| Henin-Hardenne decided to compete at the Olympics Belgian Justine Henin-Hardenne, number one in the world tennis classification, announced yesterday that she will take part in the Olympic Games. For a long time, her trip to Athens was in great doubt. After losing in the second round of the French Open at the end of May, Justine has not competed at a WTA tournament since then due to a viral infection. The tennis player finally felt an improvement in her health and, after consulting with doctors, decided to return to the court. During the forced downtime, Henin-Hardenne lost a huge gap in rating points over its closest pursuers. Her continued absence from tournaments could cost the athlete the title of tennis queen, which she has held since October 20 last year.
Our handball players lost to the French
The Russian men's handball team began an international tournament in Egypt with the participation of four teams with a defeat. In the opening match, head coach Vladimir Maximov's team lost to the 2001 world champions the French with a score of 27:32. The Russians started this match well, created a good margin of safety, confidently hitting the opponent's goal, and went into the break leading by four goals - 15:11. However, in the second half, the game of the Sydney Olympic champions went wrong, and the absence of injured goalkeeper Andrei Lavrov in the lineup began to affect them. As a result, the French first caught up with the Russians, and then left our team no chance of winning.
Australians complain about dogs
The head of the National Olympic Committee (NOC) of Australia, John Coates, in a conversation with reporters in Athens, complained that entire packs of stray dogs were running around the Olympic Village. “The guards and security staff are doing nothing to get rid of the dogs. On the contrary, they only attract them, pet them and feed them,” Coates complained. There are indeed a lot of stray dogs in Athens. On the eve of the Games, the mayor's office carried out a special operation to catch them, but since killing dogs is considered inhumane, they were only sterilized and immediately released. Last August, at the pre-Olympic archery tournament in Athens, stray dogs bit the coach of the Ukrainian national team.
Additional security for Israelis
Greek authorities rejected a US request to provide additional security for American Olympians. At the same time, the Greeks gave a positive response to a similar request from Israel. The Israeli sports delegation in Athens will be the only one to receive a separate staff of local security personnel. Let us recall that at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, 11 Israeli athletes and coaches were killed at the hands of terrorists from the extremist organization “Black September”. Prepared by Ilya TRISVIATSKY |
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