whipping boy
The KwaZulu-Natal season is still in full swing and on Saturday comes the chance for a choice selection of sprinters to show what they are made of in the R250 000 grade one Mercury Sprint at Clairwood Park.
The Mercury is a weight-for-age event, meaning that in these final weeks of the season the three-year-olds get just 0,5kg from their older rivals.
These conditions could spell doom for David Ferraris’s Kushka and Mike de Kock’s Norinco, both up-and-coming young horses. Both face their toughest test to date and it will be interesting to see how they fare, especially Kushka, who comes off a hat-trick of victories.
At the top of the mountain these two have to climb are Clifton King and the familiar Buddy Maroun pairing of Fov’s Favourite and All Will Be Well.
Clifton King, who fetched the top price as a yearling at the 1997 Select Sale in New Zealand, has certainly not disappointed his connections, winning 11 and placing in 12 of his 31 races. He has always been among the top echelon of South Africa’s sprinter-milers and showed a welcome return to his best when winning the Senor Santa Handicap at his penultimate start his second run after a rest. The King’s next run was below his best but he no doubt found the Gosforth Park 1 700m trip too far for his liking. He should contest the finish again.
Maroun’s two also represent proven class and although neither have the best recent form, it is odds-on that they will run good races. Maroun’s other runner, Johnny Reb, seems to have his work cut out, given that his last win was over the stiff Turffontein mile.
Super Home and Cartel both have good form but they look just that crucial bit below class.
An interesting runner is Syon, a son of Fort Wood and a grandson of top sprint sire Harry Hotspur, who has run his way through the divisions in the mud of Cape Town. He will be hoping against hope for a place to pay for the trip.
Mr Steadfast won the Langerman Handicap two years ago and has upheld the tradition of that event by winning a few more since. However, he too bumps real class here.
Clifton King is selected to kick sand in the faces of of Fov’s Favourite, All Will Be Well and Kushka. But don’t leave the Maroun coupling out of the pick six.
In the fifth, an allowance plate, the highly regarded Consent to Conquer should be too good. He suffered interference in his last start in a feature race, leading to his first defeat over the minimum distance. He had been supported as if the result were a foregone conclusion.
Dare To Dream won her last start without having to stretch for the wire and should have enough in the tank to follow up in the fourth race, a juvenile plate over 1 200m.
Tytola, already a grade one winner, could do well in the seventh, a C division race, but meets a fast- improving type in Coronation Cup. Coronation has improved with every run and could do even better.
Model Chimes, a well-tried gelding with fair form, could finally win a race and wrap up the pick six in the eighth. He meets a really modest-looking bunch.
Gosforth Park best bets: Asian Fields (race 8); Scenic Drive (race 9) Kenilworth best bets: West Portico (race 2); Duty Officer (race 8)
@Chinese doping puzzle faces IOC
A poor human rights record did not prevent China getting the 2008 Olympics and neither did a history of performances enhanced by drugs
Martin Gillingham
It’s strange that an organisation, which will have you believe it is leading a crusade against the use of drugs in sport, should award its most cherished possession to a country which, over the past decade, has the world’s worst doping record.
But that’s exactly what the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has done by awarding its 2008 summer Games to Beijing. Though most media coverage has been devoted over the past week to criticism of China’s human rights record, it’s the nation’s state-sponsored abuse of drugs in sport that should be concerning sporting aficionados most of all.
On his election to the top job on Monday, Jacques Rogge told us that his biggest priority was to rid Olympic sport of drugs. That’s a virtuous stance. But it only begs the question, why then Beijing for 2008?
China has fast become the Soviet Union of the new millennium. And we’re not just talking politics here though sport and politics will be forever entwined. The 1980 Moscow Games were hijacked by the Kremlin for the purposes of Soviet nationalism and a demonstration of the might and success of its political system. And while the success of the 16 days from a logistical perspective do just that, nothing is more tangible than success on the medals table.
In 1980, the Soviet Union won 80 gold medals. The next best were their political allies, East Germany, who collected 47. Even considering the fact the games were boycotted by several Western nations, including the United States, the Soviets’ supremacy was remarkable. And no one “in the know” ever doubted how they did it.
