BEIJING — A group of American cyclists has apologized to Beijing Olympic organizers after arriving in China’s capital wearing face masks.
Michael Friedman, Sarah Hammer, Bobby Lea and Jennie Reed released a statement Wednesday, a day after they caused a stir by showing up in the protective gear.
“The wearing of protective masks upon our arrival into Beijing was strictly a precautionary measure we as athletes chose to take, and was in no way meant to serve as an environmental or political statement,” the athletes said. “We deeply regret the nature of our choices. Our decision was not intended to insult BOCOG or countless others who have put forth a tremendous amount of effort to improve the air quality in Beijing.”
The host city’s air remains a concern with the start of the games approaching. Beijing has put into effect long-planned pollution-control measures, such as taking cars off the streets, and American officials are cautiously optimistic.
Jim Scherr, the U.S. Olympic Committee’s chief executive officer, said his organization didn’t ask the cyclists to apologize.
“Those athletes regret that action and have written an apology to BOCOG on their own behalf,” Scherr said. “They now realize and understand how their actions were perceived by the host nation and by the organizing committee.”
Scherr said masks have been issued to national governing bodies that requested them.
“I understand that about 200 of our athletes received those masks through the national governing body, not directly from the U.S. Olympic Committee,” Scherr said. “Hopefully they won’t have to use them.”
In other Olympic news:
PROTESTS: In Beijing, foreign activists unfurled pro-Tibet banners at a key Olympics venue Wednesday and spoke out against China’s rights record in Tiananmen Square, in the first attempts to use the spotlight of the games to raise other issues.
No arrests were reported despite the rare displays of dissent in the capital, where normally stringent controls over criticism of the government have been tightened even further for the 17-day Olympic competition.
Four foreign activists were led away by police after they hung pro-Tibet banners outside the Beijing National Stadium, where Friday’s opening ceremony will be held.
FLAGBEARER: Eight years ago, Lopez Lomong didn’t even have a country. Now he’ll be carrying the flag for his adopted nation, leading the U.S. Olympic team at opening ceremonies Friday night in Beijing.
Lomong, one of the Lost Boys of Sudan, won a vote of team captains Wednesday to earn the honor of leading America’s contingent into the 90,000-seat Bird’s Nest Stadium. The 1,500-meter track runner will be the flagbearer only 13 months after becoming a U.S. citizen.
BASKETBALL: Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and the U.S. basketball team arrived in Beijing amid near pandemonium Wednesday after fans waited hours for a glimpse of their basketball heroes.
Dozens of fans, most wielding cell phones or digital cameras, mounted a spiked iron fence to get a closer look, many shouting “Kou-bi-er” — the local rendering of Kobe Bryant’s name — in hopes of getting his attention.
The Los Angeles Lakers guard waved and smiled, looking pleased and vaguely amused by the display.
INJURIES: Track star Tyson Gay (hamstring), javelin contestant Breaux Greer (shoulder), swimmer Eric Shanteau (testicular cancer), boxer Gary Russell Jr. (shoulder), and tennis stars Venus Williams (knee), Serena Williams (knee) and Lindsay Davenport (knee) will compete in the Beijing Olympics despite health problems. U.S. swimmer Emily Silver broke her hand at the Olympic trails and may not be able to compete.
TENNIS: Mario Ancic withdrew from the Beijing Olympics on Wednesday, and Canadian players Frank Dancevic and Frederic Niemeyer were added to the men’s draw. Niemeyer replaced the 25th-ranked Ancic, while Dancevic replaced Denis Gremelmayr of Germany.
BEACH VOLLEYBALL: Juliana Felisberta Silva, one-half of the top women’s beach volleyball team from powerhouse Brazil, pulled out of the Olympics on Wednesday because of an injury. By withdrawing before competition begins Saturday, she allows partner Larissa Franca to compete with another teammate for the tournament.
SOCCER: Three European clubs won an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport on Wednesday to keep their players out of the Olympic soccer tournament. Two however will still play, and the other might.
The sport’s highest court ruled Argentine forward Lionel Messi, Werder Bremen’s Diego and Rafinha of Schalke can be kept out of the Beijing Games by their clubs.
