• Injured pair return;Hockey

Cats are out as Beijing starts to preen itself
Jane Macartney in Beijing

335 字

2008 年 2 月 25 日

The Times

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(c) 2008 Times Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved
Thousands of strays will be rounded up from the streets of Beijing in a campaign to spruce up the city for the Olympic Games.
No one knows how many homeless cats roam the streets, but the Capital Animal Welfare Assocation said that at least 200,000 were at risk. Strays are being caught and transported to a holding pen in the suburban county of Changping.
Animal welfare activists described seeing the cats crowded together in cages the size of a microwave oven. They estimate that about 90 per cent of the animals were diseased and many had been neutered with rudimentary surgery that had led to infections.
Qin Xiaona, head of the association, told The Times: "This is nothing less than torture. And the situation is much worse for dogs."
The clear-up was announced by the city's agricultural bureau director. He ordered that all stray cats be caught and removed by the end of June to ensure that the city looks its best for the Games, which start on August 8.
Mrs Qin said: "The officials said they did not want the Olympic athletes to see a single stray animal. This is partly because the Chinese care so much about face."
In the 1950s Mao Zedong ordered the "Four Pests" campaign, in which citizens were ordered to kill flies, mosquitoes, rats and sparrows. The mass slaughter of sparrows had unintended consequences: an explosion of the locust population.
Mrs Qin said that her association had offered to work with the city authorities to ensure that the cats were handled and removed in a humane manner but that its proposals had been ignored.
She said: "We Beijing residents are ready to go without electricity, without water, without cars if the Games can be a success. But we are opposed to an Olympics that will cost the lives of animals. We feel that this is tragic."
(c) Times Newspapers Ltd, 2008
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Sport

Royal smile veils ruthless desire to rule the world;The big interview;Zara Phillips;Profile;Equestrianism

Simon Barnes, Chief Sports Writer

1,225 字

2008 年 2 月 23 日

The Times

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94

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(c) 2008 Times Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved
* The daughter of a princess is not guaranteed to become the best on the planet. That takes passion, commitment and formidable talent
Winners need to believe that they are, beyond all shadow of a doubt, the best. You may think that being royal helps, but it doesn't. Winners also need humility - you can't improve without believing that there is room for improvement. You may think that being royal would get in the way, but it doesn't.
Not with Zara Phillips, anyway. Phillips is a professional athlete, a world champion, a red-hot Olympic prospect. She has all the obsession and narrowness that any exceptional athlete in training must possess. That's how she sees herself; that's what she is.
You catch the royal stuff only at the margins: the perfectly understandable wariness of strangers with notebooks, the supremely confident ability to withhold all signs of friendliness, the freezing temperature of those blue eyes. Can't blame her, though it's pretty alarming. But the trouble with being royal and taking part in elite sport is that you have to check your family tree in at the door. The fact that you have a well-connected grandmother won't help you if your half-pass is trailing; it certainly didn't help Phillips when she demolished the showjumping course at the European Championships last year.
This week Britain's elite event riders gathered for a training day and the royal member of the group deeply relished the huggermugger democracy of it all. "It's very good, to see how other people are doing, to share ideas," she said. She talks rather like a ventriloquist, without moving her lips, though she eschews the fixed smile. Her upper-class voice is dramatically toned-down with, like, teen-speak, democratic vowel-slurring and a light overlay of sporting mockney.
The clans were gathered at the Unicorn Trust equestrian centre deep in the Cotswolds and Phillips was first up in the dressage arena, riding her Olympic horse, Toytown, with whom she won the World Championship two years ago. He is a pale, imposing chestnut with an unexpected scattering of white spots. "Oh, he's very attention-seeking," she said, lighting up as any horsey person does when discussing the quirks of a favourite. "He's very time-consuming, he wants a lot of fuss all the time. He's the best in the yard and he knows it." That, by the way, is not anthropomorphisation, just dominance hierarchy.
Toytown needs his arrogance and his swagger and his self-belief. He also needs other things, such as obedience and submission, to make the partnership work and Phillips was working for both in the course of her lesson. She needs other things to go with
her self-certainty and it is a fact of life that you can't do dressage for five minutes without confronting your inadequacies.
You could see horse and rider frowning in concentration, Phillips struggling to improve a less than perfect outline while Tracie Robinson, the team dressage coach, offered a stream of instructions. You've got to learn to take orders if you want to succeed here; you also have to learn how to fail.
And in the course of the lesson, Phillips and Toytown failed many times, sometimes with faults almost infinitely subtle, at other times with errors plain for all to see. "Complete moron!" she said at one stage in sudden exasperation, meaning herself, rather than the horse or the teacher.
See, then, the humility of a royal personage. It is the humility that all elite athletes need to cultivate if they are to get better. They need humility as much as ruthlessness. Mind you, ruthlessness was not something Phillips wanted to discuss. "Part of the job," she said, and she was not so much content as eager to leave it there. Dressage can be examined to the last half halt, but look too hard at the will to win and it might be lost for ever.
That, too, is common ground for many great performers. Defeat and setback must be analysed out of existence, but the mystical processes of success are not to be touched. Every one of her colleagues is a brilliant and gifted horseman, but there is only one world champion.
It helps to have the horse, of course. Money isn't exactly an obstacle. But there are plenty of great three-day eventers who have started with nothing and plenty of rich ones who haven't made the grade. They lack the almost unmentionable qualities that turn talented people into champions. Phillips, 26, has the horse-power all right. She will talk absent-mindedly of a horse bred by her mother, of another bred by her grandmother. She doesn't apologise for her background; she doesn't presume on it, either.
Then a session of showjumping, shared with two team-mates, this time riding the mare, Tsunami. You can't hush up an error in showjumping. Phillips was working hard to transform the mare's - and I suspect her own - natural impetuosity to an easier rhythm. Visibly, the thing was being achieved.
She loves the team thing, at training and in competition. The princess's daughter thrills to joys of being one of many, working for a common cause, sharing a triumph. "I love riding for my country," she said. Eventing, like tennis and golf, is an individual sport that at exceptional times becomes a team game: at World and European Championships, at the Olympic Games. All of which leads us to the defining trauma of Phillips's competitive life.
Britain won the European Championship in Rome last year; for Phillips, the event was also a personal disaster. After an excellent dressage and dashing round across country, she was in pole position going into the showjumping. But, utterly unexpectedly, Toytown stopped dead at a routine fence. He knocked it down when asked to try again and took out another fence for good measure. It was what horse people call "a dirty stop" - a refusal for, it seems, no reason whatsoever.
But don't suggest that to Phillips. She is passionately determined to take every scrap of the blame. "It could have been avoided," she said. "I should have ridden it differently. It was my mistake and I intend to learn from it."
The horse had had a stressful day of galloping on hard and tricky ground, not the sort of thing an English horse is used to. Jarred in the leg and sore of foot, he was just that little bit reluctant to give everything the next day. He needed a clued-in rider to give his best.
"You've got to learn from your mistakes," Phillips said, with something like religious fervour. It was not the humility of a princess, it was the humility of a champion. "He'll be back, don't worry."
So will Phillips. She has a programme of competition designed to culminate in Beijing this August and it is part of a longer programme aimed for London in 2012. Ruling England is not her concern: she is a professional athlete seeking to conquer the world.
(c) Times Newspapers Ltd, 2008
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Sport

