News

SYDNEY: Former world swimming champions James Magnussen and Eamon Sullivan, and their 4×100-meter relay teammates, face possible sanctions including a loss of funding from the Australian Olympic Committee after admitting taking the sleeping medication Stilnox during a “bonding session” ahead of last year’s London Games. Magnussen, Sullivan, Tommaso D’Orsogna, Cameron McEvoy, James Roberts and Matthew Targett fronted a media conference Friday with Swimming Australia president Barclay Nettlefold, and released a joint statement …

TEHRAN: Arch foes Iran and the U.S. have found some common ground in the fight to save wrestling as an Olympic sport. U.S. wrestling coach Zeke Jones on Tuesday called the sport an important “ambassador,” suggesting possible cooperation to fight a decision by the International Olympic Committee to drop wrestling from the 2020 Games. “Wrestling has brought closer the people of Iran and the U.S.,” Jones …

PARIS: Wrestlers around the world on Wednesday vowed to fight to save the ancient sport’s Olympic status, after the International Olympic Committee voted to drop it for the 2020 Games. Japan and Turkey — whose cities Tokyo and Istanbul are bidding to host the Games in seven years’ time — led the calls for the world body to reconsider, as an online petition was organised urging a …

BEIJING: Three-time world table tennis champion Zhuang Zedong, a key figure in 1971’s groundbreaking “pingpong diplomacy” between China and the United States, died Sunday, China’s official Xinhua News Agency reported. He was 72 and had struggled with cancer since 2008. Zhuang won new fame by presenting a gift to American player Glenn Cowan, who had inadvertently boarded a bus carrying the Chinese team at …

LOS ANGELES: Shamed cyclist Lance Armstrong wants to return to competitive sport, but says the driving force behind his belated doping confession was the well-being of his five children. “The biggest hope and intention was the well-being of my children,” Armstrong told talk show host Oprah Winfrey in the second segment of their televised interview that aired on Friday. In the first installment aired …

DUBAI: Rafael Nadal’s comeback from a long-term knee injury has been put on hold by an illness that has ruled him out of an exhibition tournament in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. “Rafael Nadal has been forced to make a last minute withdrawal from the 2012 event due to a stomach virus,” organizers said in a statement released Tuesday. “Nadal, who …

PARIS: Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone believes Michael Schumacher was wrong to return to the sport, claiming the German had severely damaged his legacy as a seven-time world champion. The 43-year-old Schumacher quit the sport in 2006 before being tempted into an ill-fated return in 2010 at Mercedes where he spent three seasons being largely outshone by teammate Nico Rosberg. He brought the curtain down on …

CAIRO: An Israeli delegation was to arrive Monday in Cairo for indirect talks with Hamas on easing the Gaza blockade, the Palestinian faction’s number two said, warning his group may act if there is any delay. Mussa Abu Marzuk said Hamas did not commit to stop arming itself in truce talks that ended a week-long conflict in and around Gaza with an agreement for Israel to ease its …