| Serbia beats Czech Republic 3-2 to reach 1st final By NESHA STARCEVIC 2010-09-19T18:32:09ZBELGRADE, Serbia (AP) -- Janko Tipsarevic beat Radek Stepanek to send Serbia to its first Davis Cup final with a 3-2 victory over the Czech Republic on Sunday.... hosted.ap.org |
Dettori rides Ascot four-timer • Godolphin runner pips Rip Van Winkle on line• Frankel hot Guineas favourite after runaway win"I don't have a statue here for nothing," Frankie Dettori said after the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes yesterday, with his best film-star smile. From anyone else it might have sounded arrogant, but not from him, not at Ascot, and above all not on this day.Fourteen years ago, he went through the card with all seven winners. Twenty years ago, he rode his first two Group One winners, in the Fillies' Mile and the QEII, and yesterday there was a repeat performance, thanks to White Moonstone and Poet's Voice, as well as two more successes in supporting races for a 217-1 four-timer.Poet's Voice got home by a nose from Rip Van Winkle in the QEII, with Makfi, the 2,000 Guineas winner, among the also-rans. In the stands, few would have called the photo-finish with any confidence, but Dettori was celebrating a stride after the line. No one knows or rides Ascot better.With two winners on the board for Dettori, there was plenty of money for Poet's Voice, though he still started third-favourite at 9-2. On the book, he needed to have improved from a victory at Goodwood last month, but he looked like a horse who is thriving in the paddock beforehand and duly underlined it on the track."You know me when I get on a roll, it just happens," Dettori said. "Saeed [bin Suroor] was very confident, and that gave me lots of confidence, and the horse did the rest."This day is very special for me, and I think this is my fifth QEII. The crowd gets behind me, and riding good horses helps as well. The place has a real magic for me. Looking at the photograph, perhaps I was a bit over-confident [of the result], but he had his head down on the line and I knew that Johnny [Murtagh] hadn't come back to me."Poet's Voice will now head to the Breeders' Cup Mile in Kentucky in early November, where the opposition is likely to include Goldikova, the winner of the race for the last two years. He is improving so rapidly, though, that given luck with the draw, he is not a forlorn hope. Hill's make Goldikova the 2-1 favourite, with Poet's Voice and Rip Van Winkle quoted at 9-2.Frankel has yet to contest a Group One event, but he is the 2-1 favourite for next year's 2,000 Guineas after a 10-length success in the Royal Lodge Stakes that summoned memories of the runaway victories of two-year-olds Arazi and Celtic Swing.What neither of those exceptional juveniles managed to do was to win the Guineas the following spring, but while the opposition was moderate by Group Two standards, Frankel powered away from them with such casual ease that normal progress alone would surely make him difficult to beat at Newmarket in April.Frankel almost ran away with Tom Queally, galloping straight past his field in just a few strides as they turned for home and then striding further clear all the way up the straight. Despite being under no pressure at all, he completed the mile nearly a second faster than White Moonstone in the Group One Fillies' Mile, the next race on the card.Henry Cecil, Frankel's trainer, reached back to the 1970s in the search for comparisons. "In the last two months he's started to improve, improve, improve," Cecil said. "He's got a lot of talent, the way he works, I don't think I've had a better two-year-old since Wollow, which was a long time ago, nearly 40 years."I'd question whether he can get the Derby trip. The dam [Kind] was very fast, and the female being the stronger sex, the dam side has come out a lot in him. He's got a lot of class, and he could easily be a Guineas horse. Now we've got to decide whether we go to the Dewhurst [on 16 October] or the Racing Post [Trophy on 23 October] but if possible, I would rather finish him a bit earlier."Tom Queally, Frankel's jockey, was not surprised by the ease of his win. "I moved to get a little bit of room and he just went up through the gears so quickly," he said. "It would be nice to think he could continue on an upward curve, and he looks physically as though he will train on."White Moonstone, Dettori's first Group One winner on the day, will head into winter quarters as the 4-1 favourite for the 1,000 Guineas, and a 5-1 chance for the Oaks. "Her turn of foot wasn't as good today as it was at Doncaster [two weeks ago]," Dettori said, "but her class pulled her through. Now we can dream."Horse racingFrankie DettoriAscotGreg Woodguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Austin's Little Helping Hands receives $30K from Chase Chase Community Giving distributed more than $500,000 in grants to 17 charities nationwide, including the Little Helping Hands organization in Austin. feeds.bizjournals.com |
Andy Bull reflects on Delhi 2010 The media onslaught from the UK and Australia and stay-away stars have left the Games fighting for its futureThe rickshaw driver turned back over his shoulder: "You a wrrrrrBEEEEEEEPPPPP!" I leant forward into his ear, shouting to make myself heard over the rush hour chorus of car horns and the washing-machine howl and rattle of his decrepit engine "Excuse me?""You are a writer?" he bellowed back. "There is one thing you must tell your readers for me! Tell them that Delhi people very sad that no one came. Where are all the visitors? Why did they all stay at home? I am crying…"He broke off at this point, snapping his head back round just in time to clock the three-legged dog that had limped out in the road in front of us. He thumped his fist down on to the horn and the little rickshaw swerved violently, cutting in front of the family of four squeezed on to the back of a scooter who were in the lane outside us. As I slid across the back seat and offered an apologetic shrug to the scowling scooter driver, the driver started up again. "Yes, in my heart I am crying. I had big hopes, big dreams. Many people would come from many nations. I would have much business. But no one came."Later, when we had pulled over outside the hotel, he explained his story. Last year he had bought a new taxi, a shiny white hatchback, because he thought that he would need it to impress all the fans who were going to descend on the city for these Games. In fact his business had gone down over the last fortnight, and now he was struggling to meet the instalments he owed at the bank. His name was Sanjay and was obviously a bit of a dreamer, because when we parted he gave me his