Bong! And finally, torch still flickers for Christie;Olympic Games 2008;Comment;Opinion

Giles Smith

799 字

2008 年 2 月 23 日

The Times

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(c) 2008 Times Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved
So, it turns out that Linford Christie won't, after all, be carrying the Olympic torch for 250 metres through the streets of London as the time honoured symbol of the Games makes its 85,000-mile global journey to Beijing. However, it seems that it will be carted at some point by Sir Trevor McDonald, who, over the course of a long and distinguished career in broadcasting, has rarely set the record books alight from a pace point of view, but who has never once tested positive for nandrolone. (So far as we know, anyway. The official testing regulations for newsreaders have been a mess since that business with Reginald Bosanquet and even today there are no published figures in this area.) The good news is that the anger and repugnance that frothed on contact with the possibility that the torch would be borne by a convicted drugs cheat can now recede, leaving in its wake only some confusion as to this provocative story's provenance.
On the one hand, Christie's office maintains that he got an official come on down from the mayor as long ago as November and points out that the former sprinter, who has denied etc, may well be busy that day (April 6) in any case. On the other, Ken Livingstone's people insist that they never invited Christie in the first place and were much too busy buttering up McDonald.
Still, it's a shame if the possibility has been raised only to be dashed. And having given the prospect due consideration, this column finds itself entirely in support of Christie playing a part in the torch procession - though only if certain conditions are broadly met regarding the nature of the ceremony and what it is intended to convey.
For instance, it would seem fine to me if Christie ran with the torch for 250 metres - but back in the direction from which it had just come. Then he could hand it to a newsreader (Nicholas Witchell?) who could start off in the right direction again. It would be a simple but unignorable piece of pageantry, sending out a clear message that cheating is emphatically not the way forward, unlike newsreading. I can't see why anyone would take exception to that.
(NB. We should bear in mind, perhaps, that there are lots of young children out there who don't know who Christie is or what befell him in 1999, in the form of a two-year ban for steroid use, and that therefore, if he is going to be involved, it may be an idea for him to wear a costume that made his role in the ceremony completely clear. I'm drawn, myself, to the thought of a stripy burglar's jumper and face mask, but other people, such as Tessa Jowell, the Olympics Minister, may have some better ideas.) Alternatively, what about letting Christie carry the torch forwards for 250 metres, but for a portion of the route that is completely underground, like through a pedestrian underpass? Here, again, the symbolism would be richly and undeniably communicative. It could also be wonderfully redemptive if the 1992 Olympic 100 metres champion could be led back up into the light by a newsreader, possibly Natasha Kaplinsky or, failing that, Jon Snow.
We take it that the option of Christie running with a torch that has been temporarily extinguished is out of the question (the point being that the flame is supposed to be eternal). What may work very well, though, is if some room could be found in the procession for a kind of repentant relay, in which the torch were passed from Christie to Christine Ohuruogu and then on to Dwain Chambers, only for the latter to have it snatched out of his hand by McDonald, dressed as an angel, running the other way and bringing the Olympic symbol forwards again in a massive, dramatic moment of retribution and rebirth for UK athletics in its entirety.
Complex? Perhaps. But likely to be memorable in a way that, say, 250 metres of McDonald running on his own probably won't be.
So, some good may yet follow from this apparently needless controversy after all. We very much hope that Lord Coe, the chairman of the London Organising Committee, now feels inspired to get round a table with Christie soon and thrash out a compromise position. The disgraced sprinter was, by his own account, bitterly disappointed not to be involved in an ambassadorial role with the successful London 2012 Olympic bid. Here, surely, is a prime opportunity for him to return to the fold and make a positive contribution.
(c) Times Newspapers Ltd, 2008
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Sport

