cricket legend Kapil Dev as arguably India’s finest sporting achievement.

“This is much, much bigger than the World Cup,” said Dev who captained India to their lone World Cup win in 1983.

“I hope it will do as much for Olympic sports as ours in 1983 did for cricket.

Other gold medals are on offer in canoeing, fencing, shooting, weightlifting and wrestling.

Kobe Bryant and the US all-star basketballers are back in action as well hoping to follow up their big win over China with a victory over Angola.

China looks to gymnasts, divers to bolster medal haul

AFP, Beijing

China’s bulging bag of gold medals looks set to get bigger here Tuesday with the host nation hot favourites in diving, gymnastics and weightlifting on day five of the Olympic Games.

The powerful Chinese team, bidding to knock the United States from the top of the final medal standings for the first time, has been dominant over the opening days of the Games, collecting nine gold, three silvers and two bronze.

Another 19 are at stake Tuesday with the United States closing the gap on their arch-rivals early in the day with Michael Phelps, Aaron Peirsol and Natalie Coughlin winning in the pool.

The Americans now have six gold, six silver and seven bronze.

China, though, is almost certain to add to their haul through their all-conquering men’s gymnastics team, who dominated qualifying in the team event, pommel horse, rings, parallel bars and the individual all-around event.

Japan, Russia, and South Korea are their nearest challengers but Japanese coach Koji Gushiken knows it is a near almost impossible task to reel in the home nation.

“The Chinese are too strong and the only opportunity for us is to wait for them to make a mistake,” he said.

China has won four weightlifting gold medals so far and it has six lifters still in contention in the remaining 10 divisions, led by Shi Zhiyong on Tuesday in the men’s 69kg.

Shi won the 56kg title in Athens four years ago but has since upgraded to the heavier weight and is a favourite to win a second Olympic gold. Compatriot Liao Hui also starts.

China has no-one in the women’s 63kg category where Svetlana Tsarukaeva is aiming for Russia’s first weightlifting gold of the Games.

When it comes to diving, the Chinese have few peers and it has two-out-of-two off the boards so far with a third virtually certain Tuesday.

Wang Xin, who was 16 on Monday, is looking for a late birthday present with 15- year-old partner Chen Ruolin in the women’s 10m synchronized platform.

China has won the event for the past two Olympics since it was included on the schedule in Sydney in 2000 and in Wang, the world number one, and Chen, the world number two, another triumph is on the cards.

“I am confident of bringing back two gold medals at the Games,” said Chen. “I will work hard on every dive instead of caring too much about results.”

Their biggest threat is expected to come from Australia’s Melissa Wu and Briony Cole.

On the ranges, Russia’s Mikhail Nestruev will be shooting for his second Olympic gold in the 50m Pistol with China’s Tan Zongliang, in his fourth Games, an outside chance.

Olympic debutant Hu Binyuan will challenge Indian sharpshooter Rajyavardhan Singh in the men’s Double Trap final.

China is poised for a clean sweep in the table tennis which gets underway Tuesday with the men’s and women’s team events.

The top four men and top five women in the world hail from the mainland with the Chinese men led by Wang Hao, Ma Lin, and Wang Liqin while Zhang Yining, Guo Yue and Wang Nan are the stars of the women’s team.

In the pool, Sun Ye finished seventh in the women’s 100m breaststroke final, won by Australia’s Leisel Jones.

Medal hope Wu Peng qualified for the 200m butterfly final where he will try to halt Phelps’s charge for an unprecedented eight golds at a single Games.

China win men's gymnastics team gold

AFP, Beijing

China won the Olympic Games gold medal in the men's team gymnastics competition here today

The win, ahead of defending Olympic champion Japan and the United States, is the second time the world champion Chinese men's team have won the title after snaring their initial Olympic gold in Sydney in 2000.