Rafinha and Diego’s clubs said they will allow them to play in the Olympic tournament if certain conditions are met. Argentina’s coach said Messi still wants to play despite the ruling.
for his country instead of returning to FC Barcelona, according to Argentina coach Sergio Batista.
Barcelona postponed making a decision on whether to demand Messi’s return until its coach talked to the star. Team officials were unable to contact Messi in China, club sporting director Manel Estiarte said in New York.
Barcelona coach Pep Guardiola planned to call Messi again either before or after Wednesday night’s exhibition game against Major League Soccer’s Red Bulls in East Rutherford, N.J. Barcelona was scheduled to return home to Spain immediately after the match.
Schalke and Werder Bremen later offered to let Rafinha and Diego stay with Brazil for the Olympic tournament.
However, both demanded the Brazilian football federation quickly “create the conditions” for the players’ involvement — for example, by providing evidence of insurance cover in case they are injured.
“We are pleased that CAS has confirmed our legal interpretation,” Schalke manager Andreas Mueller said. “It is laid down quite clearly in the FIFA Statutes.”
Bremen manager Klaus Allofs said the club’s preparation for the beginning of the German season, “which, because of the legal dispute, largely had to be conducted without Diego, is so far advanced that a recall at this point in time would no longer make any sense in sporting terms.”
Schalke’s Mueller echoed that.
“We don’t feel we’re the big winners because an impossible situation has arisen as a result of the delay,” he said. “Five minutes before the Olympic football tournament kicks off we now have to decide whether to recall the player or not.”
“Our decision would have been different if the legal position had been clarified earlier,” Mueller said. “In that case we wouldn’t have let Rafinha go under any circumstances.”
“FIFA and the CBF were aware of the situation months ago. I believe the matter was deliberately delayed until just before the Olympics to put the clubs in an awkward position.”
Argentina opens Thursday against the Ivory Coast in Shanghai and Brazil plays Belgium in Shenyang.
CAS secretary-general Matthieu Reeb said the three-member panel ruled in favor of the clubs because the Olympic tournament is not on FIFA’s match calendar, and because there was no evidence that the football body’s executive board obliged the clubs to release the players.
FIFA ruled on July 30 that the players must be released for the Olympic tournament because they are under 23.
Batista said Messi and the team were relaxed despite the apparent setback.
“He (Messi) told us he wants to stay,” Batista said. “He’s relaxed and asks the people at Barcelona to understand his situation. The club is relaxed, and I was figuring to put Messi in the starting 11.”
The ruling in sport’s highest court could be bad news for countries relying on young talent.
“Theoretically the clubs could ask their players to go back to Europe because they would be entitled to do so,” Reeb said. “And if the players do not come back there could be a case of a breach of contract.”
Reeb said the case was narrowly focused on the three under-23 players and did not address the question of the over-23 players who are playing in the Olympic football tournament.
“This decision does not affect the eligibility status of the players who have been validly entered by their national Olympic committee and who remain fully eligible to compete in Olympic Games of Beijing 2008,” CAS said.
The three-member panel consisted of Efraim Barak of Israel, Michele Bernasconi of Switzerland and Ralph Zloczower of Switzerland.
“FIFA is surprised and disappointed by this decision, but we respect it,” FIFA president Sepp Blatter said in a statement.
The men’s Olympic football tournament is for players 23 and under, with three exceptions for older players.
Both Barcelona and Schalke are scheduled to play Champions League qualifying matches during the Olympics, and they could lose out on millions of euros (dollars) if they fail to reach the group stage.
———
AP Sports Writer Ronald Blum in New York contributed to this report.
U.S. INJURIES: Paul Hamm, the reigning all-around gold medalist in gymnastics, ran out of time in recovering from a broken right hand sustained two months ago. While trying to speed his recovery, he also strained his left rotator cuff.
Abby Wambach broke the two major bones in her lower left leg during the Women’s soccer team’s final pre-Olympics tuneup.
Allen Johnson, the 1996 gold medalist at 110-meter hurdles, he lost his chance for a fourth straight Olympics when he aggravated a leg injury during a preliminary heat at the trials.