Games torch relay invite to Christie sparks anger;Olympic Games

Ashling O'Connor, Olympics Correspondent

647 字

2008 年 2 月 22 日

The Times

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(c) 2008 Times Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved
* Banned sprinter 'will accept mayor's offer'
* Livingstone attacked for 'perverse' decision
Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, came under intense pressure last night to withdraw his invitation to Linford Christie, a convicted drugs cheat, to be part of the Olympic torch relay in the build-up to the Beijing Games.
The Olympic world reacted with incredulity to the news that the Greater London Assembly (GLA) had asked the disgraced British sprinter, who received a two year ban in 1999 for using steroids, to run a 250-metre leg of the relay when the Olympic flame arrives in London on April 6.
Christie, 47, who is subject to a lifetime ban by the British Olympic Association (BOA), is scheduled to be one of 80 people bearing the torch in London as part of its 85,000-mile journey around the world in the run-up to Beijing's opening ceremony on August 8. Hugh Robertson, the Shadow Sports Minister, called on Tessa Jowell, the Olympics Minister, to overturn Livingstone's "utterly ill-conceived" invitation.
"It is extraordinarily perverse of the mayor to select someone banned from the Olympic Games for drug offences to act as a standard-bearer for the London Olympic torch relay," Robertson said. "It sends out totally the wrong message to young people about drug cheats and to the world in general about the values that will underpin London 2012."
Colin Moynihan, the BOA chairman, said: "I have been crystal clear at Olympic board level that no banned athlete should be allowed to carry the flame."
The GLA has only officially named Kelly Holmes, a double gold medal-winner in Athens, Sir Trevor McDonald, the newscaster, and the actress, Amara Khan, as torchbearers along the route from Wembley Stadium to the O2, a 2012 venue. However, Christie's agent confirmed to The Times that he had received a personal invitation last year from the mayor's office.
"Yes, they have invited him. If he is around, he would be delighted to accept. We will know his schedule in a couple of weeks," Sue Barrett, of Nuff Respect, Christie's sports management company, said.
Christie won the 1992 Olympic 100 metres title in Barcelona and is the only Briton to win 100 metres gold medals at Olympic, World, Commonwealth and European Championships. More recently, he has been training young athletes including Christian Malcolm, the 200 metres runner.
Christie, who was in semi-retirement, tested positive for nandrolone, the performance-enhancing steroid, at an indoor meeting in Germany nine years ago. He was banned for two years by the IAAF, the world governing body, but has always maintained his innocence, claiming that the positive test was flawed. "If I took drugs, there had to be a reason to take drugs," he said. "I had pretty much retired from the sport."
The London Olympic Organising Committee (Locog), which has joint powers to nominate relay participants, was quick to distance itself from Christie's involvement. "The invite didn't come from us," a spokeswoman said.
Lord Coe, the Locog chairman, is in Australia, but he is understood to be dismayed at the decision. The double Olympic 1,500 metres champion's views on drugs cheats have been vehemently reiterated in recent weeks amid the controversy over Dwain Chambers's selection to represent Britain at the World Indoor Championships in Valencia next month despite having served a drugs ban.
The antipathy between Coe, who is pushing for a four-year ban for drugs offences, and Christie is well documented. In 2001 Coe used his newspaper column to call the sprinter "boorish". In a famous Radio 5 Five interview in 2002, the pair had a heated discussion after Christie was put through to a live phone-in with Coe.
(c) Times Newspapers Ltd, 2008
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Sport

Forget citius, altius, fortius. Sport's new motto is fitter, bigger, bette r ... richer;Opinion

Simon Barnes

1,261 字

2008 年 2 月 22 日

The Times

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(c) 2008 Times Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved
A mark, a yen, a buck, or a pound A buck or a pound A buck or a pound Is all that makes the world go around That clinking clanking sound from Cabaret How do you think he felt? Abused, betrayed, like a piece of meat, bereft of human dignity, a mere commodity, a piece of flesh to be traded in, nothing more nor less than a whore. Mind you, his pain was eased because he will be paid Pounds 770,000 for 45 days' work. Ain't nothing wrong with the game, dearie, so long as a girl gets a fair rate for the job.
Mahendra Singh Dhoni, India cricketer, was valued at this sum by the process of auction. I suppose most of us, when offered a choice between dignity and three quarters of a million, would tend to sway towards obscene amounts of money.
The Indian Premier League (IPL) opened for business this week. The lightning brief 20-over competition is between eight cities, each side stuffed with international stars and, in case you have missed the point, it involves hallucinogenic sums of money.
It was Chennai (formerly Madras) that bought Dhoni. The franchise - hideous term - cost Pounds 47million and it is owned by India Cements. They have spent a little more than Pounds 3million on players, including Matthew Hayden and Mike Hussey, of Australia, Muttiah Muralitharan, of Sri Lanka, and Makhaya Ntini, of South Africa. Money money money money money money, as the song in Cabaret continues. Really rather frightfully vulgar, don't you think? India is treating is newfound prosperity like Viv Nicholson, the Sixties pools winner who vowed to spend spend spend. That all ended in tears, of course.
I think most of us who like sport are a trifle uneasy about this. The IPL has been launched as a celebration of money. The sport itself has come a poor second. But are we right to have these reservations? Are we harking back to the outmoded hypocrisies of amateurism? Are we being a bit prudish? Are we shutting our eyes to facts? Are we saying that there is one law for football and England and quite another for cricket and the Third World?
I'll tell you something important about sport: whoever you are and whatever you are trying to do, money doesn't half help. Killer stat: in 1996, at the Olympic Games in Atlanta, Britain won one gold medal and finished 36th in the medals table. In Sydney four years later, Britain won 11 gold medals and finished tenth. Why? Sydney was Britain's first post-lottery games. If you can allow your elite athletes to be fully professional and give them the best training facilities, coaches, nutritionists and medics, the chances of improving performance are pretty good.
The England cricket team - the Test side, anyway - improved immeasurably when lavish central contracts for top players were introduced in 2000. Rugby union is unrecognisable from the game it left behind in 1995, when they went professional: faster, fitter, stronger, bigger in every way.
In club football, it is demonstrated every week that rich clubs win more than poor clubs. Rich clubs that have massive incomes and superb facilities buy the best players and pay them sums that would make even Dhoni turn pure malachite from envy. They dominate the domestic game. Equality of competition has been deliberately eroded since the 1980s, when home clubs were allowed to keep their own receipts rather than share them with their visitors. At a stroke, the likes of Wimbledon lost their annual payday when they visited Manchester United.
We know all this, yet we dislike the thought that money matters. I remember my naive astonishment at the response of Phil Edmonds, England cricketer and my biography subject, on being dropped from the Test team: "Fifteen hundred quid down the Swanee!"
My colleague, Gabriele Marcotti, views at least some of this distaste for money in sport as a cultural issue. In his book, The Italian Job, he maintains that Italians do not consider football in the same rosy light: it's a job, and the job is winning. We English prefer to view football more as a Lord of the Rings quest, with our favourite players, such as Frodo and Gandalf, battling the forces of darkness for no reason other than that to do so is profoundly and ineffably right.
Steve Davis, the snooker player, once explained his attitude to me: "The money's great. But it's a bonus. It's a brilliant bonus, but all the same, I'd do it for nothing. If the money went out of the game tomorrow, I'd still be playing." That sounds sort of right to us, yes? There must be money, accepted - but it can't be the No1 motivating factor. Hell, you can tell when it is. Time and again, we have seen England players in all sports playing not for victory and glory, but for their places; for the income. That's when England lose.
Money won't get you genetic ability (yet). It won't buy you the mysterious thing that is the difference between the champions and the brilliantly talented rest. But most certainly, money will allow the individual to become as brilliant as he or she is capable of being. It will allow the nation to develop its talent in the best possible way, allow the club to purchase the best.
Money matters. But others things matter still more. That, I think, is the point here. Money has, in recent years, changed football dramatically, but football is still capable of giving us stirring, moving and profound pieces of sport. When Arsenal play Manchester United, sport is in the ascendancy over money, even if this is a hard-won victory. Fabregas and Rooney would still do it for nothing.
The appalled reactions to the Premier League's plans for the overseas round, the 39th step, demonstrate something important. Sport can exist perfectly well when money is second on the priority list, but as soon as money becomes first, the sport begins to die.
That's because sport is not an inherently commercial activity, any more than sex. Both can be considered in that light, but not without loss. Sport without the love of the game for its own sake lacks something; something that matters deeply to those of us who watch.
If the IPL is about money first, it will fail. It is now down to the players and the viewing public to find out what has survived the auction. Ditto, the 39th step. Sport must matter for itself, or it is worth nothing: neither morally, nor spiritually, nor commercially.
Can money buy us Pinsent's last ten strokes, Kelly's double gold, Freddie's Ashes, Gerrard in Istanbul, Jonny in Sydney? For that matter, could money buy us Paula in Athens, the England cricket team in Adelaide, the football team against Croatia, Hamilton's last two races, the England rugby team against Wales the other week?
We watch sport for the passion, for the real thing, for the love. Whoring simply doesn't make the Earth move. Without love, sport is a sounding brass, a tinkling cymbal. Roger McGough can have the final say:
The act of love lies somewhere Between the belly and the mind.
I lost the love some time ago And I've only the act to grind.
(c) Times Newspapers Ltd, 2008
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Home news

