Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 21 - 27 September 2000 Issue No. 500
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

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Overweight lets team down

THE CONTENDER for the women's 52kg Olympic judo gold medal has been attacked by her team management after being thrown out for failing to make the weight. Britain's Debbie Allan twice returned to the scales in an attempt to make the limit but was 100 grammes over at the deadline for the competition. Allan's team manager, Dianne Bell, said: "She's let herself and her team down. Obviously she's very disappointed, as we all are, and the rest of the team was feeling a little down. We don't know why she failed the weight. She always has problems making the weight but she made it in Canada in June for the Commonwealth tournament."

Fire near the centre

A FIRE blazed for several hours Sunday just two miles from the Olympic Regatta Centre where rowers had competed a few hours earlier. More than 100 firefighters and three helicopters were used to control the blaze, keeping it away from the Olympic venue and about 20 nearby houses. "We're all very sensitive to its proximity to an Olympic venue, but by all reports it hasn't affected performances," said John Winter of the state Rural Fire Service.

Fredericks gone

AN EMOTIONAL and solemn Frankie Fredericks, Namibia's only Olympic medalist, withdrew from the Sydney Games with an Achilles' tendon injury. "This is one of the toughest days of my life," said the 32-year-old Fredericks, the silver medalist in the 100 and 200 metres at the 1992 Barcelona Games and the 1996 Atlanta Games. "I thought this would be my time to win the gold medal. It wasn't an easy decision to make ... it was very difficult. I wish someone would have made it for me. I'm very sad I can't take part, but for my health it's best not to." Having declared himself out of the Games, Fredericks tipped world record holder and two-time world champion Maurice Greene to win the 100-metre gold medal.

Death in the family

JUAN Antonio Samaranch, the man who has headed the IOC for the past 20 years, was half a world away in Spain, making preparations for the funeral of his wife. Samaranch, who had presided over Friday night's spectacular Games opening ceremony, flew back to Barcelona on Saturday after 67-year-old Maria Teresa's condition suddenly worsened. By the time he arrived home, she was already dead. Canadian IOC vice president Dick Pound took over the president's functions in Sydney. Organisers ordered the Olympic flag to fly at half-mast in Stadium Australia, the central Games venue. A memorial mass was held in Sydney on Sunday.

Another blight

ROMANIA's weightlifting team was thrown out of the Sydney Games and a Norwegian lifter was suspended in fresh drugs scandals marking another black day for the team and the sport. Two more athletes faced possible expulsion from the Olympics as a result of random tests by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), International Olympic Committee director general Francois Carrard told a news conference.

Riders drop

TWO Belgian riders were taken to hospital on Monday after falls in the cross-country stage of the Olympic three-day equestrian event, organisers said. The first casualty was Constantin van Rijckevorsel, who was taken to hospital with a suspected fractured ankle. Karin Donckers was also taken to hospital after she fell. "It was purely a precaution so she could be checked out," said a spokeswoman for the Olympic organisers.

The day was a disaster for the Italian team -- their first two horses were injured and they had to pull out of the team competition.

Safety has been a major concern after a string of fatalities in the sport. Six riders were killed in Britain over the past year, while two died in Australia, one in Switzerland and one in the United States.

The International Event Safety Committee launched a major probe into the accidents and made several safety recommendations such as more body protection armour. But it came to the conclusion that the sport would always be risky.

Istanbul won't quit

ISTANBUL bid organisers have dismissed any talk of pulling out of the race for the 2008 Olympics after two successive failures to secure the Games. They said their chances at an unprecedented third attempt should not be reduced by the fact that Athens, capital of Turkey's neighbour Greece, would stage the Games in 2004. "There is nothing in the Olympic Charter that says that if the Games are organised on a continent they cannot be staged on the same continent the next time," Sinan Erdem, president of Turkey's National Olympic Committee, told a news conference. "All five cities start from zero. We have an equal chance." Istanbul, a city at the crossroads between Europe and Asia, lost out to Sydney in 1993 in the race to stage the 2000 Games and to Athens in 1997 for 2004. It made it last month on to a short list of five cities from which the International Olympic Committee will select the host of the 2008 Games at a session in Moscow next July. The others are Beijing, widely regarded as favourite, Osaka, Paris and Toronto. All are promoting their chances at the Olympics in Sydney. Erdem, who is an IOC member and on the Istanbul bidding committee, also said in response to a question that it would not make sense for Istanbul to delay its bid for the 2012 or 2016 Games. "We don't want to have any interruptions," he said. Turkey would be the first predominantly Muslim country to stage the Olympics if its bid is successful. It has spent $148 million on sports facilities and other projects in Istanbul, a sprawling city of 12 million people, under a law passed in 1992 in connection with the bid. The projects include an 80,000-seat stadium now being built on a site where the bid committee has proposed staging 16 of the present 28 Olympic sports -- two more than are concentrated in Sydney's Olympic Park.

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