Gold-winning shooter tides over India’s sporting woes

AFP, Beijing

If split-second accuracy is a champion shooter’s hallmark, Abhinav Bindra’s historic gold medal at the Beijing Olympics could not have been timed better.

Bindra’s victory in the men’s 10m Air Rifle event on Monday which gave India its first ever individual Olympic gold came on a day when nothing else went right in the sporting world for the country.

India’s cricket superstars crashed to a Test series defeat in Sri Lanka, tennis beauty Sania Mirza pulled out of the Olympics with a wrist injury and weightlifter Monika Devi stayed home due to official apathy.

Bindra, a 25-year-old from a wealthy business family in Chandigarh, finally ended the debate that generates every four years before the Olympics on why a nation of one billion can’t win a gold medal.

On Tuesday, the nation of a billion was celebrating and they were not Chinese.

Bindra’s feat is arguably India’s finest sporting achievement, a fact conceded by the country’s lone cricket World Cup winning captain Kapil Dev.

“This is much, much bigger than the World Cup,” Dev told AFP. “I hope it will do as much for Olympic sports as ours in 1983 did for cricket.

“It is not easy for an Indian to win an Olympic medal, let alone a gold, because there is no sporting culture in our country. I hope this will make sports a way of life in India.”

Therein lies the rub. It is only recently that private funding began pouring in for disciplines other than cricket as the government struggled to put aside money to raise sporting standards.

Bindra may have an indoor shooting range at home to practice, but still needed steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal’s Olympic Trust to back him when the supply of ammunition dried up due to strict government controls.

The situation was so bad that Indian shooting officials were on the verge of pulling the team out of the Olympics before the sports ministry and private sponsors stepped in as saviours.

“It is important for India to do better at Olympic sport as these are the true measure of a nation’s sporting depth,” Bindra wrote on his blog (abhinavbindra.blogspot.com) a day after his victory.

“With our depth of talent and expanse of people, I firmly believe India can be a world-class sporting power.”

India have won eight field hockey Olympic gold medals, but the next best individual performance is trap shooter Rajyavardhan Rathore’s silver at Athens four years ago.

The euphoria over Bindra’s achievement will last till the next cricket series comes around, but if this does not provide the fillip that other sports need, nothing will.

It, however, still needs single-minded devotion and hard work to win an Olympic gold and Bindra set an example by realising a dream that began as a 17-year-old in his first Games in Sydney in 2000.

“It has all still not sunk in,” Bindra wrote on his blog.

“The joy that the nation feels at my win is humbling.

“Frankly, all the attention is a bit overwhelming. I ran away from all the media and official attention yesterday after I had done my bit. Instead, I chose to go to a quiet dinner with some friends.”

The calm and composed young man has been so unmoved by the euphoria around him that team-mate Rathore said “we call him the guy who is constantly comatose.”

Asked how Bindra reacted to that, Rathore quipped: “He does not, he’s comatose you see.”

Pak claims gold for North Korea

BBC Online

Pak Hyon Suk won North Korea's first Olympic gold medal in Beijing when she won the women's 63kg weightlifting.

Pak was nearly eliminated after twice failing to clean and jerk 135kg, but made it at the third attempt to match the Olympic record and claim gold.

She earlier lifted 106kg in the snatch for a total of 241kg, just 1kg ahead of Irina Nekrassova of Kazakhstan.

Lu Ying-chi of Taiwan took bronze with 231kg, while Britain's Michaela Breeze suffered a back injury to finish 15th.

Pak's total of 240kg was just 1kg behind the Olympic record set in Sydney in 2000 by China's Chen Xiaomin.

With world champion and world record-holder Liu Haixia not competing because the Chinese decided to concentrate on other weight categories, Svetlana Tsarukaeva was favourite to win gold.

But the Russian crashed out after three failed attempts to lift 107kg in the snatch and ended in tears after knocking her head on the wall as she departed.

Nekrassova took the lead after the snatch when she managed 110kg, but her 130kg in the clean and jerk was not enough to deny Pak.

