Pakistan Information & News

 Umpteen Davids have slain many a Goliath in the world of boxing and Akhil Kumar standing on the threshold of history does not want to step on a banana skin and miss out on his first Olympic medal on Monday for someone who has beaten the world champion in his previous round today’s quarter-final bout against the relatively unheralded Veaceslav Gojan of Moldova should ideally be a cakewalk.

Akhil however refuses to lower his guard and says underestimating opponents can often be fatal you never underestimate an opponent much like you never get overawed by his reputation the bantam weight 54kg boxer who is just one win away from an Olympic medal said. A number of great players have bitten the dust just because they took it for granted. The Russian world champion Sergey Vodopyanov made the same mistake and underestimated me. See who reached the quarter finals. It is a cardinal sin in any other sport and I am not going to step into the ring thinking he would serve it on a platter the Haryana boxer said even before he boarded the flight to Beijing Akhil has been insisting that he would not settle for anything less than gold. Asked if that was arrogance Akhil said he is aware of the fine line that separates confidence from complacency. I am not complacent at all. I’m just confident, confident of my ability. I want to be the 1^st Indian boxer to have an Olympic medal dangling from his neck and that just cannot happen if I am not confident enough. Tomorrow is my medal bout, it’s too big an occasion to get complacent and I am confident because I know I’m not complacent Akhil said and the 27 year old has not faced Gojan before but the boxer says he has seen enough recordings of the Moldovan. I am thankful to Doordarshan , they provided me some of those recordings. I am consulting my coaches and formulating a strategy. All I can say is that I would not turn up under-prepared tomorrow he asserted though overwhelmed by the deluge of wishes flowing from all quarters Akhil is hurt by the way boxers are treated back home and he pleaded all to provide financial security to pugilists.

I am not sure if I would be read and listened to if something untoward happens in tomorrow’s bout but I know people would listen to me today. So I don’t want to take a chance and urge all to provide security to the boxers. I work with the Railways but if I buy a pair of boxing shoes I have to worry how to meet my monthly expenditure. Promised promotions never actually materialise and it is worse with other boxers said Akhil sounding bitter. I don’t aspire for private jets or trendy cars. I just want decent jobs for boxers and some financial security for them.

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His Olympics looking lost, Michael Phelps decided to flap those gangly arms one more time. Milorad Cavic, inches from spoiling it all, glided along just under the surface, convinced he had won gold. But it didn’t matter who was fastest. Just first.

Phelps swam into history with a magnificent finish Saturday, tying Mark Spitz with his seventh gold medal by the narrowest of margins in the 100-meter butterfly.

One-hundredth of a second, the time it takes lightning to strike the ground.

Whew!

“Dream as big as you can dream and anything is possible,” Phelps said. “I am sort of in a dream world. Sometimes I have to pinch

myself to make sure it is real.”

Call it the Great Haul of China — and it’s not done yet. Phelps has one more race on Sunday, which will likely complete his coronation as the greatest Olympian ever.

Spitz already ceded the title.

“It goes to show you that not only is this guy the greatest swimmer of all time and the greatest Olympian of all time, he’s maybe the greatest athlete of all time,” said the icon of the 1972 Munich Games. “He’s the greatest racer who ever walked the planet.”

The finish was so close the Serbian delegation filed a protest and swimming’s governing body had to review the tape down to the 10-thousandth of a second.

Phelps thought he lost — until he saw the “1″ beside his name on the scoreboard.

“When I did chop the last stroke, I thought that had cost me the race,” he said. “But it was actually the opposite. If I had glided, I would have been way too long. I took short, faster strokes to try to get my hand on the wall. I ended up making the right decision.”

Phelps’ time was 50.58 seconds, the only time in these Olympics that he won an event without breaking the world record.

Not to worry. The 23-year-old from Baltimore has now pulled even with the greatest of Olympic records.

“One word: epic,” Spitz told The Associated Press from Detroit. “I’m so proud of what he’s been able to do. I did what I did and it was in my day in those set of circumstances. For 36 years it stood as a benchmark. I’m just pleased that somebody was inspired by what I had done. He’s entitled to every second of what’s occurring to him now.

“I feel a tremendous load off my back.”

