Usain Bolt can have his final sporting wish granted at World Athletics Championships

Agencies
August 12, 2017

London, Aug 12: He had demanded that the world write one last headline about him - "Unbeatable. Unstoppable." - and at the World Athletics Championships on Saturday, Usain St Leo Bolt can still have his final sporting wish granted.

Those quicksilver feet which always dealt in gold have another chance to obey his command as he seeks to bring down the curtain on his matchless sprint career and land a 20th global championship title in the 4 x 100 metres relay.

There may never have been an anti-climax in sport quite as deflating as Saturday's 100 metres final when Bolt, in his last solo race, proved both beatable and stoppable, defeated by the two-time doping offender Justin Gatlin.

It seemed the greatest entertainer that athletics -- and maybe even the whole panoply of sport -- has known had run out of magic, betrayed by a creaking start from the blocks.

Even as he posed for all the selfies afterwards, demonstrating a grace and sportsmanship that proved him just as big a winner in rare defeat, it still felt wrong, a desperately downbeat way to depart for a sportsman who has brought so much joy to all.

So, to the good news. Delightfully, there are now two last spins for the road. There was supposed to be only one, the 4 x 100 metres relay final on Saturday night, but Bolt has offered us an extra treat by opting to run the heats too earlier that morning.

Saturday night will, he promises us, be the last time we ever see him flowing down a track, with that unique ground-devouring stride that used to make other fine sprinters appear like shrimps wallowing in treacle.

No worries about having to haul himself stiffly out of the blocks here; he'll take the baton on the anchor leg and fly. He always did look his most imperious with a rolling start and he still holds the fastest 100m relay leg time, an unreal 8.65 seconds.

UNTOUCHABLE LANDMARKS

But then all the records are his. He departs with landmarks that feel for the moment untouchable, especially that 100 metres milestone of 9.58 seconds -- nobody has come within a tenth of a second of that one -- and the 200m mark of 19.19.

Since he first ran the blue riband shorter event in 2007, he has run 54 100m races, excluding heats, and won all but six. Of his 200 metres races since his breakthrough 2008 season, he's lost, astonishingly, just one of 30.

The statistics tell of a longevity of domination that the fickle world of sprinting had never seen before. Yet no athlete could be defined less by cold, emotionless figures.

With Bolt, the pleasure, the gasps of incredulous laughter, always came with just watching him make the impossible look workaday.

When he leaves us, perhaps with one fitting final gold and one last daft 'Lightning Bolt' pose, it will feel like a light illuminating world sport has just been switched off.

Then where will athletics be? It is hard to imagine a sport that needed a figurehead more than it needed Bolt. Mired in doping scandals, strangled by disinterest and treated with increasing public cynicism, Bolt was its joyous bolthole.

His farewell championships have given a glimpse of athletics life without him.

LIFELONG FANS

We had a 100m winner Gatlin booed to the rafters and a 200m victor Ramil Guliyev, whose winning time was nearly a second slower than Bolt`s best and who ended up being interrogated in the victory press conference about his adopted country Turkey`s doping record.

Then, Bolt`s supposed successor as the sport`s main attraction, Wayde van Niekerk, wept over suggestions of IAAF 'sabotage' from a rival Isaac Makwala who was not allowed to run the 400 metres because of a virus he claimed he didn't have.

It was never like that when Bolt was doing his thing. Bolt brought a pure, clear simplicity to the sport, rich in entertainment, delivered with a smile -- and on a diet of chicken nuggets.

The world did not just love Bolt, smiling with him as he made winning look preposterously easy; athletics trusted Bolt in an era when the sport was engulfed by disenchantment.

When Sebastian Coe, the IAAF President, watched his farewell to Jamaican athletics in Kingston this year, he told Reuters: "He's connected with young people, with people that didn't even think they liked track and field, he's turned them into lifelong fans.

"I'm not just saying that as the president of the world sport, I`m saying this as a fan."

Because Bolt made us all his fans. He was athletics` Muhammad Ali and Pele rolled into one.

If anyone else had declared, as he did after his 200m triumph at London 2012, "I am a living legend. Bask in my glory!", he would have appeared an appalling braggart. Not Bolt; he just made it seem like a bit of fun.

And that was, ultimately, his crowning glory. Not just that he was the fastest man in the world but that he so obviously loved every hundredth of a second of us enjoying him. Let's bask in his glory one last time.

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News Network
January 8,2020

Indore, Jan 8: Skipper Virat Kohli struck an unbeaten 30 as India beat Sri Lanka by seven wickets in the second Twenty20 international in Indore on Tuesday.