Ericka Lorenz, a part of the water polo team that won silver in Sydney (when women’s water polo became a medal sport), and bronze in Athens, wasn’t able to participate because of a back injury suffered last year.
Colby Rasmus, baseball: A former Little League World Series star, the St. Louis Cardinals outfield prospect recently sprained his knee and won’t be Beijing-bound.
Nathan Sturgis, soccer: A hamstring injury that’s cost him playing time for MLS club Real Salt Lake also cost him his Olympics roster spot.
———
On the Net:
Students for a Free Tibet Olympics site: http://freetibet2008.org/
BC-OLY—Beijing’s Injured List, ADV02,1922 Adv02 For release weekend of Aug. 2-3 or thereafter. Games will miss many injured stars, others hobbled AP Photos NY150-151
To the Olympic ideals of higher, faster and stronger, here’s another worthy pursuit: healthier.
Just ask gymnast Paul Hamm. Or sprinter Tyson Gay.
Or even Hossein Rezazadeh, the weightlifter better known as “Iranian Hercules.”
A few weeks ago, each was a headliner, someone the rest of the competition respected and possibly feared. Now, Hamm and Rezazadeh are out because of injuries, while Gay heads to Beijing focused more on his trainer than rivals Usain Bolt and Asafa Powell.
For Hamm, a broken hand and a bum shoulder are to blame. For Rezazadeh, it’s a knee he hurt in a car wreck. For Gay, it’s a strained hamstring.
Their aches and pains are a reminder that while Olympians may seem superhuman, they are very much as human as the weekend warrior who shows up to work Monday morning on crutches.
With the opening ceremony rapidly approaching, The Associated Press cobbled together an informal Olympic disabled list filtered into two categories:
—Those like Hamm and Rezazadeh who can’t go;
—Those like Gay who are hurt but going anyway.
The list is further broken down by U.S. athletes and international foes, with an emphasis on high-profile performers.
Male or female, big sports or small, the causes range from basic (the show jumper who fell off a horse and broke a leg) to bizarre (the guy who lost a finger on a metal fence).
Also worth flagging is the women’s 400-meter hurdles, an event that should be held as close to the medical tent as possible. Injuries already have claimed the top two finishers at last year’s world championships, and the best U.S. hope failed to qualify a year after giving birth to twins — not an injury, of course, but still too much physical trauma for her to overcome.
Disappointing? Of course. But the anguish of these ruined dreams can be tempered by the tale of Hungarian canoeist Gyorgy Kolonics.
A winner of two gold medals and two bronze over the last three Olympics, Kolonics was training when he dropped dead in his canoe on July 15. Only 36, heart failure was to blame.
Abby Wambach certainly gets it. The leading scorer for the reigning Olympic champions, she’s sidelined by a broken leg. It’s the first serious injury of her career, and she’s handling it like a champion.
“This is very bad timing, but this is what my life has shown me and these are the cards that I’ve been dealt,” she said. “With those hard times it’s when your character really shines through.”
———
———
BEIJING: China, determined to make a good impression, has arranged a massive contingent of Olympic volunteers. Most will never see an event themselves, unless they draw a coveted assignment inside a venue. But it’s both a chance to try out their English, get a colorful blue and white shirt, and show pride in what their country has done. “It’s like a promotion,” said Eric Yang, a 19-year-old marketing student. “A grand promotion is what it is.”
BC-OLY—Hispanic Shortage, 1st Ld-Writethru,1059 Hispanic growth not reflected on US Olympic squad AP Photos OLY524
BEIJING (AP) — Hispanics have rapidly emerged as the largest minority group in the United States, comprising 15 percent of the population. But on the U.S. Olympic team assembling in China they are — for a range of reasons — strikingly underrepresented.
It’s no fault of the Lopez family from Sugar Land, Texas — three Lopez siblings are on the taekwondo team, coached by their oldest brother. It’s no fault of Commerce, Calif., a heavily Hispanic working-class suburb of Los Angeles with a youth aquatics program that has produced two members of the women’s water polo team.
Overall, however, an Associated Press review found only about two-dozen Hispanic athletes on the nearly 600-member U.S. team — roughly 4 percent. By contrast, African-Americans, who make up 13.5 percent of the population, hold more than 120 spots on the team. More than half the 126 U.S. track-and-field athletes are black; only two — distance runners Leonel Manzano and Jorge Torres — are Hispanic.