The Soviets will have you know that talent-spotting at junior level, high-performance sports schools, and a network of state-employed coaches led to sporting success. And, of course, that was part of it. But when the Berlin Wall came tumbling down and, soon after the Stasi files surfaced, the extent of East Germany’s doping programme became evident. Their’s was a model shaped on that of their communist brothers.
So why the parallels between the methods adopted by the sporting masters of the old Soviet Union and China? In truth, much is based on rumour, innuendo and the balance of probabilities though one event, in particular, has provided evidence of widespread doping.
The rumour and whispering campaigns were loudest at Stuttgart in 1993 when Ma Junren’s Family Army of young women won every track title at the world athletics championships between 1 500m and 10 000m. The best of Ma’s young proteges was Wang Junxia, the 10 000m champion, who by the end of the year had set world records at the 3 000m and 10 000m. The performances of Wang and her teammates were disregarded by most aficionados for the simple reason that they were too good to be true.
Wang’s 10 000m world record, set in Beijing three weeks after the 1993 world championships, took almost 42 seconds off Ingrid Kristiansen’s previous mark. That represents something like 250m on the track and Wang’s time, 29min 31,78sec, is a performance no athlete has got within 45 seconds of since.
Ma Junren, their coach and substitute father, put his charges’ remarkable performances down to exotic potions like turtle blood. The world didn’t believe him. But he was supported by not only his own Chinese masters but also the IOC. Former IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch declared Chinese sport as “very clean” on the eve of the 1994 Asian Games in Hiroshima. At first, Samaranch’s claim appeared to have been supported by the lack of any positive tests at Hiroshima.
But weeks later a “deep throat” figure presumably from within the Asian Games organising committee revealed to an American newspaper that a Chinese swimmer who had won gold had indeed failed a test. It, along with failures by 10 other Chinese competitors, were eventually confirmed. All 11, six men and five women seven swimmers, a hurdler, a cyclist and two canoeists tested postive for the same substance. It was the previously thought undetectable steroid dihydrotestosterone. The official who was in charge of the testing in Hiroshima, Professor Manfred Donike, said there was no doubt China was systematically doping its athletes.
But despite this reputation and nothing has happened since 1995 to suggest the Chinese have cleaned up their act the IOC has given them the games. Looking ahead to 2008 we look set for yet another dope- driven celebration.
@Rogge could take the games to the linnet
Harry Pearson
Despite the fact that South Korea’s Kim Un-yong’s suitability to be president of the International Olympic Committee was given a wonderful boost when he was implicated in an alleged corruption scandal just hours before voting, Belgian surgeon Jacques Rogge this week beat off all challengers for the job.
After the recent performances of the tennis players Kim Clijsters and Justine Henin and the news that South Africa’s United States Open winner Retief Goosen attributes much of his success on the golf course to the help of the Belgian sports psychologist Jos Vanstiphout, Rogge’s appointment may give the impression that Belgium is fast becoming a major sporting power. That would be wrong, however. For the simple fact is that Belgium already is a major sporting power and has been for some time.
That this has gone unacknowledged owes much to simple prejudice. For just as Bobby Charlton might have been given more credit for his creative genius had he had a full head of hair instead of that scrape-over, so any sportsman born in Belgium faces an uphill struggle for recognition. As Simon Kuper once remarked of the beefy midfielder Jan Ceulemans, whose jolting gallops were a stirring feature of the 1986 World Cup finals: “Had he been born in any other country he’d have been acknowledged as a world-class player.”
Down the years Belgian sporting heroes have included Eddy “The Cannibal” Merckx and a whole host of Flemish cyclists; three-time Le Mans winner Jackie Ickx; Gaston Reiff, who beat Emil Zatopek to win the Olympic 5 000m gold in 1948, and the elegantly monikered golfer Flory van Donck (second in the 1956 and 1959 British Opens).
Yet despite these titanic efforts the prevailing view has been of a nation of sporting underachievers.
Perhaps that is why most of the time Belgians seem to have preferred to concentrate their efforts away from the mainstream, keeping a firm grip on the sort of pursuits that turn up on Transworld Sport, sandwiched between Mexican cliff-diving and Xtreme ballroom dancing.