The hosts rode a 71-run opening stand between KL Rahul, who hit 45, and Shikhar Dhawan, who made 32, to chase down their target of 143 in 17.3 overs and take a 1-0 lead in the three-match series after the first match was rained off.

Leg-spinner Wanindu Hasaranga took the wickets of the Indian openers but Shreyas Iyer, who scored 34 before falling to paceman Lahiru Kumara, and Kohli, who hit the winning six, got the team home.

The third match is on Friday in Pune.

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News Network
May 9,2020

May 9: Filipina weightlifting star Hidilyn Diaz noticed live-streamed concerts were collecting money for coronavirus relief and was struck by inspiration: why not raise funds with an online workout?

Since then the Olympic silver-medallist -- and strong contender for her country's first Games gold -- has made enough money to buy food packs for hundreds of hard-hit families in the Philippines.

Diaz has done it all from Malaysia, where she was training to qualify for the now-postponed Tokyo Olympics when much of the world locked down against the virus in March.

"I thought (distribution) would be impossible because I'm not physically present," Diaz, 29, told news agency.

"It's a good thing that I have trusted friends and trusted family members who understand why we need to do a fundraising."

That circle of supporters has handed out the packages, which include vegetables, eggs and rice, to more than 400 families.

The food was bought with donations from about 50 people who joined sessions that lasted up to three hours, and gave them a rare chance to train with an elite athlete.

Diaz rose to fame in 2016 after snagging a surprise silver in the 53 kilogramme category in Rio, becoming the Philippines' first female Olympic medallist and ending the nation's 20-year medal drought at the Games.

Two years later, she won gold at the Asian Games in Indonesia.

However, her quest to qualify for Tokyo is on hold ahead of the Games' rescheduled opening in July 2021.

"I thought all the hard work would soon be over... then it was extended," she said. "But I'm still thankful I can still continue with (the training) I need to do."

Still, the lockdown broke her daily training regimen, keeping her away from weights for 14 days for the first time in her career.

"I felt like I was losing my mind already. I've been carrying the barbell for 18 years and all of a sudden it's gone. Those were the kinds of anxiety that I felt," she said.

But she got access to some equipment, and with her coach's urging, got back to work. She was relieved to find her strength was still there.

Instead of a Tokyo berth, the past months have been about a different kind of accomplishment for Diaz: helping her countrymen get through the coronavirus crisis.

Rosemelyn Francisco's family in Zamboanga City, Diaz's home town, is one of the first to get help from the athlete's initiative, and is deeply grateful.

Her family was not wealthy to begin with, and the pandemic has cost her husband his construction job.

"The food she donated has all everything we need, including eggs," said Francisco, 27.

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News Network
March 29,2020

Sydney, Mar 29: Steve Smith's two-year leadership ban ended quietly Sunday, leaving him eligible again to captain Australia at a time of uncertainty over when international cricket will resume.

Smith was stripped of the captaincy and banned from leading Australia for two years over his involvement in the 2018 ball tampering scandal in South Africa. His sentence ended Sunday and he can again captain Australia if called upon.

Australian players were due this week to conclude a series of matches in New Zealand and, for some, to join the Indian Premier League. But it wasn't clear Sunday if the IPL will take place this year and when international matches will resume. Australia's scheduled mid-year tours to England and Bangladesh are in doubt.

Smith told Channel Nine television's Sports Sunday he is doing his best to stay mentally and physically fit, training in his home gym, going on 10 kilometer (6 mile) runs and practising the guitar.

"It's obviously not looking likely (the IPL will go ahead) at the moment," Smith said. "I think there might be some meetings over the next few days to discuss what the go is with it all.

"I'm just trying to stay physically and mentally fit and fresh and, if it goes ahead at some point, then great. And if not, there's plenty going on in the world at the moment. So just play it day by day."

It seems unlikely Smith will return to the captaincy when cricket resumes. Tim Paine is firmly established as Australia's test captain and at 35 is not immediately considering retirement. Aaron Finch has captained Australia successfully in white ball cricket.

The conclusion of Smith's ban ends the period of upheaval in Australian cricket that followed the ball tampering incident in the second test at Cape Town in 2018 when Cameron Bancroft, with the knowledge of Smith and his vice-captain David Warner, used sandpaper to change the condition of the ball.

Smith and Warner received one-year bans from international and most domestic cricket and Bancroft was banned for nine months. The scandal also resulted in the resignation of coach Darren Lehmann and the departure of Cricket Australia's chief executive, James Sutherland.

Warner remains under a career-long leadership ban.

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