Arts struggle to compete for Olympic cash

Ashling O'Connor Olympics Correspondent

578 字

2008 年 2 月 22 日

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(c) 2008 Times Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved
* Cultural side of 2012 being 'starved of funds'
* Groups are advised to get ready for a chase
Arts groups have complained of a further squeeze on resources after being told to look for funding wherever they can find it if they want to be involved in the cultural events linked to London 2012.
Organisations in Westminster heard from the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (LOCOG) that there was no single pot of money available for the Cultural Olympiad, a four-year festival of culture billed by the Government as central to a successful Olympics.
Under a Pounds 2 billion private sector funding package, LOCOG has allocated only Pounds 17 million to its cultural programme. The budget, however, is largely operational and includes the closing ceremony in Beijing, when London has an eight-minute segment to publicise its ambition as the next host city, and the ceremony that will open the 16-day event in 2012. It is not intended to cover the community and arts groups that may want to stage ancillary events so that they can share the glow of the Games.
Bill Morris, director of culture, ceremonies and education, said: "We are campaigning for more resources for the arts and culture but we are not a funding body. We are a catalyst. The trick is to look for funding wherever (they) can find it."
Arts groups, already feeling marginalised after the diversion of lottery funding to the Olympics, reacted with sceptism. "We have a one-off opportunity to present the best of British culture but we are starved of money to develop interesting and new ideas to go with the Olympics," William Tayleur, director of Business of Culture, said. "I would like to see a London opera festival during the Games but there is no funding for this. Part of the bid was about the cultural aspects of London, but this needs to be funded."
The Government, which promised a world cultural festival, an international museums exhibition and an international Shakespeare festival during the bid for the Games, said that there were positive signs that funds would be available.
Groups will be able to apply for grants from local authorities, existing cultural funders and the Legacy Trust, a Pounds 40 million fund to promote culture and sport, according to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
Additionally, Lloyds TSB, a London 2012 sponsor, will spend Pounds 3 million on "live sites" around the UK to engage the public in the Games. The Youth Music Trust has also earmarked Pounds 9million and the Arts Council England is investing Pounds 7 million in artists creating work in "unexpected places".
Louise de Winter, the director of National Campaign for the Arts, said: "We have no information about how organisations might access money from the Legacy Trust but any additional money will not make up for what was taken from the arts in the first place."
The Government said originally that Pounds 1.5 billion of lottery money would be needed for the Olympics but announced a final raid of Pounds 675 million last year. The sum is not likely to be paid back until 20 years after the Games when land in Stratford is sold.
Pounds 17m
cultural programme for 2012 does not cover community/arts groups
Source:LOCOG
For the latest Games news timesonline.co.uk/london2012
(c) Times Newspapers Ltd, 2008
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Overseas news

US athletes plan to dodge the food rules for Olympics

Ashling O'Connor Olympics Correspondent

347 字

2008 年 2 月 22 日

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(c) 2008 Times Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved
Chinese Olympic organisers yesterday criticised US athletes who are bringing their own food to the Games in Beijing this summer instead of trusting local cuisine.
Competitors are banned from importing their own food into the athletes' village under rules drawn up by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that are designed to protect the rights of sponsors such as McDonalds and to police the use of illegal substances.
The United States Olympic Committee, which will have more than 600 people in its delegation, is planning to transport its own produce because of fears about public health and food standards in China.
The athletes will eat their three daily meals at their training camp at a local university, which is outside the official confines of the Olympic Park.
"I feel it's a pity that they decided to take their own food," Kang Yi, the head of the food division for the Beijing Olympic organising committee, said. "We have made lots of preparations to ensure that the athletes can get together at the Olympic Games."
The athletes' village will house about 17,000 athletes and officials during the 16-day event in Beijing, serving up to 6,000 meals simultaneously in several restaurants round the clock.
It is standard practice for delegations to eat the food prepared by the contract caterer, in this case Aramark, a Fortune 500 company based in Philadelphia. The British Olympic Association said that it would not be taking food for its 270 athletes. The party will include one nutritionist who will work with local chefs to prepare the team's meals.
Other countries are understood to be considering plans to cater their own food after a series of public health scares in China. Chinese-made dumplings contaminated by pesticides made thousands of Japanese ill last month.
Tang Yunhua, a spokeswoman for the Beijing Municipal Office for Food Safety, said: "The standards for Olympic food safety are much more strict than international standards."
(c) Times Newspapers Ltd, 2008
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Sport

Phillips prepares for Olympics in Portugal;Equestrianism

132 字

2008 年 2 月 21 日

The Times

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75

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(c) 2008 Times Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved
In a departure from her usual preparation for a leading event, Zara Phillips, the world three-day event champion, is travelling to Barroca in Portugal this weekend with a team of four horses headed by Toytown to begin her build-up to this summer's Olympic Games. "The better weather there means you're guaranteed a run and good going," she said.
Phillips, 26, who is training with the Olympic squad at Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire, will also take Toytown, 15, to Fontainebleau in April but not to Badminton in May. Her debut at the latter event, from which she withdrew Toytown last year because of the hard ground, will come on either Glenbuck or Ardfield Magic Star.
(c) Times Newspapers Ltd, 2008
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Sport

