Sathish, Sanjita to lead lifters at qualification

Commonwealth Games champions Sathish Kumar Sivaling am and K Sanjita Chanu will spearhead the challenge of a 16-member Indian team at the Senior Asian Weightlifting Championship, which will serve as the qualification event for the Olympics, at Tashkent, Uzbekistan from April 21 to 30.

Sathish (Men’s 77kg) and Sanji ta( Women’s 48 kg) had won gold medals at the Commonwealth Games in 2014, while Sukhen Dey (Men’s 56kg), who had also bagged the top position at Glasgow, failed to make it to the team for the Asian Championship. RIO OLYMPICS CHIEF SHRUGS OFF WORRIES

LAUSANNE: Rio de Janeiro’s Olympic chief Carlos Nuzman on Tuesday brushed aside complaints over power failures and other problems revealed during a gymnastics test event and also played down concerns over a deepening political crisis in Brazil. The Association of Summer Olympic International Federations (ASOIF) heard on Tuesday that a gymnastics event being held in Rio this week partly as a test run for the Games suffered from power failures, problems with the timing system and power outages when athletes were performing. ‘BLADE JUMPER’ TURNS TO SCIENCE FOR BERTH

FRANKFURT: Paralympic champion Markus Rehm said he hoped new scientific studies would prove he gains no advantage through his prosthesis and clear him to compete at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in August. Nicknamed “Blade Jumper”, the 2012 Paralympics gold medallist and 2014 German long jump champion hopes to become the second athlete with a carbon fibre running blade to compete in the Olympics after South Africa’s Oscar Pistorius in 2012. But a new rule by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) introduced last year leaves it to amputee competitors to prove their prosthesis does not put them in an advantage over ablebodied athletes.