The Belgians invented pigeon racing and land-yachting, and as president of the IOC Rogge has it in his power to make either an Olympic event. For my part, though, I would like to see the new boy putting his weight behind the charming Flemish pastime of finch sport.
Basically, for there are certainly subtleties I have missed, this begins when its owner places a linnet or some other songbird inside a wicker basket. He and other like-minded individuals then sit beside their birds and make a chalk mark on a piece of wood whenever it chirrups. The bird that does so most in the allotted time is declared the winner. This would slot in nicely beside other Olympic thrill-fests such as Greco-Roman wrestling and small-bore shooting.
Admittedly recent sports that have been rushed on to the Olympic schedule have been things such as beach volleyball. But if Rogge can amend the rules of finch sport to dictate that female competitors must wear bikinis and signal a chirrup by waving their legs in the air instead of using chalk, then there seems no reason why Belgian sport shouldn’t take another step towards shaking off its unjustified image.
@Who is the new IOC boss?
Name:Jacques Rogge
Born: May 2 1942 in Ghent, Belgium.
Family: Married to Anne Bovijn; two children.
Education: Doctor of medicine; degree in sports medicine, surgeon.
Languages: Dutch, French, English, German, Spanish.
Career: Orthopaedic surgeon; former sports medicine lecturer at Universite Libre, Brussels and University of Ghent.
Was he a sportsman? He’s a three-time Olympian having competed for Belgium as a yachtsman in Mexico (1968); Munich (’72) and Montreal (’76). He is a former world champion in his class and twice runner-up. He also played rugby for the Belgian national team.
How did he become head of the IOC? He was Belgium’s chef de mission at the 1976 Olympic Winter Games in Innsbruck and at a further four summer and winter Games after that. In 1989 he became the president of the European Olympic Committees and, two years later, became a member of the IOC. Once a member his rise was meteoric. In 1995 he was appointed chairman of the coordination commission for the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. Three years later he took up the same position for the 2004 Games in Athens. In 1998 he was appointed to the IOC executive board.
@Tunisia go through
Just two World Cup places remain for African football’s best
Ntuthuko Maphumulo
Tunisia had two reasons to celebrate this week: they confirmed their place in next year’s World Cup in Japan and Korea, and they displaced South Africa as the best African team in world body Fifa’s rankings.
The North Africans beat the Democratic Republic of the Congo 3-0 to join South Africa and Cameroon as qualifiers for the World Cup and earned themselves a ranking of 22 in the world. South Africa, previously ranked 22, dropped to 25.
Cameroon and South Africa played their final World cup qualifiers, which were only academic as both teams had already won through. Cameroon drew with Zambia 2-2, while South Africa beat Malawi more comfortably than the 2-0 scoreline suggests.
Qualifying Groups 2 and 3 have become known as the groups of death. Any of the top two or three teams stand a chance of qualifying for the World Cup if they win their final qualifying games over the next two weeks.
Liberia’s Lone Stars edged closer to their first appearance in the World Cup finals after they beat Sierra Leone 1-0 through a goal from the one time African, European and world player of the year George Weah.
Weah retired from the national side two weeks ago after Liberia lost to Ghana 2-1 in Monrovia because supporters insulted his mother. He was called back to represent the country by President Charles Taylor.
The Lone Stars now have to wait and see as Nigeria take on Ghana on the weekend of July 27 in Lagos in a game that will determine who will go to the World Cup. Victory for Nigeria would end the hopes of Liberia making their first appearance on the biggest soccer stage, but a loss or draw for the Super Eagles would see Liberia in Korea and Japan.
In Group 3 Morocco are the log leaders with 15 points but cannot be assured of a place in the greatest soccer show piece.
This is because Egypt and Senegal, both on 12 points, have a game at hand with only goal difference separating the two.
A win by either or both of these teams next weekend would mean the group goes down to goal difference. Egypt play Algeria after they thrashed Namibia 8-2 last week, and Senegal face Namibia after they beat Morocco 1-0.
African and Olympic champions Cameroon have made it to the World Cup five times now and reached the quarterfinals once in Italy in 1990.
South Africa will be at the extravaganza for the second time having made their first appearance in France 1998, exiting the tournament in the first round.
Bafana Bafana coach Carlos Queiroz is determined to take his team to at least the second round, with hopes of making the last eight.