My drugs test confirms IOC must bulk up to win fight against cheats;Olympi c Games;Factbox

Matthew Pinsent

994 字

2008 年 2 月 20 日

The Times

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69

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(c) 2008 Times Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved
It took Matthew Pinsent only Pounds 180 and an internet search to get hands on growth hormone
When I was an athlete competing at the Olympics, I was always of the belief that we were operating under a protective umbrella that the drugs testers were holding over our heads. I looked around the Olympic Village sure that if there were cheats then they stood a really good chance of being caught and that they had to really work to get around a system that was so good. Recent press coverage about Dwain Chambers and Marion Jones bolsters the view. They were cheating - they eventually got caught. But in reality the cheats are often slipping past the testers and my old attitudes seem hopelessly naive.
Human growth hormone (HGH) is naturally produced in the brain to help with muscle, cartilage and bone development, particularly when we are young. The original need for a laboratory product was for patients who had a deficiency, but as is so often the case, the body-building fraternity began in the early 1980s to experiment with it. At the beginning, the sports testers were way behind and those who wanted to could use HGH without fear of being caught. The drug worked well, with users reporting extra strength and lower body fat soon after starting a course.
By the 2000 Games in Sydney, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had seemingly had enough. Rumours of athletes using the stuff were rife and it put millions of dollars into a study headed by Professor Peter Sonksen, a British endocrinologist and HGH expert who had designed a test that could detect HGH in someone's system up to three weeks after it had been injected. But the IOC did not use the test and whoever was using the stuff in Sydney slipped away.
Despite refining his test in time for Athens, the IOC chose another test, which, according to Sonksen, had a loophole a mile wide. "They introduced another test in Athens called the isoform test, but you've got to have a blood sample taken less than 24 hours after the athlete last injected himself in order to stand a chance of catching someone," he said.
The IOC maintains today that the Sonksen test was neither reviewed by other scientists at the time nor validated independently in other laboratories, claims that Sonksen disputes. Perhaps understandably, the IOC is unwilling to say how long after drugs use its isoform test will catch HGH users. A statement issued to the BBC reads: "The IOC has full confidence in the test being used to detect HGH at the Olympic Games. The test was used in Athens and Turin and will be used again in Beijing this summer, where 450 tests will be conducted." The number of people caught using HGH in Turin and Athens combined was zero.
Maybe this is a substance that is all rumour and gossip - what body-builders used in the Nineties did not cross the divide from gym to Games. But when I went to the US, the evidence was laid out in extraordinary detail. There, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) was getting fed up with what it called an open pipeline from Chinese pharmaceutical companies to America. Where European pharmaceutical companies trade through the usual medical routes such as doctors and hospitals, the Chinese had no such compunction. Internet sites bloomed with offers to ship HGH and steroids to your door through DHL or UPS, the courier companies. The DEA reckons that HGH is being used by some people in every school and sports club across the country. When the agency went after big importers of the stuff it seized box after box of Chinese HGH.
Perhaps the US is suffering some epidemic that is yet to hit home here? After a visit to a needle exchange in Tyne and Wear that possibility, too, is dashed. It is an NHS advice and medical back-up centre, set up to help to cope with the heroin explosion in the early Nineties. But the man running it, Dr Rob Dawson, estimates that more than 40 per cent of his patients don't touch hard drugs. They are after a sporting edge and want steroids, insulin and HGH. Where HGH was once so expensive that only the most determined body builder would add it to his drugs cocktail, Dawson calls HGH the new "food for the masses".
I had to find out just how hard it was to get my own hands on HGH. I searched on Google for it and my BBC producer met a bloke in an ordinary pub. Within 24 hours I had a packet of Chinese HGH sitting on my desk. It cost Pounds 180 and would last an athlete about a fortnight. I sent two of the ten phials to be tested and found that it is indeed HGH and very good quality. The rest sits on my desk. I honestly don't know what to do with it but I have a feeling that there are plenty of people who do.
Matthew Pinsent's full report into HGH is on Inside Sport on BBC One at 10.50pm.
GROWING GAINS
* Human growth hormone (HGH) has been used in Britain to help stunted children to grow since 1959. Some boys who would have reached a height of only 4ft 6in were able to grow to 5ft 9in.
* HGH is produced naturally by the brain's pituitary gland. It is a protein substance that is emitted after exercise and during sleep and, while it is more abundant when people are young, it is produced throughout adult life.
* HGH has been used to prevent muscle wasting in Aids sufferers and as an anti-ageing agent. It is sold in vials that are injected by users.
(c) Times Newspapers Ltd, 2008
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Business

