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(09/18/07 2:14am)
SHANGHAI, China – The United States needs only a tie against Nigeria to reach the quarterfinals of the Women’s World Cup.\nThat result sounded modest a few weeks ago. But on Tuesday, it could prove difficult for the No. 1-ranked Americans, who have wobbled slightly in their first two games.\nThe Americans rallied to tie a swarming North Korea 2-2, and withstood four corners in the first four minutes to overcome Sweden 2-0. Seeking its third World Cup title, the U.S. team needs to start more quickly on Tuesday on the banks of the Yangtze River. And they know it.\n“We weathered the storm both in the North Korea game and the Sweden game,” said captain Kristine Lilly, playing in an unprecedented fifth World Cup. “But I think it’s a reminder. We have to be ready. We’ve got to start going at teams. It’s another wake-up call for us to be ready right from the start instead of waiting to get into the game.”\nA tie will be enough to advance the United States, which remains undefeated after 49 games. However, a victory in the final Group B game might ensure a slightly easier opponent in the quarterfinal. The group winner will face England, and the second-place team will play defending champion Germany.\nThose teams became the first to reach the quarterfinals on Monday.\nGermany ousted Japan 2-0 in Hangzhou. Birgit Prinz scored her 13th career goal in World Cup finals, eclipsing the record of 12 by American Michelle Akers. England hammered Argentina 6-1 in Chengdu with two goals by Kelly Smith, advancing England to its first quarterfinal appearance in 12 years.\nNorth Korea, which faces Sweden in its group final on Tuesday, and the United States are tied in the first six categories used to break ties, but the U.S. has one less yellow card. Both teams are favored to win, and the top spot should go to the team that has the bigger margin of victory.\nFive-time African champion Nigeria drew with Sweden 1-1 and lost 2-0 to the Koreans.\nNigeria is tall, quick and athletic, with two top strikers in Cynthia Uwak and Perpetua Nkwocha – both African players of the year.\n“You have a team that can kind of lull you to sleep,” defender Kate Markgraf said. “They’ll kind of sit in a spot on the field where you don’t quite notice them. And then all of a sudden, they are so fast and so quick. You’ll play a ball and they’ll be able to jump on it when you’re not expecting it.”\nNigeria has vastly improved from the last World Cup, where the Americans won 5-0. In that one, Nigeria lost all three games and failed to score.\nThe Americans have defeated Nigeria in three meetings by a combined score of 15-2.\nGermany coach Silvia Neid knows her team will have to play better in the quarterfinals.\n“In the quarterfinals we need to add a little bit to our performance, because we will face a very tough opponent,” she said.\nGermany and the United States drew 0-0 in their last game.\nFor England, Smith has four goals to share the tournament scoring lead. England drew 1-1 with the Americans the last time they played.\n“If it’s the United States, it will be a challenge that we will relish,” said England coach Hope Powell, who played on England’s last quarterfinal team. “We will clearly be the underdog, and that’s something that we will thrive on.”
(09/12/07 12:35pm)
CHENGDU, China – Blood streaming from a gash on the top of her head, Abby Wambach came off the field. For 10 minutes, the United States played short-handed while she got stitches.\nNorth Korea didn’t waste its chance.\nThe United States allowed a pair of goals while Wambach was off the field – one on a blunder by goalkeeper Hope Solo – then rallied for a 2-2 tie Tuesday in its opener at the Women’s World Cup.\n“When they scored right away as I went off, I started to get worried,” Wambach said. “So I started to run to the locker room to get stitches put in.”\nThe top-ranked Americans, trying to regain the title they won in 1991 in China and 1999 at home, extended their unbeaten streak to 47 games. But playing in the toughest of four groups, they put pressure on themselves heading into games against third-ranked Sweden on Friday and Nigeria next Tuesday.\n“I think the U.S. is the best in the world, but today they didn’t perform to their maximum,” said Kim Kwang-min, coach of the fifth-ranked North Koreans.\nWambach, playing on a sore right toe she injured Aug. 26 against Finland, put the United States ahead in the 50th minute on a rainy night. She took a pass from captain Kristine Lilly on the right side of the penalty area and beat Jon Myong-hui with a 13-yard shot that the goalkeeper got her gloves on but failed to stop.\nFive minutes later, Wambach was defending a cross when she collided with North Korea’s Rik Kum Suk. Wambach fell to the ground, blood pouring from the back of her head onto her face and jersey.\nU.S. coach Greg Ryan decided not to replace Wambach, who has 78 goals in 97 games with the national team.\n“It was a very tough call,” he said. “The doctors said they could get her back within just a few minutes. Abby is such an important player to this team. I though we could withstand playing 11 against 10.”\nIn the 58th minute, Kil Son-hui hit a twisting, long strike that slipped through the Solo’s hands, tying the score. Kim Yong-ae then pounced on a rebound in the 62nd and shot it past Solo, who didn’t have a chance.\nWhen the crowd screamed again, Wambach knew North Korea had taken a 2-1 lead.\n“I really had to hurry up the process,” she said. “I was yelling at the doctors to get it done quicker. I cursed some bad words, and hurried up and got my jersey on and ran as fast as I could.”\nWambach re-entered the game two minutes later, and the United States tied it in the 69th minute when Heather O’Reilly scored her 12th goal – her first in the World Cup – taking a ball in the penalty area that couldn’t be cleared and putting it into the roof of the goal.\n“I was just moving around in the box and the ball just seriously wound up on my feet,” O’Reilly said. “I just tried to get something on it – to get it on frame. It didn’t feel like it came off my foot very cleanly. I was surprised it was as nice a goal as it was.”\nSolo made two saves in injury time to protect the lead, first sprawling to her right to parry away a shot, then grabbing a drive without allowing a rebound.\n“For the fans and soccer it was great,” Lilly said. “People saw attacking soccer, they saw goals; the teams were combatting to the very end.”\nDespite its usual poise, the U.S. looked unnerved at times before a crowd of 35,100 at Chengdu Sports Center Stadium in southwestern China.\nNorth Korea, with many of the players that won last year’s under-20 Women’s World Cup, pressed the Americans. The North Koreans ganged up at midfield to attack and mixed long balls with quick triangular passes.\n“I would say I have never defended as much,” U.S. defender Cat Whitehill said. “They came at us flying, they came at us with a ton of numbers. I’m just glad we were able to stop them enough to get a tie.”\nRyan tried to encourage Solo, who rebounded from the bad first goal with some excellent late play.\n“A hundred times Hope is going to save that one shot, but this is the one time it goes through her hand. It’s unlucky,” Ryan said.\nSolo said, “It’s a day in the life of a goalkeeper. The conditions are slick and it is wet out there, but it happens.”
(04/27/07 4:00am)
BEIJING – Organizers for the 2008 Beijing Olympics announced Thursday what will be the longest torch relay in the history of the games, tracing a route that covers five continents and makes politically sensitive stops in Taiwan and Tibet.\nThe head of Taiwan’s Olympic Committee, however, said it would not participate in the relay, because it “downgraded” the island’s sovereignty.\nAt a Beijing ceremony attended by senior members of China’s ruling Communist Party and the International Olympic Committee, organizers said the route would cover 85,000 miles, last 130 days and reach Mount Everest.\n“It will be a relay that will cover the longest distance and be most inclusive and involve the most people in Olympic history,” said Liu Qi, the head of Beijing’s Olympic organizing committee.\nThe relay is the latest grand plan associated with an Olympics that organizers and IOC officials have said should set a new standard for the games. But it also takes the games into politically tricky terrain.\nStops in Taiwan and Tibet, where Mount Everest towers, have generated controversy ever since Beijing telegraphed its intentions to include them on the route years ago. Taiwan has resisted Beijing’s overtures – and sometimes threats – to unify after splitting amid civil war while China’s often harsh 57-year rule over Tibet has been widely criticized.\nFour American activists were detained by Chinese authorities Wednesday on Mount Everest after they unfurled a banner calling for Tibet’s independence.\nBeijing is hoping that the torch relay will bolster its claims over both territories.\nIn a compromise, however, the torch will pass from Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City to Taipei, Taiwan’s capital, and then to Chinese-controlled Hong Kong. The route allows Taiwan to say it is part of the international leg while allowing China to blur the distinction between the domestic and international parts.\nBut Tsai Chen-wei, chairman of Taiwan’s Olympic Committee, said less than two hours after the Beijing meeting that the island would not participate in the torch relay.\n“This route is a domestic route that constitutes an attempt to downgrade our sovereignty,” Tsai said. “It is something that the government and people cannot accept.”\nTsai’s comments contradicted an April 13 statement by another Taiwanese Olympic official, who said the island could accept a spot on the torch route that involved geographical contiguity with Hong Kong.\nTaiwan’s governing Democratic Progressive Party has long pushed for a torch route that would reflect Taiwan’s separateness from China, from which it split amid civil war in 1949.\nIn recent days, DPP officials said a route that linked Taiwan and Hong Kong would not be acceptable, because it would feed China’s desire to make it appear that the self-governing island was part of the mainland.\nThe disputes underscore the political agendas at work surrounding many Olympics, but especially in Beijing, whose Communist government hopes the event will raise its stature at home and abroad.\nForeign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said politics should be kept out of the games, and that Beijing has the support of the country and of people around the world.\n“Most of China’s citizens are looking forward and making preparations for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Most people in the world are looking forward to a successful Olympic Games that can promote the friendship of people around the world,” he told a news conference.\nThe relay, which is supposed to embody the Olympic values of friendship through sports, is a popular public relations tool and the only contact most people have with the Olympics.\nNext year’s relay will begin in Greece and wind across the globe before it is used to ignite the cauldron at the opening ceremony on Aug. 8, 2008, in Beijing’s 91,000-seat Olympic Stadium.\nOther stops announced Thursday include Paris; San Francisco; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania; Islamabad, Pakistan; and Pyongyang, the capital of politically isolated and belligerent North Korea.\n“The Beijing 2008 torch relay will, as its theme says, be a journey of harmony, bringing friendship and respect to people of different nationalities, races and creeds,” IOC President Jacques Rogge told the ceremony.\nThe relay’s signature moment is expected to be its ascent to the summit of Mount Everest, which straddles Chinese-ruled Tibet and Nepal.
(04/12/07 4:00am)
BEIJING – Along with spitting, run-down housing and bad manners, add unintelligible English to the list of things organizers of the 2008 Beijing Olympics want to ban.\nMunicipal officials promised on Wednesday to crack down on awkward, Chinese-inflected English, known as “Chinglish,” and asked the public to help police bad grammar and faulty syntax.\nWith 500,000 foreigners expected for the Olympics, taxi drivers who can’t speak English – or signs that mangle the language – could be an embarrassment and distract from the $40 billion being poured into rebuilding the city for the games.\nThroughout the city, examples abound.\nA store selling tobacco products advertises: “An Excellent Winding Smoke.”\nOn the floor at Beijing’s Capital Airport, a sign reads: “Careful Landslip Attention Security.”\nOn a billboard, this mysterious message: “Shangri-La is in you mind, but your Buffalo is not.”\nIn an elevator, parents are warned: “Please lead your child to tare the life.”\nLiu Yang, who heads the “Beijing Speaks Foreign Languages Program” for the city government, said 6,500 “standardized” English-language signs were put up last year on Beijing roads. But he acknowledged private businesses were not following the rules, which were handed to reporters – a stack of glossy documents weighing 2 pounds.\n“We will pass the message on to authorities in the advertising sector,” Liu said. “If English translation is needed it must be subject to the standards set forth in the regulations.”\nLiu said a language hotline may be set up for the games to encourage the public to report nonsense English. China’s diplomatic missions abroad are assisting, Liu said, “and our people working in foreign companies are helping with correct usage.”\n“In the future when we set up new signs in public places in English, we hope all these standards will be followed to avoid more additional mistakes.”\nLiu said Beijing taxi drivers must pass an English test to keep their licenses. But he acknowledged most speak only Chinese, and many are skipping language classes.
(07/28/03 1:41am)
BARCELONA, Spain -- Ian Crocker looked at the clock and thought there was a big mistake.\nNo mistake.\nCrocker, not U.S. teammate Michael Phelps, set a world record Saturday in the 100-meter butterfly finals at the World Swimming Championships.\nWhen a startled Crocker saw his time, he shouted "what," gave a palms-up shrug of disbelief, then embraced Phelps across the lane ropes.\n"A lot of people would say I had full confidence in myself going into the race," Crocker said. "But deep down you've got to say: 'Hey, it's Michael Phelps.'"\nPhelps, after all, had already broken four world records in the championships, including the 100 butterfly Friday.\nCrocker was timed in 50.98 seconds for the gold medal while Phelps won the silver in 51.10 -- the two fastest times in history. Andrii Serdinov of Ukraine, who held the world mark for five minutes Friday before Phelps snatched it, took the bronze in 51.59.\nCrocker, a 20-year-old University of Texas swimmer, was America's best 100 butterflyer until Phelps came along.\n"I've wanted to go 51 (seconds) for a long time but I guess I've skipped that one and I'll take the 50," Crocker said. "I don't know what to think right now. I'm in shock. I feel like someone's going to wake me up and it's going to be time to swim today."\nCrocker, who was "one of those kids who couldn't get out of the guppy group when I started to swim," seems to thrive on being underestimated.\n"In some ways it's kind of an advantage to be an underdog if you have the drive," he said. "When my American record disappeared last summer, a fire was lit."\nPhelps, 18, has been invincible. He has upstaged Australia's Ian Thorpe in the championships, a soft-drink maker is dickering with him for an endorsement and at the Athens Olympics he's expected to challenge Mark Spitz's record of seven gold medals.\n"As you all know, I hate to lose," said Phelps, who hasn't been beaten in the race in two years. "This is going to drive me even more. And I'm sure it's going to drive Ian even more."\nThe 100 butterfly might be Phelps' weakest event, even though he shaved 0.37 seconds off his time in each of his last two races -- setting a world record in one.\nBefore the 100 butterfly record fell, Phelps on Friday was one of only three male swimmers to hold four individual world records at once, joining Spitz and Michael Gross.\nPhelps still owns three world marks: 200 individual medley, 200 butterfly and 400 IM. He swims the 400 IM on Sunday and the 400 medley relay.\nPhelps has won gold in the 200 IM and 200 butterfly, with silver in the 800 freestyle relay to go with the 100 fly.\nIn other events, triple Olympic champion Inge De Bruijn won the 50 butterfly, her first gold of the championships.\nDe Bruijn clocked 25.84, beating silver medalist and eight-time Olympic champion Jenny Thompson of the United States (26.00) and bronze medalist Anna-Karin Kammerling of Sweden (26.06). Kammerling set the world record of 25.57 last year.\nIn the 50 freestyle final, world record-holder Alexander Popov won his third gold medal of the championships. Popov, who won his first two Olympic golds at the 1992 Barcelona Games, finished in 21.92 to beat Britain's Mark Foster (22.20) and Pieter van den Hoogenband (22.29) of the Netherlands.\nPopov won the 100 freestyle Thursday and was a member of Russia's winning 400 freestyle relay team.\nThe Chinese team of Zhan Shu, Luo Xuejuan, Zhou Yafei and Yang Yu won gold in the women's 400 medley relay in 3:59.89, ahead of silver medalist United States (4:00.83) and bronze medalist Australia (4:01.37).\nZhou swam the third leg (butterfly) and collapsed afterward. She briefly lost consciousness on the pool deck but recovered and made it to the medal podium. She attributed her blackout to exhaustion.\nGermany's Hannah Stockbauer won the gold in a tight 800 freestyle. Stockbauer (8:23.66) beat silver medalist Diana Munz of the United States (8:24.19), while Britain's Rebecca Cooke took bronze (8:28.45).\nBritain's Katy Sexton won the 200 backstroke (2:08.74) ahead of silver medalist Margaret Hoelzer of the United States (2:09.24) and bronze medalist Stanislava Komarova of Russia (2:10.17).\nDe Bruijn also topped the 50 freestyle semifinals (24.75). Germany's Thomas Rupprath posted the fastest time (25.07) in the 50 backstroke semifinals.\nLenny Krayzelburg, the American who holds the world record of 24.99 in the 50 backstroke, is recovering from shoulder surgery and is not competing.\nLuo Xuejuan of China (30.64) led the women's 50 breaststroke semifinals.