Morocco’s Hicham El Guerrouj will try to erase the memory of past Olympic nightmares on Tuesday as Iraq’s footballers bid to continue their dream run in the semifinals at the Athens Games.
Even as athletics geared up for a night of six finals, word came from an International Olympic Committee source that Hungarian discus champion Robert Fazekas will be stripped of the gold medal he won on Monday for trying to switch his urine sample during a mandatory post-competition drugs test.
El Guerrouj, the 1 500m world record-holder and four-time world champion, will try once more to claim the Olympic gold that has eluded him.
He fell at the 1996 Atlanta Games, and was stunned in 2000 by Kenyan Noah Ngeny after winning 28 straight finals heading into the Sydney Games.
”I am confident it will be third time lucky for me,” El Guerrouj vowed. ”Just wait and see, I’ll make you believe me.”
Athletics offered six of the 14 gold medals going on Tuesday.
Among the highlights was the men’s pole vault, in which self-coached American Toby Stevenson had his sights set on gold after this year becoming only the ninth man in history to clear 6m.
Also on tap, the conclusion of the decathlon with its crowning of the man who can lay claim to the title of world’s best all-around athlete.
Kazakhstan’s Dimitry Karpov, the 2003 world championships decathlon bronze medallist, led the 10-discipline event after the first day, with world record-holder Roman Sebrle of the Czech Republic breathing down his neck.
Karpov, the 2003 World Championships bronze medallist, maintained his lead after two events on Tuesday, adding to his advantage by producing the best 110m hurdles and discus performances to push his total to 6 572 points.
Karpov was on course to become Kazakhstan’s first men’s medallist in the athletics arena since the country became independent from the former Soviet Union.
World champion Tom Pappas didn’t even make it to the decathlon finale, withdrawing with a foot injury after failing to record a height in the eighth event, the pole vault.
In other early athletics action, newly crowned 100m champion Justin Gatlin’s bid to become the first man to win the sprint double since Carl Lewis in 1984 remained on course as he eased into the second round of the 200m.
Finals were also on the slate in show jumping, beach volleyball, diving, weightlifting and sailing.
But action was heating up in several team sports at the semifinal stage, including Iraq’s clash with Paraguay in football.
A victory over Paraguay will guarantee Iraq only its second-ever Olympic medal, an achievement that seemed impossible just two weeks ago.
In baseball, Australia stunned gold-medal favourites Japan 1-0 to reach the final, a result that packed more seismic punch than the small earthquake that jolted the Olympic city on Tuesday afternoon.
At the Olympic velodrome, sprinters moved into the spotlight with two-time world champion Laurent Gane of France hoping to keep himself in contention for Tuesday night’s men’s final after missing out on bronze in Sydney.
He faced a ride-off for the medal round against Australian Ryan Bayley, while world champion Theo Bos of The Netherlands and German Rene Wolff were both into the semifinals.
Australian Anna Meares put herself in contention for her second gold medal of the Games after reaching the women’s spring semifinals, where she was to face Canadian Lori-Ann Muenzer.
Meares set a world record in winning the 500m time-trial gold medal on Friday. World sprint champion Svetlana Grankovskaya of Russia and compatriot Russian Tamilla Abassova were also in the hunt for women’s sprint gold.
At the Olympic Aquatic Centre, teenager Alexandre Despatie was poised to claim Canada’s first Olympic men’s diving gold after leading the preliminaries and semifinals in the 3m springboard.
In weightlifting, the heavyweights make their entry on to the stage, with two-time world champion Igor Razoronov of Ukraine bidding for gold after finishing just out of the medals in fourth in Sydney. — Sapa-AFP