Beijing Olympics

Torch lands in Bangkok, protests expected

The Olympic torch landed amid tight security on Friday in the Thai capital, the latest leg of its world tour, with police saying they were ready to stop any attempt by anti-China activists to put out the flame.

Several groups angry at Beijing’s human rights record and its rule in Tibet are thought to be planning demonstrations which, if peaceful, will not incur the wrath of authorities, Thai Olympic chief General Yuthasak Sasiprapa said. “If they are peaceful, it’s OK,” he told Reuters.

“But we will not tolerate any violent or illegal protests. The torch and runners will be tightly escorted by police patrols and motorcycles all along the route.”

The torch relay is due to start at 0800 GMT on Saturday.

Police are preparing for a demonstration of about 100 people outside the regional headquarters of the United Nations, which lies on the 10.5 km (6.5 mile) route from Bangkok’s China Town to a parade ground outside the golden-spired Grand Palace.

The elite police Special Branch unit, which newspapers say has been consulting the Chinese embassy about security, said it was also trying to prevent members of the Falun Gong religious group, outlawed by Beijing, from demonstrating.

Yuthasak said short-cuts and alternative torch relay routes had been made ready in case of any “unexpected incidents”.

The torch has been beset by protests about Chinese rule in Tibet during its long journey from Greece to the Games’ official opening in Beijing in August.

On the previous leg of its swing through Asia, India had to deploy 15,000 police to keep at bay protesters from the world’s largest community of exiled Tibetans.Thai Crown Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn will host a dinner on Friday night for those taking part in the torch relay.

BANGKOK, Reuters

Kenyan runners take freezing road to Beijing

Kenya’s famous distance runners seldom find their road to an Olympic Games slick with ice and buried under a blanket of snow. That is the path Philip Lagat and Richard Kessio are travelling to Beijing after being forced by political violence to leave the dusty roads of their homeland for the streets of wintry Ann Arbor.

Until touching down in Detroit last month, Lagat and Kessio had never seen snow but they were just glad to leave behind the bloody chaos following Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki’s disputed re-election.

With the country split along tribal lines, gangs seized control of the streets and highways.

They included the well-beaten paths of Kenya’s running heartland around Eldoret in the Rift Valley where the country’s most talented runners, including Lagat and Kessio, lived and trained.

“I saw some terrible things I had never seen in my life, bandits killing people, children,” Lagat told Reuters. “For two weeks I did not train...I had to hide.”

Weeks of violence claimed at least 1,200 lives, sending Kenya’s best runners into hiding.

Lagat, his wife and three-year-old son slept outside, huddled under bushes rather than in their home, fearing they could become targets for revenge killings like Lucas Sang, a relay finalist at the 1988 Olympics.

Half a world away, Lagat’s manager Joseph Codrington watched as the situation in Kenya worsened, the death toll mounting along with his concern until he finally decided it was time to get his clients and friends out.

Codrington and his wife Lauretta found sponsors and raised enough money to get the two men to the U.S. where they continue to chase their Olympic dream — swaddled in donated hi-tech training gear protecting them from the harsh Michigan winter.

Codrington recalled: “As we got more reports we found things were escalating and we talked more often to find out what they needed and decided it was time to move them out.

“They really didn’t want to leave their families but decided this was best.”

Sanctuary for Lagat and Kessio is the Codrington’s small home on a quiet Ann Arbor side-street.

The surroundings are warm and welcoming but tight.

A treadmill sits in a dark corner of the basement office/living room for use on days when it is simply too cold to run outside.

There are few, if any, familiar landmarks for the slightly built Kenyans.

The grass is buried under snow and Kessio while poking at the ice caked to the Codrington family car says he is waiting to see the trees with leaves.

“It’s not the snow, it’s the cold, I have never seen this before,” smiled Kessio, who left a wife and twins in Kenya.

ANN ARBOR, Michigan, Reuters

Nakamura and 10 others qualify

Athens Olympic bronze medallist Reiko Nakamura failed to defend the women’s 100-metre backstroke at Japan’s national swimming championships, but still earned a place at the Beijing Games on Thursday.

Nakamura timed one minute 00.16 seconds in the final, only to see Hanae Ito beat her in 59.83 and set a new national record in the process.

Third place went to Shiho Sakai, who set a new high-school record of 1:00.45.

