International Capsules: UK police officer loses Olympic security documents
LONDON (AP) — A British tabloid reported Tuesday that it had been handed documents about security arrangements for the London Olympics that were left on a train by a police officer, the latest in a series of embarrassing mishaps involving British authorities misplacing government documents.
London police confirmed Tuesday that one of its officers lost a bag containing documents on Jan. 5 and reported it to his bosses, but downplayed the incident, adding that the papers were not "operationally sensitive."
"Obviously the loss of restricted material is a matter for concern, but we are satisfied that this does not compromise our security operation for the Olympics," police said in a statement.
The Sun newspaper said it received the documents from a passenger who found them on the train, and that it returned them to the police. It says the papers contain accounts of meetings where security measures were discussed, and details of contingency plans for the Olympics.
The Sun published an image of some of the documents in its print edition, and described in sweeping terms some of the complaints police had about communications systems.
Olympics experts deemed the breach embarrassing.
"It will do nothing but undermine confidence in the Olympics security operation, already brought into question by the prospect of riots and terrorist attacks," said Ellis Cashmore, a professor of culture, media and sport at Staffordshire University in England. "With so much scrutiny, it's almost beyond belief that someone in a responsible position would be guilty of such crass absentmindedness."
Security has been a top priority for the Olympics since 1972, when 11 Israeli athletes and coaches died during a hostage ordeal involving Palestinian extremists at the games in Munich. The nature of nations squared off against nations also opens up the Olympics to an array of political issues.
The incident comes only a few weeks after London police experts managed to smuggle a fake bomb into Olympic Park in a security test. Olympic officials declined to comment directly on the matter, saying such "testing is standard practice" in all major security operations.
Security experts said that while such testing is routine, it underlined the constant and ongoing struggle faced by security forces to create a system that will safeguard the July 27-Aug. 12 event without making London feel like an armed camp.
Authorities have already acknowledged they vastly underestimated the number of people needed to search spectators and otherwise secure venues and other Olympic sites, and have substantially increased the number of military, police and security guards taking part in the games.
U.K. authorities have been criticized over several mishaps involving the loss of sensitive information in recent years.
In January 2008, a computer carrying information on 600,000 prospective military recruits was stolen from the car of a Royal Navy recruitment officer in central England. The month before, the government's top transport official said a disc containing personal information of 3 million driving-test candidates was lost. The Department of Health also lost information on 168,000 patients in a separate incident.
Dwarfing all those incidents was the revelation in November 2007 that British tax officials lost computer discs containing information — including bank records — for 25 million people, nearly half the country's inhabitants.
Olympics ticket resale site to re-open
LONDON (AP) — London Olympics organizers plan to re-open a ticket resale website Tuesday for the Summer Games but only for people who want to resell their tickets.
The ticket resale will allow people to return tickets, resuming a resale effort that stalled earlier this month when the computer site crashed. London has suffered several computer glitches because demand for the July 27-Aug. 12 event has outstripped supply.
Ticket holders can offer their tickets for resale at face value until Feb. 3. Those who want to buy those Olympic tickets will have to wait until April.
"We are sorry for any inconvenience caused by the suspension of our ticketing resale platform," said Chris Townsend, the commercial director for the organizers. "We made a commitment to our customers to give them a safe, secure and legal way of selling Olympic and Paralympic tickets which they are no longer able to use. We are delivering on that commitment."
The decision to delay the resumption of purchases reflects a tacit acknowledgment by Olympics organizers that demand for tickets has exceeded the capability of their computers systems to address them.
London's organizers have struggled with ticket sales — and the public anger that has emerged after several faltering efforts to make the sales fair and equitable. Frustration began from the start, with a complicated lottery system in which people blindly registered for tickets and handed over their credit card details before learning what tickets they were getting.
Two-thirds of ticket seekers failed to earn any in a first round that ended in April, with 22 million requests for 6.6 million available tickets. While some of those tickets will come back in resale — because the plans of the buyers have changed — organizers acknowledge that those numbers will be limited.
Another round was blighted by computer problems — even before the troubles with the resales earlier this month.
-- Danica Kirka
Kiwi farmers group sees sheep shearing at Olympics
WELLINGTON , New Zealand (AP) — A New Zealand farm lobby group says sheep shearing has the potential to become an Olympic demonstration sport. Just don't count on seeing it at London next summer or Rio in 2016.
The "time has come to elevate shearing's sporting status to the ultimate world stage," the New Zealand Federated Farmers said in a statement Monday, adding that the world's top shearers are "athletes who take it to another level."
