Aussie women eye US upset in Rio

Contador set to miss Olympic road race

SYDNEY, July 12, (Agencies): Threetime Olympic medallist Suzy Batkovic was on Tuesday left out of Australia’s woman’s basketball squad for the Olympic Games as the Opals look to make the podium for a sixth successive time in Rio de Janeiro.

The 35-year-old, a team regular for over a decade, was one of three players to miss the cut in coach Brendan Joyce’s final roster alongside Tess Madgen and Rebecca Allen.

They were already without star centre Lauren Jackson, who retired in March because of injury after an almost 20-year international career.

The world number two Australians have won either silver or bronze at every Olympics dating back to Atlanta in 1996, with the irrepressible US team their long-time nemesis.

Laura Hodges, Elizabeth Cambage and Rachel Jarry return from the London 2012 line-up that won bronze, while Erin Phillips and Penny Taylor make their return to Olympic competition.

Alberto Contador looks set to miss the road race at next month’s Rio Olympics after saying on Tuesday that he needed four weeks to recover from injuries sustained on the Tour de France.

The Spaniard, who withdrew from the Tour during Sunday’s ninth stage, told a news conference in Madrid that his goal now was to get ready for the Vuelta (Tour of Spain) which starts on Aug 20.

The men’s Olympic road race will be held on Aug 6, almost four weeks after he sustained his injuries in two crashes in the first two stages of the Tour.

World champions Shawn Barber and Derek Drouin and heptathlon favourite Brianne Theisen-Eaton headline a 65-member Canadian athletics team for the Rio Olympics announced on Monday.

Barber won the pole vault at the 2015 world championships in Beijing and Drouin claimed the high jump title. He also won a bronze medal at the 2012 London Olympics.

Theisen-Eaton has the top heptathlon score in the world this year and is the two-time world outdoor silver medallist and 2016 world indoor champion.

Decathlete Damian Warner and sprinter Andre De Grasse also will be looking for medals at the Aug 5-21 Games.

Golfer Siddikur Rahman has become the first ever Bangladeshi to directly qualify for the Olympics Games after cementing his status as one of the top 60 players for next month’s tournament in Rio de Janeiro.

The 31-year-old’s place was confirmed when he finished in 56th place in the rankings list published by the International Golf Federation on Monday, the cut-off date for qualification.

Bangladesh is the most populous country never to have won an Olympic medal and all previous entrants have had to rely on wildcards provided by the International Olympic Committee and other international sports bodies.

Hong Kong golfer Tiffany Chan is aiming for the top after becoming one of three amateurs to qualify for the Rio Olympic games on Tuesday.

The 22-year-old university student’s spot was confirmed after she finished 56th in the Olympic rankings, as the sport returns to the games for the first time in 112 years.

“I’m really excited and happy to be part of the Olympics,” Chan told AFP hours after qualifying, adding that she hoped to appear on the leaderboard next month.

“I just have to be patient and try to learn from the other professional players,” Chan, who first played on a public Hong Kong driving range at the age of six, said.

Former WNBA center Liz Cambage has been included in a 12-strong Australian squad that is aiming to win a medal at a sixth consecutive Olympic women’s basketball tournament.

This time, the so-called Opals want gold in Rio de Janeiro.

Cambage, Laura Hodges and Rachel Jarry return from the squad which lost the semifinals to the United States at London 2012 and finished with the bronze. Penny Taylor and Erin Phillips return after missing the London Games.

“Gold is always the goal — but we know there is a long way to getting the chance,” said Taylor, who has two Olympic silver medals and, at 35, will be the oldest member of the squad.

Taylor plays for the Phoenix Mercury in the WNBA and has regular exposure to the top Americans.

Long jumper Darya Klishina, the only Russian athlete cleared to compete in this summer’s Olympic Games in Rio, says she does not feel a traitor.

The 25-year-old was given the goahead on Sunday by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) to compete internationally as a neutral athlete after a successful appeal against a blanket ban on her country’s track and field athletes for systematic doping.

Klishina, whose best performance at a senior global event was fourth at the world indoor championships in Istanbul in 2012, thanked the IAAF for giving her the chance to compete in Rio in a post on her Facebook page shortly after the decision.

NBC will broadcast the opening ceremony of the Rio Olympics on a onehour delay.

Spain’s Alberto Contador, who abandoned halfway in the ninth stage, greets spectators prior to the start of the ninth stage of the Tour de France cycling race over 184.5 kms (114.3 miles) with start in Vielha Val d’Aran, Spain, and finish in Andorra Arcalis, Andorra on

July 10. (AP)

NBC Sports Group Chair Mark Lazarus said Monday that will allow producers to “curate” the coverage to provide proper context.

With Rio just one hour ahead of the United States’ Eastern time zone, the network will televise most competition live, with the notable exception of gymnastics. For the third straight Olympics, NBC will stream every event live, but that hasn’t included the opening ceremony. This year, viewers will need to wait only an hour.

The opening ceremony is Aug 5. NBC also announced Monday that it would air a one-hour preview special the night before. While the program will feature several star athletes, it will also offer the network a chance to cover topics such as the Zika virus and polluted waters that it likely won’t address much once the games begin.

Bayern Munich’s pacey Brazilian winger Douglas Costa has withdrawn from the Rio Olympics due to injury, the German champions said on Monday.

Costa had been chosen along with Barcelona’s Neymar among the overage players in Brazil’s squad for the first summer Games in South America.

Bayern said on their website (www. fcbayern.de) that an injury to Costa’s left thigh had not healed and they had told the Brazilian football federation that the player could not be released.

“I greatly regret this,” said Bayern chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge. “We all wanted Douglas to contest the Olympic Games in his home country, but the player’s health and fitness takes priority.”

Bayern said Costa, who joined them a year ago from Ukrainian side Shakhtar Donetsk, would continue his sports rehabilitation programme in Munich.

Brazilian public defenders have recommended to Rio de Janeiro’s city hall and Olympic organizers that religions of African origin be represented in the ecumenical center of the Athletes Village.

Public defender Edison Santana told The Associated Press on Monday that his recommendation is based on the fact that only Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism are currently included.

Rio Games organizers said other services could be provided.

Santana said the recommendation is a way to settle the issue without a lawsuit and that organizers have 10 days to respond.

Official figures from 2010 show that out of 200 million inhabitants Brazil has almost 600,000 followers of African religions, such as Candomble, which was developed in the 19th century by Brazil’s slave populations.

Swimming’s world governing body FINA has cleared Russian swimming star Yulia Efimova of all charges for using the banned drug meldonium, the swimmer’s agent said Tuesday.

“Yulia received a letter from FINA doping panel chairman Robert Fox, which said that all charges for meldonium use had been dismissed,” her agent Andrei Mitkov told AFP.

“No sanctions were imposed against her. The case is closed.”

The 24-year-old swimmer, who won bronze at the 2012 London Games, was handed a provisional ban in March after testing positive for meldonium, the same medication that saw Russian tennis star Maria Sharapova banned.