No biting!
A light heavyweight boxer from Tajikistan was disqualified for biting his opponent on the shoulder during their Olympic quarterfinal bout Tuesday night.
Dzhakhon Kurbanov’s bout with Kazakhstan’s Yerkebulan Shynaliyev was stopped with 17 seconds left in the third round when Kurbanov apparently bit Shynaliyev during a clinch.
Shynaliyev, who angrily showed the blood on his shoulder to the referee, led 12-6 at the time. Kurbanov had been warned multiple times for shoving and holding his opponent.
Kurbanov is a 22-year-old fighter who got off to an auspicious start in Beijing last week, beating world champion Abbos Atoev in his first bout. He won the 2005 Asian championships as a middleweight, and was competing in his first Olympics.
Oddly enough, the evening card at Workers’ Gymnasium was watched by Evander Holyfield, who was infamously bitten on the ear by Mike Tyson on June 28, 1997.
The show must go on
Participants in the spectacular Olympics opening ceremony endured many hardships preparing for the event, including serious injury, fainting from heatstroke and long hours in adult diapers because bathroom breaks weren’t allowed.
Filmmaker Zhang Yimou, the ceremony’s director, insisted in an interview with local media that suffering and sacrifice were required to pull off the Aug. 8 opening, which involved wrangling nearly 15,000 cast and crew. Only North Korea could have done it better, he said.
Performers in the West by contrast need frequent breaks and cannot withstand criticism, Zhang said, citing his experience working on an opera performance abroad. Zhang directed an opera at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in 2006.
“In one week, we could only work four and a half days, we had to have coffee breaks twice a day, couldn’t go into overtime and just a little discomfort was not allowed because of human rights,” he said of the opera production. … We can achieve in one week what they can achieve in two months.”
But at what price? Questions have been raised about the lengths to which Beijing went in trying to create a perfect start to the Summer Games.
Performers sustained injuries from slipping during rain-drenched rehearsals and fainted from heatstroke amid hours of training under the relentless summer sun. Liu Yan, a 26-year-old dancer, was seriously injured during a July rehearsal when she fell from a 10-foot stage. She may be permanently paralyzed from the waist down.
In the Olympic ceremony segment showcasing the Chinese invention of movable type, the nearly 900 performers who crouched under 40-pound boxes donned adult diapers to allow them to stay inside for at least six hours, Beijing organizers said.
About 2,200 performers spent an average of 16 hours a day, every day, rehearsing a synchronized tai-chi routine involving high kicks, sweeping lunges and swift punches. They lived for three months in trying conditions at a restricted army camp on the outskirts of Beijing.
In another instance, performers were kept on their feet for most of a 51-hour rehearsal with little food and rest and no shelter from the night’s downpour, as the show’s directors attempted to coordinate the 2,008-member performance with multimedia effects.
Road to recovery
The wife of an American killed in Beijing is starting to talk and walk short distances while recovering at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
A statement posted on the Web on Monday by Barbara Bachman’s three daughters also says the funeral for Todd Bachman is on hold until their mother is well enough to attend.
The Bachmans were in China for the Olympics when they were attacked at a tourist attraction August 9, apparently at random. The attacker killed himself.
Their daughter Elisabeth “Wiz” Bachman is a former U.S. Olympic volleyball player and their son-in-law, Hugh McCutcheon, coaches the U.S. men’s volleyball team.
Phelps is Grrrreat!
Move over Tony the Tiger, here comes Olympic champion Michael Phelps.
The record-setting swimmer will soon be appearing on boxes of Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes and Corn Flakes.
Kellogg Co. made the announcement Tuesday. The winner of eight gold medals at the Beijing Olympics will be featured on Frosted Flakes and Corn Flakes boxes expected to be in stores by mid-September.
Kellogg says the images of Phelps that will be used will highlight some of the most memorable moments of the games.
No Rice
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, confronted with a sudden array of global troubles, has dropped plans to attend the closing ceremonies of the Olympics in Beijing this weekend. She will be replaced by Labor Secretary Elaine Chao as leader of the U.S. delegation for Sunday’s finale.
Associated Press
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