While shearing is a sport, its chances of becoming an Olympic event — even a demonstration one — are slim.
The Olympic sports program is decided a minimum of six years in advance of a scheduled games through a complicated process that includes strict criteria including global participation by male and female athletes. For example, baseball and softball were cut from the Olympic program for 2012 and 2016 because they aren't played in enough countries.
New Zealand produces some of the world's best shearers and its national championship, the Golden Shears, receives substantial media coverage in the country. Other shearing countries include Ireland and Australia.
New Zealand will host the world shearing championships in March, and Federated Farmers Meat and Fiber chairwoman Jeannette Maxwell said it was an appropriate time for the sport to press for wider international recognition.
"One way would be to make shearing a demonstration sport at a Commonwealth Games, if not, the Olympics itself," she said.
Maxwell said men's and women's world record-holders, Ivan Scott of Ireland and Kerri-Jo Te Huia of New Zealand, showed the athleticism necessary to reach the top of world shearing.
"Ivan regained his world eight-hour solo lamb title by shearing 749 lambs, seven more than the previous world record," she said.
"Kerri-Jo smashed the women's eight-hour solo lamb shearing world record by shearing 507 lambs, 37 more than the previous record."
To be accepted on the Olympic program, a sport first must be recognized by the International Olympic Committee by being widely practiced around the world and administered by an international federation that ensures that the sport's activities follow the Olympic Charter.
Dance sport, squash and 10-pin bowling have lobbied unsuccessfully for many years to be accepted as Olympic sports.
Maxwell said New Zealand's government sports funding agency Sparc recognized shearing as a sport and Australia had previously pressed for its inclusion in the Commonwealth Games.
Gymnastics
Injured left foot not deterring Horton
Jonathan Horton knows the routine. First comes the injury, then comes the speculation, then comes the doubters.
The two-time Olympic medalist understands. Rip up your left foot the way he did in the world gymnastics championships last October and there's no stopping the whispers.
"You get hurt 10 months before the Olympic games and people start questioning, 'is he going to lose a lot of skills?'" Horton said.
The 26-year-old and longtime backbone of the U.S. men's team is hoping to provide an emphatic no. Horton plans to compete on pommel horse and still rings at the Winter Cup in Las Vegas early next month even though a pair of screws in his injured foot will likely prevent him from completing full routines.
The way Horton figures it, he doesn't really need two good feet to show that he remains focused on making the 2012 U.S. Olympic team. One should be enough.
"I've been training as hard or harder than anybody else in the gym since I got hurt," the two-time U.S. champion said. "You'll be able to look at these two events and see I've upgraded them, made them better. They'll be able to see that even without dismounts."
Horton isn't ruling out attempting a dismount on pommel horse — thinking he can land on his right foot then roll onto his back — but he plans on doing his entire ring routine before being helped back down to the floor by coach Tom Meadows.
While the judges and the rest of the field may not see a finished product, they will see Horton has upped the degree of difficulty on rings. Ditto pommel horse, notoriously his weak spot.
Here's the other thing: Not only will Horton be doing harder routines, he thinks he'll be doing them better. The injury has forced him to spend the last few months focusing exclusively on low-impact elements. No vault. No floor exercise.
No big deal.
In a way, Horton considers the setback a blessing. Having spent more than two decades in gyms across the world, he was starting to get burned out. The passion and commitment that led him to a silver medal on high bar at the Beijing Olympics — the same games in which he helped the U.S. to a surprise bronze medal — were waning.
It wasn't until London appeared to be disappearing on the horizon that Horton got his mojo back.
"Just the monotony of the same routines over and over and over again was just starting to get to me," he said. "But you never want to get injured. That has kind of put things in perspective for me. I realize how much I love to do gymnastics."
So much that he's willing to give it a go on one leg.
While Horton stressed he's going to listen to his body, at the moment his body is telling him to get out there and do his thing.
"I need to get back on the competitive floor," he said. "I feel like I'm a very seasoned gymnast at this point. I want the U.S. and the rest of the world to see that this injury hasn't stopped me."
If anything, it's strengthened his resolve.
Horton understands he's closer to the end of his career than the beginning and, after the most significant injury of his life, he's developed a sense of urgency.
It's why his rehab is 2½ months ahead of schedule. If the screws come out on time, Horton expects doctors to clear him for full practice by March 1. That will give him just over two weeks to prepare for the Pacific Rim Championships in Everett, Wash.
Plenty of time to work all the kinks out on floor and vault. Probably.