“I can’t believe it,” Ito said of her record. “I just tried to swim my race. I was determined not to finish at third place.

“But the times of the top swimmers in the world are less than 59.50. I want to catch up with them before the Olympics.”

Nakamura said: “At least I earned a berth in the Olympics. It was a good preparation for my 200 metres. But I was a bit disappointed with my time today.”

A total of 11 swimmers, including four each for the relay races, booked their places for August’s Beijing Games.

In the women’s 100m breaststroke, Megumi Taneda qualified for the Olympics after winning her first national title in 1:07.91, beating defending champion Nanaka Tamura in 1:08.55.

The 2006 champion Yoshimi Miwa was second place tied in the same time.

“I hadn’t expected me to qualify for the Olympics in the 100 metres, so I was very surprised.

I thought I wanted to swim well for a good performance in the 200 metres,” said Taneda.

Nobody qualified for the men’s and women’s 200m freestyle individual races, but the top four finishers in both categories qualified to represent Japan in the Olympic relays.

Yoshihiro Okumura won his second straight and fifth overall men’s title in 1:47.90, beating Sho Uchida, Hisato Matsumoto and Yasunori Mononobe.

Haruka Ueda, who set her personal best earlier, bettered it by clocking 1:59.09, beating two-time defending champion Maki Mita, Emi Takanabe, and Misaki Yamaguchi.

“I really wanted to go to the Olympics, so I tried to swim as fast as possible from the first half.

I was disappointed because my target was to swim under 1:59.00 and set a new national record,” said Ueda.

TOKYO, AFP

Australia’s D’Arcy axed from Olympics after brawl

Swimmer Nick D’Arcy was dropped from the Australian Olympic team on Friday for bringing the sport into disrepute after a bar brawl that left a fellow swimmer with a broken jaw and nose.

The 20-year-old has been charged with assault and causing grievous bodily harm over the altercation, which caused multiple facial fractures to former Commonwealth swimming champion Simon Cowley.

The incident followed last month’s national Olympic trials, where D’Arcy won a spot on the team for the Beijing Games in August by winning the 200m butterfly.

Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) president John Coates said D’Arcy would be able to appeal the decision to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. There was no immediate word if he would do so. “This is obviously a difficult decision to make,” Coates said, reading from a prepared statement.

“It is clear that being charged with criminal offences of such a serious nature is sufficient to bring Nicholas and the sport of swimming into disrepute and is likely to bring the team and the AOC into disrepute,” he said.

“I have decided that Nicholas’s membership of the 2008 Australian Olympic team must be terminated, and conveyed my decision to him this morning by a private and confidential letter.”

D’Arcy, who won the 200m butterfly in a Commonwealth record time of one minute 55.10 seconds at the trials, issued a public apology after the incident — which became front-page news in Australia.

His case may not be resolved by the courts before the Beijing Games, which kick off on August 8, and Coates said the swimmer was still entitled to the presumption of innocence.

“Notwithstanding this, I was required to consider Nicholas D’Arcy’s conduct in a number of respects, given widespread media coverage of incidents in which he was reportedly involved not limited to the above incident,” Coates said.

Tallent claims first win in ‘Bird’s Nest’

Australian Jared Tallent won the first ever race staged in Beijing’s eye-catching new Olympic “Bird’s Nest” stadium on Friday, claiming victory in a men’s 20-kilometre race-walk.

The 3.5-billion-yuan (500-million-dollar) arena will be the centrepiece of the Beijing Games, staging the opening and closing ceremonies as well as the athletics competition.

“Fantastic to win here in the Bird’s Nest. It is really good to win the first race in the new Olympic stadium,” said the 23-year-old Commonwealth Games bronze medallist, who set a personal best of 1hr 20min and 11sec in the IAAF event.

Next came China’s Wang Hao in a time of 1:20:25, with Mexico’s Eder Sanchez, who placed fourth in the world championship last year, third in 1:20:57.

The field of more than 50 athletes started the race with three laps of the 91,000-seater stadium in front of a sparse crowd of about 1,000 spectators.

By the time they returned for the race to the finish line more than an hour later, fans had streamed in and about 3,000 Chinese were waving banners and screaming encouragement.

“Wow, what a thrill to run into the stadium, which is going to host the Olympics in August,” said Wang, one of China’s elite race walkers, from Inner Mongolia.

BEIJING, AFP