Women support referees at U-17 World Cup
women officials will be officiating as support referees for the upcoming FIFA Under-17 World Cup, which kicks off on October 6. The FIFA Referees Committee has appointed 21 trios of match officials, representing all six confederations.
“For the first-ever time, FIFA has selected female referees for a men’s tournament. The results and improvements seen in the joint preparations have shown that the time has come for the elite female referees to officiate in men’s competitions together with their male colleagues,” a statement from the organising committee said.
The Indian golf team for the World Police and Fire Services Games won two gold and a bronze in a tough field that had more than 300 golfers from 80 countries.
The event held at three venues in Los Angeles --- Trump National Golf Club, Harding Golf Club and Wilson Golf Club ---- from August 7-17, saw DIG Pushpendra Rathore of the Border Security Force (BSF) and SP Kulwinder Singh (Haryana Police) playing key roles in the team winning the medals.
Indian WGM Harika Dronavalli failed to maintain her unbeaten run, losing to Romanian GMBogdan-Daniel Deac in the fourth round of the Master’s tournament. The world No 9 Indian, playing with black pieces, got off to a flying start as she took the Romanian’s pawn in the third move of the game.
Former world champion Viswanathan Anand had another bad outing, drawing seven and losing two games, to remain on joint 8th place after the end of nine rounds of blitz in the St. Louis Rapid and blitz chess tournament here. Having garnered just seven points out of a possible eighteen in the rapid section, Anand needed a big breakthrough in the Blitz tournament but he was not in the best shape to make a mark.