China fills empty seats with volunteers

AFP, Beijing

Cheerleading volunteers have been shipped in to Olympic venues to fill up empty seats and liven up the atmosphere, Games organisers said today.

Empty seats have been filled by yellow T-shirted volunteers at events including beach volleyball as organisers have struggled to keep venues for some preliminary rounds full even though all tickets have been sold.

“I think they are volunteers who are the cheer squads to cheer both sides of the competition in order to create a good atmosphere,” Wang Wei, vice president of the Beijing Olympic organising committee told reporters.

He said that individual venues could call in volunteers to fill the seats if they were needed.

“If they find that there are not enough people or if they find too many empty seats, they will organise some cheerleaders who are volunteers,” he said.

Organisers have faced criticism over empty seats at several venues on the opening days of the Games, and Wang has said that the combination of bad weather and a large number of unused sponsor tickets had caused the problem.

“I think we are also concerned about this,” he said, adding that all tickets to the Games had been sold.

He said that tickets had been made available for the Olympic family-which includes athletes and sponsors-and some of these were not being used.

Wang said some fans were just coming for a portion of the action during long sessions that may involve several matches.

Juventus open bid to return to European big time

AFP, Turin

Juventus are looking to take a big step towards regaining their place among Europe's football elite when they entertain Artmedia Bratislava in their Champions League final qualifying round, first leg tie on Wednesday.

The Serie A giants have not played in Europe since drawing 0-0 to Arsenal in Turin in April 2006 to crash out of the tournament 2-0 on aggregate at the quarter-final stage shortly before the explosion of the match-fixing scandal that led to their relegation to the second tier.

After Juve won promotion back to Serie A at the first attempt and finished third in the standings last season to earn a ticket to the Champions League, the Slovak champions are not expected to pose a major threat to their ambitions in the competition they won in 1985 and 1996.

Indeed, coach Claudio Ranieri is hoping to make fast work of them.

"We have to wrap up the question of qualification (to the group stage) at home," Ranieri said after his side drew 0-0 at European and English champions Manchester United last week.

"The opposition are not too difficult, we knew that."

Ranieri has some injury headaches, as midfielders Marco Marchionni and Cristiano Zanetti are doubts after missing training on Sunday with muscle strains, while Croatia defender Dario Knezevic, a new signing from relegated Livorno, is battling for fitness too.

Juve are also without Czech midfielder Pavel Nedved, who is suspended after being sent off against Arsenal two years ago, as well as forward Sebastian Giovinco and midfielders Paolo De Ceglie and Claudio Marchisio, all members of the Italian Olympic squad.

But defenders Zdenek Grygera, Jonathan Zebina and Cristian Molinaro and striker Vincenzo Iaquinta are back training after shaking off knocks.

Artmedia scored 10 goals and conceded just three as they knocked out Malta's Valletta and Finland's Tampere United in the first two preliminary rounds.

But the prospect of facing the visitors' prolific attack, led by 25-year-old striker Juraj Halenar, is not keeping Ranieri awake at night.

"Artmedia are a team that score a lot, but we are solid at the back and I'm not worried," he said.

"At Manchester we again showed we are reliable in defence."

Apart from a 3-0 thumping from Hamburg at the Emirates Cup in London this month and a 1-0 defeat to Serie B Piacenza, Juventus's form has been good in pre-season friendlies.

Bangladesh women's football team will tour South Asian countries in December

UNB, Dhaka

The women's football committee of Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF) has planned a series of programmes to popularize the game in the country as well to improve its standard.

The newly formed women's football committee in its first meeting at the BFF Bhaban on Monday with Sirajul Islam Bachchu in the chair decided to hold a series of tournaments and foreign trips after Ramadan.

BFF president and celebrated footballer of yesteryear Kazi Salahuddin was present at the meeting.

The meeting decided to send the Bangladesh women's team on a tour of some South Asian countries in December.

