TOP 100 SPORT SITES
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| Kauto Star makes history with fourth King George Kauto Star created history by becoming the first horse to win the William Hill King George VI Chase for the fourth year in succession at Kempton. feeds.timesonline.co.uk |
LeBron scores 48, Varejao hits winning 3 for Cavs CLEVELAND (AP) -- Anderson Varejao made his first career 3-pointer with 17.2 seconds left - a 25th birthday present to teammate LeBron James - to give Cleveland a 106-101 victory over the Atlanta Hawks on Wednesday night, the Cavaliers' 11th victory in 12 games.... hosted.ap.org |
S.F., Oakland don’t make World Cup cut San Francisco and Oakland didn’t make the World Cup cut. feeds.bizjournals.com |
SAfrica Olympic committee: Semenya can't run yet JOHANNESBURG (AP) -- The South African Olympic Committee says 800-meter world champion Caster Semenya cannot compete at home or abroad until the IAAF rules on her gender tests.... hosted.ap.org |
Richard Williams: Bartelski stunned by skiing's plunge Financial meltdown has endangered medal hopes just two weeks before the Winter OlympicsI don't know how it happened," Konrad Bartelski is saying. "When we got together in Méribel last April, there was genuine enthusiasm. We had very good skiers, and we had enough money to do the job." The job being to compete in the alpine events at the 2010 Winter Olympics with a small squad of British skiers hoping to follow in the footsteps of Gina Hathorn, Divina Galica, Martin Bell and Bartelski himself, who finished 12th in the downhill at Lake Placid in 1980.Nowadays Bartelski earns his living commentating on ski races for ESPN but until very recently he was also in charge of the selection of the British team, a job he had held for most of the past decade. No longer. "The very day we were making the selection," he recalls, "I got an email telling me that the men's programme was being stopped, from that moment." He resigned on the spot.The British Ski and Snowboard Federation, an old-established body which nowadays trades under the snappier name of Snowsport GB, was in meltdown, and the closing of the men's training programme for the Winter Games was merely a symptom. The BSSF receives funding from UK Sport, the international ski federation (FIS), and various sponsors. But now it has barely a week to find £200,000 if it is to avoid going into administration, even after raising twice that amount from supporters when it fell into difficulties last summer. The sudden and unexplained removal of its £30,000 overdraft facility by the Royal Bank of Scotland in November has hardly helped, but it is not the whole story."It's horrendous," Bartelski says. "Bills haven't been paid, coaches have found that their credit cards are no longer working, and some of the skiers are owed serious amounts of money."Among them is Chemmy Alcott, the 27-year-old from Twickenham, who is £20,000 in the hole after paying for her summer training on the understanding that she would be reimbursed by the federation. Another to be affected is Zoë Gillings, the 24-year-old from the Isle of Man who finished fifth in the snowboard cross World Cup final standings last season but has been forced to restrict her pre-Olympic preparation on the slopes to four days rather than the scheduled six weeks.Two weeks ahead of the start of the Winter Olympics, the effect on the competitors' morale can be imagined. "When you realise, going into the most important event of your career, that the athletes don't come first, then you're never going to get a gold medal," Bartelski says."Chemmy is a world-class competitor, but with two weeks to go someone has opened a trapdoor under her feet. When you go to bed at night in that kind of state, at a time when you're needing all the rest you can get, your head just spins."The British Olympic Association is doing its best to provide emergency help, but the government has been understandably reluctant to bail out a federation that shows no sign of being able to manage the affairs of a sport that, as far as Britain is concerned, has no real history of international success."On the one hand," Bartelski says, "you've got a lot of rich people in England who love to go skiing, and on the other you've got these skiers who put in an enormous effort. There really ought to be a way of connecting the two. We have some world-class skiers, including several in the junior categories who are among the top 10 or 12 in the world, but no good businessman is going to put money into something that's so badly run."This is, he suggests, an old story for British sport, and the recent success of Britain's cyclists suggests that it is indeed the quality of the administrators that makes the difference. Once a credible platform has been built, the money flows in. British skiing needs people of vision and authority, and it needs them now.Desert Island reveals Warren'sFrank does it his way with unexpected soulFrank Warren was already on to his fourth record – Billie Holiday singing Don't Worry 'Bout Me – by the time I tuned in to Sunday's Desert Island Discs. Next came Sinatra's All the Way, very much the kind of choice you might expect from an east London boxing promoter of a certain vintage. But then, prefaced by the statement of an enduring devotion to soul music, came the Temptations' gorgeous Since I Lost My Baby, a true fan's favourite, followed by Al Green and Lyle Lovett delivering Funny (How Time Slips Away), from an obscure album of duets by soul and country artists. Finally – and conclusively, if you happen to be the kind of person who expects Kirsty Young's programme to reveal inner truths – Warren presented us with Aretha Franklin at her most majestic in the unadorned 12-bar blues of Dr Feelgood. I'll be tuning in to the repeat, on Friday morning, to find out if his first three records matched up to this immaculate playlist.Wenger would have averted Roman's decline and fallNice to see Roman Pavlyuchenko scoring an excellent goal for Tottenham in their 2-2 draw with Leeds on Saturday, making a rare appearance as a substitute under Harry Redknapp. Remembering the Russian's performances alongside Andrey Arshavin in the 2008 European Championship finals, one has to wonder how many goals he would have scored over the past season and a half had Arsène Wenger decided to buy him for the other north London team.One-eyed Sky must see beyond its own teamIt was to be expected that Sky Sports would make a major effort with their coverage of the Tour Down Under, in which their very own cycling team made their big-race debut. But the producers at the Murdoch-owned channel are going to have to be careful not to allow a desire to please the proprietor to overwhelm their editorial judgment. The sole success of Sky's riders in the six-day race came in the final stage, a commendable achievement for a new outfit, but from the coverage throughout the week you might have thought that there was only one team in the event. It's nice to see cycling on Sky, but that sort of monocular approach could get boring very quickly indeed.Winter Olympics 2010SkiingRichard Williamsguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |