Phelps planning London 2012

A man on a mission or a glutton for punishment? Whatever the answer, the swimming world has not seen the last of Michael Phelps by a long way yet.
After winning an unprecedented eight golds medals in Beijing Phelps might easily have been tempted to throw in the towel and start spending the millions of dollars flooding his bank account, but the 23-year-old American has no intentions of quitting.
He wants to swim for at least another four years to compete at the 2012 London Olympics and has not ruled out the prospect of trying to better Beijing by going for nine medals next time.

"I won't say anything is impossible," he told Reuters in an exclusive interview organised by his sponsors Visa at Beijing's 120-year-old Prince Jun Palace on Monday. "I really don't know what my programme will be, but nothing is impossible."
Having spent the last year churning through thousands of laps to get in shape for Beijing, Phelps is planning to take the next few months off to re-charge his batteries, travel the world and catch up with his friends back in Baltimore.
However, his coach Bob Bowman has already warned him that serious training starts before dawn on New Years Day and he had better be in shape.
"I probably won't be able to sit around for too long. I always want to be constantly moving and exercising," he said.
"I'll definitely try and stay in some kind of shape but nothing big until January or February."
Phelps's next major assignment is the 2009 world championships in Rome where he plans to unveil a new programme that could lay the foundations for his 2012 London schedule.
Phelps has swum the same eight events at the last two Olympics, winning six gold and two bronze medals in Athens, but wants to experiment with different events before London.
He has still not decided which races he will compete in at Rome but told Bowman he wants to drop the 400 individual medley, a gruelling event that requires long hours of training in all four strokes, and focus on backstroke and freestyle sprints.
"My mum told me she wants to go to Rome so I better make the team," he said.
"We're going to play around over the next few years and incorporate some new events and see how they work.
"I'd like to try a few backstrokes and 100 freestyle more... it'll be fun to race (specialist sprinters) Eamon (Sullivan) and Alain (Bernard).
"Those guys are moving so fast through the water so to get in there and race the best is what I'd like to do."

Source:rediff

Boxer Akhil Kumar fails to make semis

India's Akhil Kumar failed to make it to the semi-finals in the 54kg bantamweight class in the boxing competition. He was beaten by Republic of Moldova's Veaceslav Gojan 10-3 in the quarter-final in Beijing on Monday.
The Indian, who upset Russian world champion Sergey Vodopyanov in the earlier round, was at the receiving end for most of the contest.
After a reasonably good first two round, the Indian was unable to break through the defence of his opponent and paid the price in the last two rounds in which the Maldovan scored heavily.

source:rediff

Poor show by Anjali, Avneet

Indian women shooters continued to disappoint at the Olympics as Anjali Bhagwat and Avneet Kaur Sidhu failed to qualify for the 50m Rifle 3 position event on Thursday morning.

Anjali finished a poor 32nd with a total score of 571 while Avneet placed 42nd of 43 competitors after scoring 552 in the qualifying round at the Beijing Shooting Range.
Li Du of the home nation topped the scoring chart with an Olympic record-equaling performance of 589 points.
Anjali shot a series of 94 and 97 in Prone and followed it up with scores of 93 and 96 in Standing before winding up her campaign with scores of 96 and 95 in Kneeling.
Avneet shot 85, 95 in Prone and 90, 93 in Standing and concluded her challenge with scores of 87 92 and in Kneeling.

source:rediff

Dola, Bombayla out of individual archery event

Dola Banerjee and L Bombayla Devi crashed out of the women's individual archery event at the Olympics after losing their respective opening round matches on Tuesday.
While Dola lost to Canadian Marie-Pier Beaudet, Bombayla went down to Poland's Iwona Marcinkiewicz.

