Alwyn Myburgh emerged as the pick of the South African 400m hurdles crop when he edged defending Olympic champion Angelo Taylor and runner-up Hadi soua An Al Somaily out of the Athens Olympic finals in a nail-biting semifinal at the Olympic Stadium on Tuesday night. ”Oh man, I just can’t believe this,” said a jubilant Myburgh.
Special Report: Olympics 2004
You would have thought that rising levels of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) would convince us of the need for good sex advice — someone who can help us negotiate and enjoy safer sex, cope with relationships, and debunk the many myths about sex. Sex education shouldn’t begin and end at school, and STIs are not just for teenagers.
The current world order is essentially about the geopolitics of oil, and the book The End of Oil by Paul Roberts is a tour de force in charting, in a highly readable, balanced and objective manner, a fluid, constantly changing dynamic. We need to face up to the crisis in energy consumption.
I am not cynical about EIAs, I just have a skewed view of their effectiveness when most of the times I hear about them it is from the same advocacy groups conducting campaigns in the media. The truth is that a hungry stomach does not see the grace in the buck, writes Donald Kau.
Roman Sebrle of the Czech Republic added the Olympic gold medal — and the Olympic mark — to his world record by completing a come-from-behind victory on Tuesday in the decathlon. Ezekiel Kemboi led a Kenyan sweep in the 3 000m steeplechase and Tonique Williams-Darling won the 400m in 49,41 seconds.
If South Africa’s top swimmers want to swim for Uganda, then they must go, said Swimming South Africa’s president on Wednesday at a press conference called to respond to statements made by South Africa’s Olympic medallist Roland Schoeman that he will have to leave South Africa if he cannot make a living out of swimming.
I remember being present at the time of the announcement of the results of the first democratic election when President Thabo Mbeki — then not yet president nor even deputy president — spoke, seeking analogy from a line from Wordsworth’s poem on the French Revolution: ”Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive”. And indeed it was, and for many of us it has been since then. But not for us all, writes Arthur Chaskalson.
Another weightlifter has failed a dope test at the Olympics, bringing the number of known cases to 10, it was announced on Wednesday. Sam Coffa, vice-president of the International Weightlifting Federation, said that the athlete was prevented from competing after the positive test was confirmed.
Special Report: Olympics 2004
Last season’s runners-up, Monaco, as well as Inter Milan, Liverpool and Deportivo reached the group stage of the Champions League on Tuesday. Monaco hammered Slovenian side Hit Gorica 6-0, after winning the first leg 3-0. Inter Milan put on an impressive display to defeat Basel 4-1 and advance.
The South African men’s hockey team finally turned opportunities into goals, taking their frustrations of the pool matches out on Egypt by beating them 5-1 in the classification matches of the Olympic tournament. Megan Hall finished 36th in the women’s triathlon and diver Jenna Dreyer moved up in the 3m springboard preliminaries.
Special Report: Olympics 2004