He anticipates some trepidation when he stands at the end of the runway and sees the vault looming at the other end. He has no plans to change what he does or how he does it.
"I think minimum I'll do what I did at worlds last year and maybe upgrade my floor routine," he said. "That vault is as hard as I can do. It has as high of a start value as people can get."
No need to downgrade, particularly with so much at stake.
Though he's spent the last three months grounded — at least in a gymnastics sense — Horton is still planning on doing the all-around this summer.
"I feel like I can make the medal podium," said Horton, the bronze medalist at the 2010 world championships.
He made the final in the still rings at worlds last fall, and posted impressive scores on parallel bars and high bar in the team competition even though his foot was already broken. His gritty performance helped the U.S. earn a bronze, its first medal at the event since 2003.
He believes he has another Olympic run in him, even if it will start with a limp.
''You can kind of be aggressive but smart about it at the same time," he said. "I'm not going to do anything that's going to set me back."
-- Will Graves
Britain's rhythmic group will miss London Games
LONDON (AP) — Britain has fallen short of the required qualifying score and will not be able to compete in the rhythmic gymnastics group event at this summer's London Olympics.
Britain's rhythmic group needed to score 45.223 at the test event at the O2 Arena, which also served as a second Olympic qualifier. But the team fell .273 short Tuesday, finishing with a score of 44.950. Britain appealed, but it was rejected by the International Gymnastics Federation.
Frankie Jones had already given the host nation a spot in individual rhythmic gymnastics, qualifying at last fall's world championships. Britain also will send full teams in both men's and women's artistic gymnastics, a first since the boycotted games in 1984.
Skiing
Skier Maple's Streif debut lasts few seconds
KITZBUEHEL, Austria (AP) — Wiley Maple's first run down the famous Streif downhill lasted only a few seconds as he crashed at a steep starting section and lost his skis before ending up in a safety net.
The American escaped injury during Tuesday's training run, and later skied down into the finish area. The course is one of the most challenging in World Cup skiing.
"I don't feel hurt now," Maple said. "A bummer that I didn't finish. But it's kind of fun, crashing and not getting hurt."
A 21-year-old from Aspen, Colo., Maple said the course had always had a special appeal to him.
"I dreamed about it as a little kid and it's pretty crazy that now I get to race here," said Maple, who made his World Cup debut a year ago at another classic venue — Lauberhorn in Wengen, Switzerland.
Maple said he wasn't nervous for his first run on the Streif but was distracted by officials briefly stopping him at the start.
"I was held at the start for a little while," he said. "I got pretty relaxed while I was at the start and that was probably not a good thing. I wanted to go and I started relaxing more and when it was time to go, I couldn't charge up as much."
While speeding up, Maple prepared for a turn and was transitioning to get to his left foot when the tips of his skis crossed, leaving him no chance to react.
"I lost all my skis and stuff and got out," said Maple, who was the only one of 65 starters not to finish.
Maple was issued a warning by the International Ski Federation for breaching the rules because he got back onto the course and skied down after his crash.
"This is really a big issue," FIS race director Guenter Hujara said. "If a racer carries on after the start-stop signal from the jury, we have no control whatsoever. This is very dangerous."
The 3.3-kilometer Streif course, known for its intimidating turns and bumps, has been the scene of several serious crashes. Scott Macartney of the United States, Daniel Albrecht of Switzerland and Hans Grugger of Austria all suffered near-fatal head injuries after crashes.
For Maple's teammate Travis Ganong, it was only his second year visiting the course. He said he could imagine how Maple felt before the start.
"Last year, I was nervous. It was unknown, first time going to the moon," Ganong said. "This time, I know what to expect. It's more enjoyable, more fun. It's a really cool hill."
Maple said he was looking forward to Wednesday's second training session.
"I really want to finish ... and figure out the track a little bit," he said. "It's your first time so you want to get all the training runs you can get. I will have my first training run again tomorrow."
-- Eric Willemsen
Top ski official calls for underwear rule change
KITZBUEHEL, Austria (AP) — The president of the International Ski Federation has called for a rule change to clarify what skiers may wear under their race suit.
The request comes after a dispute about Tina Maze's long underwear. The Swiss ski federation protested following the Slovenian's second-place finish at a World Cup super-G in Bad Kleinkirchheim, Austria, nine days ago.
The ski federation confiscated her underwear, but later said it passed permeability tests. Still, the federation recommends racers not wear such clothing because it might contain plastic parts that prevent the body from breathing.