Chinese inflation soars to an 11-year high

Jane MacArtney, Beijing

640 字

2008 年 2 月 20 日

The Times

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51

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(c) 2008 Times Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved
* Food and factory goods jump by 7.1%
* More rises in interest rates are now likely
Inflation in China has surged to an 11-year high and is likely to rise further as damage to crops from devastating winter storms is felt, figures released yesterday revealed.
Moreover, soaring food prices are not the only factor fuelling consumer price inflation (CPI). China's producer price index - measuring prices of goods as they leave the factory - climbed 6.1per cent in January to its highest rate in three years, because of higher commodity prices and transport problems blamed on snowstorms.
The state-run Xinhua news agency said: "Higher prices at the producer level could lead to rising consumer prices as producers might be pressured to increase prices of consumer products to offset rising costs." The warning betrayed fears within the Communist Party over potential civil unrest and economic instability in a year, thanks to the fast-approaching Beijing Olympic Games, in which the eyes of the world will be on China.
Chinese consumer price inflation hit 7.1 per cent in last month, cementing expectations that Beijing would stick to a tight monetary policy despite softening economic growth. In addition, rapid money growth and rising raw materials costs have yet to feed into the numbers.
Goldman Sachs, in a note to clients, said: "The acceleration in money and credit growth in January suggests that inflation is likely to have further legs to run."
Hong Liang and Yu Song, the economists, said that CPI for this month was likely to rise by much more than 7 per cent and could approach double digits. "Therefore, we believe it is far too early to expect any policy loosening in China," they said. "To the contrary, policy-makers in China will likely try to tighten monetary policy further, with more reserve requirement ratio hikes, faster yuan appreciation and more heavy-handed controls over bank lending."
Inflation is starting to hurt ordinary people in a country where tens of millions live in poverty and as much of 50 per cent of household income is spent on groceries. Food, which makes up one third of China's consumer basket, cost 18.2 per cent more in January than a year earlier, after rising 16.7 per cent in the year to December. Many Chinese say that now they try to avoid pork because the price of the staple meat for the country's 1.3 billion people has soared 58.8 per cent from January last year. Swine disease, surging feed grain costs and low prices in 2006 that deterred farmers from rearing pigs are responsible for the rise, which has spilt over to other meat and food items.
Many economists say that they do not expect a long-term impact from the worst snowstorms in half a century that swept large areas of central and southern China last month and early this month, disrupting transport links and damaging crops. One encouraging sign is that non-food inflation rose only modestly to 1.5 per cent in January from 1.4 per cent in December, the National Bureau of Statistics reported.
Further rises in interest rates are seen as highly likely after the central bank raised rates six times last year.
Jun Ma, chief China economist at Deutsche Bank in Hong Kong, said: "It's going to be very tricky in the next few months. Right now, there is pressure for monetary authorities to relax a little bit due to the need for financing reconstruction after the snowstorm and pressure from the export sector ... But probably in the second half of March or April, when inflation continues to make new highs, the Government will be convinced that further tightening is inevitable."
(c) Times Newspapers Ltd, 2008
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Features

Boycotting the Beijing games may save Darfur;Letter

116 字

2008 年 2 月 18 日

The Times

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18

‚ń文

(c) 2008 Times Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved
Sir, In 1978 you published a letter from me counselling against a boycott of the Olympic Games in the Soviet Union. I suggested that we should let people go and meet and speak to the Russian citizens. The same still applies. For Steven Spielberg to remove himself from personal involvement is one thing. For the ordinary competitor and spectator to pull out would be futile. Go, participate, cheer on your favourite. Meet the Chinese, a welcoming, friendly people.
If you happen to have in your baggage a few sticky labels reading "Save Darfur from genocide" in Mandarin .
Barry Hyman
Bushey Heath, Herts
(c) Times Newspapers Ltd, 2008
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Features

Boycotting the Beijing games may save Darfur;Letter

193 字

2008 年 2 月 18 日

The Times

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18

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(c) 2008 Times Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved
Sir, It is laudable that Mr Spielberg has made China's connection to Darfur a beacon for media attention (news, Feb 13), but Darfur is not an isolated case. China's foreign policy and attitude to international trade is a root causes of the many recent shocking abuses of liberty and human rights globally: financing regimes such as the Burmese junta and Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe.
Beijing's opposition to democracy and self-determination has been apparent throughout its planning of the Olympic Games. Moreover, China's bullying of the International Olympic Commission means Taiwanese athletes have been denied the right to compete under their own flag or even their correct national title.
If heads of government such as Gordon Brown and George W. Bush retracted their acceptance of President Hu's invitation to the Games, in line with the sentiments of the eight Nobel peace laureates, they have the potential to affect China's policy. The people of the world are speaking out against China's conduct. Their elected leaders should do the same.
Sherman Lai
Bromley, Kent
(c) Times Newspapers Ltd, 2008
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Sport

Moses backs Olympic ban for competitors guilty of drug offences;Athletics

Kevin Eason in St Petersburg

807 字

2008 年 2 月 18 日

The Times

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66

‚ń文

(c) 2008 Times Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved
* Two years out not long enough for cheats
* Ohuruogu v Radcliffe for comeback of year
"Dwain Chambers is not on the guest list but his shadow fell over one of the most glittering sports ceremonies of the year yesterday. The Laureus Sports Awards attract the biggest names, with legends such as Boris Becker, Ilie Nastase and Franz Beckenbauer, rubbing shoulders with bright new talent such as Lewis Hamilton. This city's soaring architecture and the frozen tributaries of the Neva River that criss-cross it, announced centuries of history to the celebrities arriving for this evening's awards. But the tensions of modern sport bubbled to the surface as the nominations were announced with one of the greatest athletes of all time wading into the controversy that has surrounded Chambers's attempt at a comeback.
Ed Moses, of the United States, an Olympic gold medal-winner at 400 metres hurdles in 1976 and 1984 who set a world record in his event on four occasions, has, during his retirement, worked with the International Olympic Committee to combat the use of drugs in sport.
Now one of the chairmen of the Laureus Foundation, which helps thousands of underprivileged children around the world through sport, he would not condemn Chambers's return to the track, an issue which has consumed UK Athletics.
As far as the American is concerned, Chambers has served his time, which was a maximum sentence laid down by the IAAF, the world governing body for athletics.
"Sporting organisations are going for two-year bans and if an athlete serves two years then they are able to compete. That's it," he said. But Moses argues that the punishment does not yet fit the crime and said that the authorities need to double the two-year sentence to make it an effective deterrent to potential drugs cheats.
A four-year ban could wreck the careers of offenders because the term would almost certainly mean that athletes would miss at least one Olympic Games plus two World Championships. Moses stepped back from arguing for a life ban because the four-year cycle would effectively do that job, cancelling out the best competitive years in the lives of banned athletes.
"I personally would look for a four-year ban," Moses said. "An athlete may need to miss an Olympic cycle to appreciate the scale of the penalty. Nobody keeps training for four years, nobody hangs around that long. It is the equivalent of a life ban."
But the list of nominees for the awards has stoked another, more minor, controversy. In the Comeback of the Year category, Christine Ohuruogu is, ironically, pitted against Paula Radcliffe, one of the most outspoken critics of drugs cheats in her sport.
Ohuruogu is expected to win the trophy, which will leave the way open for critics to point out that her comeback to win the 400 metres at the World Championships came after serving a one-year ban for missing three drugs tests in a case that caused almost as much heart-searching as Chambers's return: Radcliffe came back to win the New York Marathon after taking time out to have a baby.
Laureus organisers will hope that the Ohuruogu issue does not cloud an event that celebrates sport and attempts to reach out to those youngsters whose lives can be improved by the huge sums of money raised by some of the world's greatest athletes.
But after the last celebrity leaves St Petersburg, the Chambers saga will go on. Nick Collins, his lawyer, has to decide whether to mount a High Court challenge to the British Olympic Association (BOA) bylaw that automatically bans convicted dopers from the Olympics for life. Some legal experts have questioned the validity of the bylaw, which is unique in world sport, but it will come down to money. In 2006, Chambers was ordered to pay back Pounds 120,000 in prize-money and earnings to the IAAF. He has revealed that anything he earns will be used to pay off his debts, so the prospect of losing a legal fight that could cost him Pounds 200,000 would be disastrous.
Lord Coe, chairman of the London 2012 Olympics committee, aligned himself with Moses yesterday by reiterating his desire to see the punishment for a first doping offence increased from two to four years. He added that athletics was in danger of becoming a farce. "We could end up with a situation like WWE wrestling, where everyone knows it is fake and they don't care," he said.
Allan Wells, the 1980 Olympic 100metres champion, said that he would no longer work with the BOA if Chambers is allowed to run in Beijing.
(c) Times Newspapers Ltd, 2008
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Sport