business card (gold letters embossed on a black background). His contact details read: indian-helicopter-tour@yahoo.com. "I don't have a helicopter. Yet. But I have the email address."Maybe his was an elaborate hustle for a little extra baksheesh, but it is a common story across the city. In the newspapers and on the streets, I keep hearing how disappointed Delhi's citizens are with the turn-out. Shop keepers, restaurant-owners and taxi drivers all invested in refurbishment and redecoration in anticipation of all the extra trade they would get. And all of them have suffered, struggling to cover their costs as profits have gone down rather than up while the Games have been going on.The only fans I have met here have come to watch family members or friends compete. With the athletes being advised to stay inside the confines of the Games Village on security grounds and the journalists tending to use the official hotels (and their restaurants), business has been bad across the board. That complaint, along with the plea to write some positive stories because there has been too much bad press, has been by far the most common reaction I have had when talking to local people.So much of the English and Australian coverage has concentrated on the negative aspects of these Games. Some hacks have seemed just like the lethargians who inhabit the Doldrums in The Phantom Tollbooth. Misery has become the default mode. The sad truth is that in New Delhi, many locals are just as disappointed with the contributions made to these Games by the press, public and sportspeople of those two countries, and with more reason. "Are India ready to host an Olympic Games?" we ask in England. Would they even want to after what has happened here? Elsewhere in the country the answer is surely "yes", but in the city of Delhi, I am not so sure.Just like a gold prospector in the Klondike, you need a good pan if you are going to sift out the nuggets from the wash of the media coverage. There has been the troublesome bus system. And the broken website news service. And the gastroenteritis. The dengue fever. The malaria. The often empty venues. The long queues. The intrusive security. The dilapidated ticket distribution network. The failure of the merchandising operation. The unceasing waves of moths, mosquitoes, crickets and cockroaches that bombard the spectators at the JLN Stadium. The murky water and overflowing toilets in the swimming pool. The stale food given to the volunteers. The unfinished and deserted accommodation for the delegates. The malfunctioning pop-up security barrier that speared the car of Uganda's chef de mission. The inadequate wheelchair access. The cobras in the Games Village. Oh, and the aggressive vultures.Embarrassingly enough, it took the 16-year-old Tom Daley to cut through it all. "Obviously I have read all the stories in the newspapers," said Daley, "but once we got here everything was great. I heard all the stories but when I came here everything was clean, the food was great and the security was tight, I think it has been great so far."Get rid of the quibbles and niggles and in fact there have only been three major mistakes. The first is that the food hygiene in the Games Village was not rigorous enough, which has meant that many athletes got ill.The second is that the ticketing system has not worked. Too many tickets were given to corporate sponsors who did not use them, and it has been too hard for fans to get into the venues.And the third is that the Games simply was not ready in time. On the first day of the Games the chairman of the Organising Committee promised that everything "would be ready by Wednesday". It wasn't, and even if it had been it was a ridiculous claim. The last minute is one thing, four days after the opening ceremony is quite another.But those three problems are easily rectifiable in the future: do things quicker, cleaner and better. So long as those lessons are learned, India could host an excellent Olympic Games.Instead, what has really marred these Games has been the attitude of the other major Commonwealth countries. The Games has been hugely devalued by the number of top athletes who have pulled out because they said they were too weary or too wary to come. Some of the competition has been third-rate, never mind second. It is not just the superstars who are missing. Take the men's 100m sprint, the premier event of any multi-sport Games. Look at the Commonwealth rankings – not the world rankings – for 2010 and you will find that for one reason or another the 11 top-ranked sprinters were all missing from the competition here. In the women's version only one of the top 10 runners made it to Delhi. That trend was repeated across many disciplines in many events.If you wanted premier sport, you had to look at the hockey, shooting, wrestling, boxing, squash and lawn bowls. In the absence of headline names, media organisations have concentrated on reporting all the horror stories. At the same time, the number of horror stories publicised in the run-up to the competition drove away those same headline names. The serpent has been eating its own tail.If the athletes and the spectators cannot be bothered to come, then it is time to ask what kind of future the Commonwealth Games has? Even events of this scale can die out. After the Olympic boycotts of 1980 and 1984 the Goodwill Games were created to foster a little good feeling, and make a lot of money, out of getting Cold War countries to compete against each other. The first edition in Moscow in 1986 attracted 3,000 athletes from 79 nations. There were five further Goodwill Games until, after Brisbane 2001, the organisers finally acknowledged that the Cold War was long since over and no one really cared enough any more. The 2005 edition, due to be held in Phoenix, Arizona, was cancelled.The Commonwealth Games has a much longer history than that but it too is starting to seem archaic and redundant, a relic of political and cultural time that has no relevance to the modern world. India is only going to go from strength to strength. The Olympics will come here in the next two decades. By that time the Commonwealth Games, already a pale and flickering ghost of its former self, may well have ceased to exist altogether. Glasgow has a hell of a job on its hands to prove otherwise in 2014.Commonwealth Games 2010Andy Bullguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Rooney to stay at Manchester United until 2015 By STEVE DOUGLAS 2010-10-22T17:05:13ZLONDON (AP) -- Saying "this is where I belong," Wayne Rooney ended a week of speculation about his future Friday by changing his mind and signing a five-year contract with Manchester United.... hosted.ap.org |