As per the decision, the Dhaka Metropolis Girls Football Tournament will be held in the second week of October, National Women's Football Championship to be held October-November, Club-based Football Tournament in January and Inter-District Women's Football in February-Match next year.

National Kabaddi: Police, Army record wins

Sports Reporter

Bangladesh Police and Bangladesh Army won their respective matches of the Services Zone of the 28th National Kabaddi Men's Competition on Tuesday.

Earlier, Vice-President of Bangladesh Kabaddi Federation Amir Hossain Patwary inaugurated the kabaddi meet yesterday as the chief guest. General Secretary of Bangladesh Kabaddi Federation Md Nazrul Islam was present at the time.

In the day's first match, Bangladesh Police beat Bangladesh Navy by 40-22 points amid two lonas at the Kabaddi Stadium.

In the day's second match, Bangladesh Army defeated Bangladesh Air Force by 48-11 points including three lones at the same venue.

Today Bangladesh Air Force will face Bangladesh Jail team at 4.00 PM while Bangladesh Army will meet Bangladesh Navy at 5.00 PM at the same venue.

Shahriar Nafees opts out of Australia tour due to exam

UNB, Dhaka

Opening batsman Shahriar Nafees pulled out from the Bangladesh squad that will tour Australia this month following the sudden announcement of his university examinations.

A 15-member Bangladesh cricket team will leave for Australia on Thursday (Aug 14) to play a three-match ODI series.

Nafees in a letter Tuesday requested the BCB to release him from the national squad and the selection committee accepted his prayer.

Top order batsman Nazumuddin, who was in the reserve list for Australia tour, will replace Shahriar Nafees, said a BCB release.

Mohammad Ashraful will lead the Bangladesh team, while pace spearhead Mashrafe Bin Mortaza will act as his deputy.

The three ODI matches between Bangladesh and Australia will be held on August 30, September 3 and 6 at the TIO Stadium in Darwin.

The tourists will also play five one-day practice matches against Australian Institute of Sports and Northern Territory Chief Minister's XI before playing the ODI series.

The first four one-day practice matches against Australian Institute of Sports are slated for August 18, 20, 23 and 25 at the Gardens Oval. The 5th one-day practice match against Northern Territory Chief Minister's XI will be held on August 27 also at the Garden's Oval.

Bangladesh Squad: Mohammad Ashraful (captain), Mashrafe Bin Mortaza (vice captain), Nazimuddin, Tamim Iqbal, Roqibul Hasan, Shakib Al Hasan, Alok Kapali, Dhiman Ghosh, Mahmudullah Riyad, Abdur Razzak, Shahadat Hossain, Farhad Reza, Mehrab Hossain Jr., Nazmul Hossain and Dollar Mahmud.

Federation Cup Football resumes Aug 18

UNB, Dhaka

The Federation Cup Football Tournament, which was suspended on Monday due to rain-wet ground, will resume on August 18 with two matches billed on the day.

The B. League committee took the decision on Tuesday in a meeting with representatives of the clubs at the Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF) Bhaban this evening.

As per revised fixture, Arambagh KS will meet Sunrise SC at Gazipur Stadium at 4:30 pm, while Dhaka Mohammedan SC faces Rahamatganj MFS at the Bangabandhu National Stadium at 6 pm in group D matches on August 18, a BFF official told UNB.

The meeting decided to include Gazipur Stadium as extra venue, where six more group phase matches will be played.

Bangabandhu National Stadium (BNS) was kept vacant for four days until August 14 to prepare for the next round. Afterwards, the ground will be without football for three days due to government holidays until August 17.

Jin wins men's 50m Pistol gold

AFP, Beijing

Jin Jong-Oh of South Korea won the Olympic men's 50m Pistol shooting gold medal here today.

Kim Jong-Su of North Korea took the silver as world champion Tan Zongliang of China was forced to settle for the bronze medal.