Phelps will return on Sunday to swim in his final event of these games, taking the butterfly leg of the 400 medley relay. The Americans will be heavily favored to give him his eighth gold, leaving Spitz behind.

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 Wrist injury forced Sania to retire from first round of singles at Beijing Olympics. When she retired from the game she was trailing 1-6 1-2 to Czech opponent Iveta Benesova and the match ended in 46 minutes. Sania and Benesova had met three times before where Benesova never lost a match. When Sania decided to retire Benesova came forward for a few words of consolation but Sania could not hold back her tears.

She left the court with tearful eyes after the match team coach Nandan Bal said she had a surgery on her right wrist and it was bothering her right from the beginning. She was covering the court well and keeping the ball in play too. But things subsequently became too painful and she had to retire. Sania’s doubles campaign is also doubtful due to the injury.

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 Beijing Olympics is on a huge scale and organisers intend to start as they mean to go on judging by their plans for Friday’s opening ceremony a 3 hour spectacular but the longer the performance the greater the chance of something can go and wrong and having invested so much time and effort in bringing the Games to China officials will be desperate to ensure their grandiose plans go off without a hitch. Some 15,000 performers are set to take part with 29,000 fireworks due to be released into the night sky and the ceremony is also due to see Chinese pop star Liu Huan together with British singer Sarah Brightman, sing a specially commissioned theme song in the closing artistic section.

Yet for many genuine sports fans around the world the opening ceremony of the Games are something of a puzzle delaying the serious business of competition for little obvious benefit. However ever since athletes first walked in behind their flags which were expected to be dipped before Britain’s King Edward VII at the 1908 Games in London the opening ceremony has increasingly become an opportunity for the host nation to say something about its culture and that is all the more true in an era of mass television with China a country which once prided itself on being closed to prying eyes now keen to show itself off to a global audience of hundreds of millions.

Given all that it is no surprise that film director Zhang Yimou best known in the West for his Oscar-nominated movie House of Flying Daggers has been entrusted with overseeing the ceremony. Zhang explained this week that the event would showcase the ancient and long history of the Chinese nation. He added the performance will reflect the cultural aspects of Chinese society and showcase what modern China and its people are all about but even before Friday’s show starts carefully-laid plans were upset when a film crew from South Korea’s private station SBS sneaked in and filmed a rehearsal and then broadcast parts of it on Tuesday before posting it on the Internet. However one thing has remained secret and that is the identity of the person who will light the Olympic flame after China President Hu Jintao declares the Games open. Basketball star Yao Ming who carried the Olympic torch through Beijing’s Tianamen Square on Wednesday, had been tipped for the honour but tradition dictates that a person can only carry the torch once in the run-up to a Games.  Officials remained tight-lipped saying only the flame-lighter had been selected for their sporting achievement and social influence. Darfur Lost Boy to carry US flag at ceremony. BEIJING: Lopez Lomong, one of the Lost Boys of Sudan who was a victim of violence in Darfur was named Thursday as the United States flag bearer for the opening ceremony at the Beijing Olympics. US captains in every Olympic sport met at the Olympic Village and voted to award the honor for Friday’s ceremony to Lomong a sensitive choice given criticism of Chinese foreign policy over the conflict in Darfur and this is the most exciting day ever in my life Lomong said. It is a great honor for me that my teammates chose to vote for me. The opening ceremony is the best day and the best moment of Olympic life. I am here as an ambassador of my country and I will do everything I can to represent my country well. Lomong, 23 was kidnapped from his family by the Janjaweed militia and taken hostage. He and other youths escaped and spent three days on the run before crossing the border into Kenya and being taken to a refugee camp. He spent years there just fighting to survive and famously paid five Kenyan shillings to watch a black and white television telecast of the 2000 Sydney Olympics. He said seeing US track star Michael Johnson win gold sparked his dream of becoming an Olympian. Lomong was adopted by a US foster family, changed his citizenship to American and will race in the 1,500 meters at Beijing and China has close ties with Sudan as one of the main buyers of the African nation’s oil and a key investor in its economy, and rights groups have accused Beijing of not doing enough to try and resolve the conflict in Darfur and the United Nations has said that 300,000 people have died in Darfur and that more than 2.2 million have been displaced since 2003. The Sudanese government puts the number of fatalities at 10,000.

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