Sprint king
At the last major meeting of the season in Yokohama, Japan, Olympic champion Justin Gatlin confirmed his good form by taking the 100m in 9.97 seconds ahead of Leonard Scott and Frankie Fredericks, who has now retired. Two other great athletes also chose the event to announce their retirements, Germany’s Heike Dreschler and Inha Babakova from the Ukraine.
Lone ranger
Colin Montgomerie, himself a candidate for the 2006 captaincy, has joined the European Tour in urging Bernhard Langer to stay on for a second term as Ryder Cup leader. The German has so far refused to commit himself and looks more likely to go out on top as did Seve Ballesteros and Sam Torrance before him.
Bad blood
Olympic time trial cycling champion and Tour de France hero, Tyler Hamilton, faced losing his gold medal, as well as a lengthy ban following reports that he failed a drugs test in Athens. If a follow-up ‘B’ sample, taken during the current Tour of Spain, confirms that the American had undergone performance-enhancing blood transfusions, he would lose his Olympic title in favour of Russia’s Viatcheslav Ekimov. In the event, the counter analysis carried out in Lausanne proved ‘inconclusive’. The medal stays, but a two-year suspension seems likely.
Ace
Faro-based José Ricardo Nunes has beaten Lisbon’s Nuno Jacinto 6-1, 7-5 to become 2004 Portuguese National Junior Tennis Champion. It is hoped that the Algarve schoolboy will revive the flagging fortunes of Portuguese players in the international arena. In the meantime, Andy Roddick has improved his own service world record to 249km/h.