How watching Power Rangers kicked life into young Briton's Olympic hopes;Taekwondo;Factbox

Marcus Leroux

1,218 字

2008 年 2 月 18 日

The Times

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58

‚ń文

(c) 2008 Times Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved
Aaron Cook grew up trying to emulate the television action heroes. Now the 17 year-old is close to writing his own incredible script
When some of the fighters he is likely to meet in the Beijing Olympics were being blooded in their competitive taekwondo debuts, Aaron Cook was a five year-old fly-kicking his way around his living room in Dorset.
"I was mad about Power Rangers, so my parents started looking for a martial arts class," the 17-year-old said, laughing. "We lived in Dorchester - quite a small town - and the only class we could find was taekwondo."
If the Spandex-clad warriors who terrified a generation of parents seem a remarkably recent memory, that is because Cook has arrived on the world scene well ahead of schedule. "I should be fighting juniors," he said. "But I want to go to the Olympics."
He is one of eight rising stars sponsored by Visa as prospects for the 2012 Olympic Games in London and in Istanbul, Turkey, last month he assured Britain of a place in the Beijing Games by beating a Hungarian world bronze medal winner in the European qualifying event - four years ahead of the timetable.
"Now I've got six months to win an Olympic gold medal," Cook, who as the British champion in the under-80kg category is all but assured of his place, said after a supposedly light training session at British taekwondo's base in Manchester.
While the speed of his ascent has taken the sport in this country by storm, his ticket to Beijing will take him one step closer to fulfilling a dream he has held for most of his life. His mother, Christine, still keeps a picture, drawn by Aaron at school, of an Olympic gold medal.
Cook switched codes at the age of 10 to take up the World Taekwondo Federation's full-contact version of the sport, leaving the International Taekwondo Federation's semi-contact code, a version not recognised by the International Olympic Committee.
"I started kicking people a bit too hard and getting disqualified, so I had a conversation with my mum about taking-up full-contact," he said. "I was the best in the country in my age group at light contact, but I wanted to win an Olympic gold and, although it wasn't an Olympic sport back then, I knew I would have to take up the full-contact version."
His parents were happy for him to take up the more physical variant, despite the risks. "If you get hit you can get knocked out," Aaron said, adding that it has not happened to him - "touch wood" - but that it has happened to a few of his opponents.
It was not the only time his parents made a difficult decision to support his fledgeling career. Last year they moved from Dorchester to Manchester to be nearer Aaron's training base. "It has been a huge sacrifice, leaving our friends and jobs in Dorset, but I have to be honest, I would do it again," Christine said.
They also allowed Aaron to join the British taekwondo academy in Loughborough at 15, before sitting his GCSEs. The academy then moved to Manchester.
Six days a week, 18 fighters train in the Feat Factory, hidden in a dilapidated industrial estate opposite a patch of overgrown scrubland. Sandwiched between a picture-frame factory and an electricity substation, it seems an unlikely nerve centre for Britain's Olympic efforts.
A misdirected lorry driver who might venture through the door would find himself faced with half a dozen pairs of white-suited sparring partners, swapping kicks in rapid flurries or balletic, powerful arches (taekwondo fighters cannot use their hands).
Beyond the taekwondo rings, at the back of the narrow hall, a few more figures busy themselves in a torture chamber of gym equipment. A coach looks on attentively while a technician films the action, which is streamed straight to a laptop, to be pored over later. This is the elite end of British taekwondo, but Cook is straining at the leash. "I've got to have everything right on the day, nutritionally, mentally, physiologically," he said. "It needs to be 100 per cent.
"Only 16 fighters have qualified, so I can study who I'm up against. I know who I have to beat." It turns out he means this literally.
"I've got to beat Steve Lopez," he said. "Two Olympic golds, four-times world champion. He's one of the greats. If I want to win, I've got to beat him."
In his bloody-minded determination to reach the summit of his sport, Cook seems to have transferred the challenge into human form. The conversation returns to Lopez periodically, as if the American embodies the Herculean task in front of him.
Cook describes his daily routine of four intensive hours of practice each day. "I think it isn't enough," he said, clearly frustrated. "Steve Lopez is training more than four hours a day. If I want to beat him, I need to train more than him."
His coach, Nelson Saenz-Miller, a huge Cuban, smiles patiently as he hears of Cook's frustration. It is important to take a step down in intensity. "If he wants to improve his performance he has to lose it a bit before he can build it up again," he said.
Miller describes Cook affectionately. "He is very friendly, very polite and very honest and for a 17-year-old boy, there's an arrogance - it's normal in fighters," he said.
But if it is a gold medal Cook wants, he has two of the best advisers around in Sir Steve Redgrave, the five-times Olympic champion, and Dame Tanni Grey Thompson, who won seven Paralympic gold medals, lead Visa's sponsorship scheme.
"Steve Redgrave and Tanni Grey-Thompson have come to my house, watched me train and said things that have helped me qualify for the Olympics," Aaron said. "They've helped me with things like getting nervous before a competition - they have been through it before. Steve Redgrave was very helpful in telling me about dealing with the expectations. I'm expected to win now, which hasn't happened before."
Cook inevitably returns to Lopez and his record two Olympic golds and four World Championship victories. "I believe I can beat him," he said firmly. "And I believe I can beat his record as well."
FIGHTING AGAINST EVIL
* Power Rangers is a long-running children's TV series based around a group of teenagers who "morph" into brightly coloured martial arts fighters to combat evil.
* When under the cosh, they can merge to form a Megazord with supernatural powers (a bit like Bolton Wanderers' five-man midfield), prompting the question of why they didn't do so in the first place.
* The series began in 1993 and by the mid-1990s was being criticised in Parliament for inciting the nation's children to violence.
* The series occupied the minds of child psychologists, who produced treatises such as Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Aesthetics of Phallo-Militaristic Justice.
Words by Marcus Leroux
(c) Times Newspapers Ltd, 2008
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Features