Torres, raised in the Chicago area by Mexican-born parents, says it may take another generation before Hispanic-Americans assume an Olympic role proportionate to their numbers.
“We’re still a young culture — many of us are first-generation Americans,” he said. “The priorities for my parents weren’t sports — they were to put bread on the table, to move ahead and become good American citizens.”
Torres says he had enough raw talent to attract college scholarship offers. But he contended that many young Hispanic athletes — in track and other sports — fall through the cracks despite great promise.
“Outreach programs would make things easier for people less fortunate — help the kids who have potential to maybe find the road to the next level,” he said. “Right now there is no road. It’s bushwhacking your way through to the other side — and most of them get lost.”
Fernando Mateo, president of the New York-based advocacy group Hispanics Across America, says economics is a factor.
“Hispanic kids are predominantly from poor families,” he said. “The parents don’t know their way through the system. A lot of the kids can’t get scholarships as easily as African-Americans can.”
Mateo would like to see targeted investments by foundations and the U.S. Olympic movement to support talented young Hispanics.
Swimming, unlike track and field, has a scarcity of both blacks and Hispanics in its upper echelons — the 56-member Olympic swimming and diving squad has one black and no Hispanics. USA Swimming, the sport’s governing body, has acknowledged the problem by launching extensive learn-to-swim programs in black and Hispanic communities.
USA Track and Field, for its part, is likely to at least consider targeting outreach programs at Hispanics. USATF’s newly installed chief executive is Doug Logan, a former Major League Soccer commissioner who was born in Cuba.
“I need to find out more — I don’t have all the answers,” Logan said. “We have to do more to take the fine young athletes that exist among new Americans and find some ways of creating opportunities for them. They are underrepresented.”
Logan noted Hispanic-Americans are far from monolithic in their sports interests, with passions ranging from soccer to baseball to boxing. Track and field is generally not high on the list, yet some athletes from elsewhere in Latin America — notably Cuba — have been world champions.
Soccer and baseball appeal to many Hispanic-American youth, yet only a couple of Hispanics are on the men’s Olympic teams in those sports. Of all the U.S. teams in China, the one with the largest Hispanic contingent — four — is the women’s softball team.
In parts of Latin America, and in many Hispanic-American families, girls are far less apt than boys to be encouraged to try competitive sports, but that outlook appears to be changing.
In Commerce, home to the remarkable water polo program, the girls’ team has been a powerhouse for years, and two of its alumnae — Brenda Villa and Patty Cardenas — are on the Olympic squad. Both are first-generation Americans with parents from the same Mexican town.
Villa, the Olympic captain, says she was fortunate to have parents who didn’t oppose her interest in sports.
“I did have some classmates that were discouraged by parents to play sports and many were very talented,” Villa said in an e-mail. “They would start the season on a sports team and halfway through quit because they couldn’t make practice — they had to baby-sit or run errands for their moms.”
She praised the commitment of civic leaders in Commerce, who have promoted an ambitious and varied youth recreation program. Indeed, the industrial city of 12,500 has a third Olympian — boxer Javier Molina.
“In Commerce, more parents now see that their children can represent the U.S. at the Olympics,” Villa said. “The city does a good job of giving their Olympians a lot of recognition, so residents are forced to become familiar with the Olympians and that accessibility gives them hope and encouragement.”
More broadly, Villa said it would help if Spanish-language TV networks in the U.S. broadened the focus of their sports programming beyond soccer and a few other favorites.
“The Spanish networks need to do their part in exposing Hispanic athletes in the nontraditional sports, so that parents can see all the options their kids have,” Villa said.
In that regard, the Beijing Olympics will be a help. Telemundo, which reaches 93 percent of U.S. Hispanic households, plans to cover a much broader range of sports in these games than it did four years ago in Athens, including gymnastics, swimming and track.
“It’s a difficult path,” said Jorge Hidalgo, a Telemundo vice president for sports. “We’ll give the Hispanic athletes a special focus, but we want to follow the other good stories as well.”
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