Ski federation President Gian Franco Kasper says: "We have to change our rules. ... It has to be made very clear — if (underwear) is plastified, it is forbidden."
Swiss Alpine racer Dominique Gisin out for season
GENEVA (AP) — Swiss downhill racer Dominique Gisin had knee surgery and will miss the rest of the World Cup season.
The Swiss ski federation says Gisin will need four months to recover. She underwent surgery Tuesday to repair cartilage in her left knee. The injury was more serious than expected.
Gisin is fourth in the World Cup downhill standings this season. Her best finish was third in a race at Lake Louise, Alberta, won by Lindsey Vonn. Gisin has three career World Cup victories — two downhills and one in super-G.
Track & Field
No sale: Auction fails but sprinter finds sponsor
LONDON (AP) — British sprinter James Ellington hoped to cover the costs of his Olympic preparations by turning to an online auction. The auction didn't work out, but he did find a sponsor.
Ellington thought he had succeeded in covering his travel, accommodation and uniform costs for the London Games when he received a $53,700 offer on eBay. It turned out to be a hoax, but a shaving product manufacturer has stepped in to sponsor the 26-year-old Londoner.
"Going on eBay gave me amazing exposure, but unfortunately the winning bidder wasn't genuine," Ellington said Tuesday. "I couldn't be happier that the deal has been sorted. Now I can focus on winning a medal for Great Britain in the 2012 Olympics."
Ellington ran the third leg when Britain won the 4x100 relay at the European Team Championship last year. But a string of injury problems meant Ellington missed out on major sponsorship deals or national lottery support.
"I personally want to thank all of the people who emailed, tweeted and wrote to me," said Ellington, whose 20.52 seconds in the 200 in France last year was the fastest time by a British athlete at a nonaltitude venue. "I've been so touched by all of your messages of support and even donations to my cause. Whatever I manage to achieve at London 2012, I'm doing it for you."
Ellington offered to wear branded uniforms at training and media events at "all appropriate opportunities" until the end of the Olympics in exchange for sponsorship. He estimated that he needed at least $46,000 — half in wages and the rest to cover expenses.
Ellington's new sponsor, King of Shaves, previously sponsored British skeleton competitors Kristan Bromley and Shelley Rudman at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin.
-- Staurt Condie
Suhr to compete in pole vault at Millrose
NEW YORK (AP) — Jenn Suhr, the world's No. 1 ranked pole vaulter, has entered the strong field for the Millrose Games.
Suhr won the event at Millrose in 2009. She took the silver medal at the 2008 Games in Beijing. Suhr, a native of Fredonia, N.Y., says Tuesday she is looking forward to vaulting in the Armory. Suhr is one of five women in this year's Millrose field who have cleared 15 feet.
The Millrose Games are moving uptown to the Armory after nearly a century at Madison Square Garden and will be held Feb. 11.
Cycling
Greipel wins first stage of Tour Down Under
ADELAIDE, Australia (AP) — Two-time champion Andre Greipel of Germany overcame fierce crosswinds and soaring temperatures to win the 90-mile first stage on the Tour Down Under on Tuesday.
Greipel edged Alessandro Petacchi of Italy in a sprint finish in 102-degree temperatures to claim his ninth stage victory in the six-stage race, the opening event of the UCI World Tour.
The sprint ace also won the tour's criterium prelude on Sunday for the Belgium-based Lotto-Belisol team. He won the Tour Down Under in 2008 and 2010.
Petacchi took second place for the Lampre-ISD team, while Yauheni Hutarovich of Belarus was third and Fabio Sabatini of Italy fourth.
Greipel avoided a late crash involving up to 60 riders and was again helped to victory by the powerful leadout train of the Lotto-Belisol team.
"I'm lucky I won today," Greipel said. "There was a massive crash with 800 meters to go."
Greipel's teammate, 26-year-old Belgian Jurgen Roelandts, injured his neck in the pileu and was taken to Adelaide Hospital by ambulance.
French rider Frederic Guesdon was taken to hospital for X-rays on his hip, and Italy's Matteo Montaguti of the French Ag2r La Mondiale team was treated for a broken collarbone.
"It was a huge crash," Australian veteran Robbie McEwen said. "But as far as crashes go I had a good one. I went off on the right, hit the gravel, but thankfully I didn't lose any skin.
"There were blokes down on the road all over the place."
Tour director Mike Turtur said the crash occurred when three riders tangled as they jockeyed for position in the fast, downhill run to the finish. A 70-year-old woman spectator was struck by one of the falling riders and was treated for minor injuries.