Court Circular;The register

230 字

2008 年 2 月 18 日

The Times

T

50

‚ń文

(c) 2008 Times Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved
Clarence House 16th February, 2008
The Prince of Wales, Colonelin-Chief, The Parachute Regiment, this afternoon visited the 2nd Battalion and their families at the University of Essex, Colchester.
Buckingham Palace 15th February, 2008
The Duke of York, Special Representative for International Trade and Investment, today carried out the following engagements in New York, United States of America.
His Royal Highness this morning attended a Meeting with the Sarnoff Corporation at the Carlyle Hotel.
The Duke of York afterwards attended a Meeting with the President of NBTY Incorporated at the Carlyle Hotel.
His Royal Highness this afternoon attended a Business Lunch given by Her Majesty's Consul-General for New York (Sir Alan Collins) at his Residence, marking the forthcoming 2012 Olympic Games.
The Duke of York later attended a Business Meeting with Raytheon representatives at the Carlyle Hotel.
His Royal Highness this evening attended a Business Reception for representatives from the United Kingdom and United States creative industries at the Rockefeller Plaza.
The Duke of York afterwards departed New York (JFK) International Airport for the United Kingdom.
16th February, 2008 The Duke of York, Special Representative for International Trade and Investment, this morning arrived at Heathrow Airport, London, from the United States of America.
Mr. Robin Ord-Smith, Dr. Edward Perkins and Captain James Todd, RM were in attendance.
(c) Times Newspapers Ltd, 2008
文件 T000000020080218e42i0003e

Sport

Kluft runs gauntlet of fear over spiked drinks and an innocence lost;Athletics;Factbox

Rick Broadbent, Athletics Correspondent

911 字

2008 年 2 月 16 日

The Times

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92

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(c) 2008 Times Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved
* Swedes 'would not believe me or forgive'
* Golden girl will carry on after Beijing Games
Her sport may have been tarnished in recent times, but it was in keeping with her image as the golden girl of global athletics that Carolina Kluft applied the spit and polish. Her status as the most gifted all-round sportswoman in the world gives her words added impact and, although she is blissfully unaware of the Dwain Chambers saga, she has sledgehammer-blunt views on the issue of doping.
"If someone put something in my drink and I tested positive even though I was innocent, I could leave my country forever and people would never believe me," she said as she prepared for the Norwich Union Indoor Grand Prix in Birmingham this afternoon. "They would always think of me as a cheater. They would spit on me in the street. In Sweden you cheat and you're a loser."
This carries its own problems for a woman whose easy manner and harpsichord smile are at odds with what sounded close to paranoia about having her drinks spiked. "It's not acceptable to cheat in Sweden and that's a good mentality, but sometimes it makes me scared, too," she said. "I keep my (water) bottle close to me because my life depends on nobody doing something to me. It's a worry because I don't want to lose my life."
Kelly Sotherton is one of the few to have a prayer of ending Kluft's heptathlon hegemony. It is 19 events since the Swede lost, but Sotherton came within 17 points in the pentathlon at last year's European Indoor Championships at Birmingham's National Indoor Arena, where the pair will lock horns today in a three-event challenge comprising 60 metres hurdles, long jump and 400 metres.
Sotherton knows the bitter sensation of losing out to someone who has served a ban for doping. Lyudmila Blonska, the Ukrainian athlete, took silver at the World Championships last August with Sotherton third. "I'm for everything that cleans up our sport and it's unfortunate this has all happened now and not two years ago when he (Chambers) came back," Sotherton said. "Unfortunately, we have a two-year ban, when I'd go for life, but we have to get on with it."
And so to the track. Kluft married in Scotland last September and has ensured that the grapevine has throbbed with rumour by suggesting that she may not compete in the heptathlon at the Beijing Olympics. She said yesterday that she will make a decision in the spring, but is contemplating doing the long jump instead, or both. Sotherton said that she is likely to shelve plans to join Kluft in the sandpit until after next year's World Championships in Berlin.
"In the winter I felt empty," Kluft said. "I have not had the motivation that you need in order to be good in all events. I wanted to open the door and think in a new kind of way. I'm not sure what I will do. My plan is to do the indoor season and see if my motivation comes back, but before I quit I definitely want to do one or two events, not seven."
Sotherton has no doubt that Kluft, still only 25, will be re-energised by the World Indoors. "I expect her to be there and I'd like her to be," she said. "What she has done in the last five years is amazing and I'm sure her motivation will return."
The good news for those who can surf the tide of cynicism drowning athletics is that Kluft is not hanging up her spikes for marital bliss with her new pole-vaulter husband, Patrick Kristianson. "I am not retiring after Beijing," she said. "I love being on the track, it's just my motivation for the heptathlon has been going down."
Kluft and Sotherton are close in an event known for its camaraderie, so it was no surprise to hear the former say that she would like her British rival to succeed her as the best in the world. The clever money, though, is on both lining up in the heptathlon in Beijing.
At the end of a torrid week, a reminder of the alchemic powers is provided by a look into Kluft's past - the shy target for playground bullies who gained a sense of self-worth through sport. As the friends exhibited their exasperation with questions about drugs and Darfur - "I'm not there to talk about human rights, I'm there to perform," Sotherton said - it will be refreshing to get athletics back on track. For an afternoon at least.
THE RIVALS
Carolina Kluft Sweden
Age 25
PB heptathlon 7,032 points
Best displays World champion (2003, 2005, 2007), Olympic champion (2004), European champion (2002, 2006)
Kelly Sotherton Great Britain
Age 31
PB heptathlon 6,547
Best displays World bronze (2007), Olympic bronze (2004)
Head-to-heads