Rathore, Jung fail to make final cut

Athens Olympics silver medallist Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore failed to make it to the final of the double trap shooting event at the Beijing Olympics on Tuesday.
Seen as a strong medal contender for India, Rathore shot a series of 43,45,43,131 to finish 12th among 19 shooters.
Struggling for form in the run-up to the Games, the army shooter's score of 131 was just not enough in a qualifying round that saw Italian Francesco D Aniello finish at the top of the heap with a total of 141.
Earlier, Samresh Jung's woeful form in the Olympics continued and he failed to make the 50m pistol final, finishing a disappointing 42nd in the qualification round on Tuesday.
Jung, a multiple gold medallist from the 2006 Commonwealth Games , shot a series of 88,92,91,86,90,93 to average 9.0 that ruled him out of contention. He earlier missed the cut for the 10m air pistol event final.
Meanwhile, China's Zongliang Tan qualified first for the event, shooting a series of 96,94,93,96,90,96 to average 9.417

Source:rediff

Phelps joins elite Olympians with nine golds

Michael Phelps became only the fourth man to win a record nine Olympic golds when he powered to victory in the 200 meters freestyle swimming on Tuesday.
Phelps put on an imperious display to capture his third medal of the Beijing Games, leading from the start to win in a new world record time of 1.42.96, knocking 0.90 seconds off his old record, a huge margin.

The American's third gold in Beijing, not even half way through his long march towards a target of eight, sets him beside US athletics great Carl Lewis , US swimmer Mark Spitz and Finnish distance runner Paavo Nurmi in the record books.
The lanky 23-year-old also has Spitz's record of seven golds at a single Games in his sights.
His exploits have helped draw huge audiences for the Olympics back home, where broadcaster NBC said they had more viewers for any summer Games held outside the United States since 1976.
One woman, Soviet gymnast Larysa Latynina , also has won nine Olympic golds.
Each of Phelps's victories in the Chinese capital has come in world record time.
Americans won three golds in under 20 minutes in a captivating morning swim session at the Water Cube pool.
American world champion Natalie Coughlin forced Zimbabwe's Kirsty Coventry to settle for a second silver in the women's 100 backstroke final.
Coventry, second-placed in the 400 individual medley, had hoped to bring some rare sporting cheer to her troubled country.
American Aaron Peirsol, double Olympic backstroke champion in 2004, returned to break the world record and seize gold in the 100m backstroke in Beijing.
Australian world champion Leisel Jones, two individual silvers and bronze to her name from 2000 and 2004, is overwhelming favorite to snare an elusive individual Olympic gold in the 100 breaststroke final.
PLEASANTLY COOL
Temperatures have fallen in Beijing to a comfortable 22 degrees Celsius (72 Fahrenheit) from the oppressive mid 30s at the weekend and the air has cleared, making life easier for outdoor athletes like rowers and tennis players.
New world number one Jelena Jankovic and the Williams sisters are safely through to the second round in the women's tennis, along with favorites Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal in the men's singles.
China are setting the pace at the top of the medals table with nine golds and may extend their lead on Tuesday, although the United States should hit their stride once the athletics gets underway at the end of the week.
The hosts hope for a clean sweep in the diving competition where they have picked up the first two golds on offer. Chen Ruolin and Wang Xin aim to make it three out of three in the women's synchronized 10m platform on Tuesday.
China are also fancied to pick up a couple more golds in weightlifting, and are overwhelming favorites for men's team gold in artistic gymnastics.
With memories of a 2004 Athens Games judging scandal lingering, the judges kept several of the Chinese gymnasts waiting for up to 10 minutes each as they tried to agree on scores during Saturday's qualifying round.
But the favorites still ended on top, ahead of 2004 champions Japan and former powerhouse Russia.
The Chinese team said they had taken their inspiration from "Prince of Gymnastics" Li Ning, who lit the cauldron at the opening ceremony on Friday, circling high above the heads of spectators in a daredevil high-wire act.
"The feeling it gave us was an older brother who was lighting the flame," gymnast Zou Kai told reporters. "It was very exciting and moreover it was on our home soil."

Source:rediff

Sridhar knocked out

India's Anup Sridhar bowed out of the Beijing Olympics on Monday after losing to Japan's Shoji Sato in the men's singles badminton tournament in Bejing.
Sridhar went down tamely 13-21, 17-21 in the second round.