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Russia to hold Alternative Olympics for Banned Athletes

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Russia to hold Alternative Olympics for Banned Athletes
Russian President Vladimir Putin (C) and Olympic Village Mayor Elena Isinbaeva (R) visit the Coastal Cluster Olympic Village ahead of the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics at the Athletes Village in Sochi February 5, 2014. Photo: REUTERS/Pascal Le Segretain

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has signed a decree to hold an alternative Games for athletes banned from the Winter Olympics and Winter Paralympics in Pyeongchang.

The event is a repeat of a competition the Russian Government organized for summer athletes banned from Rio 2016.

As reported by Russia’s official state news agency TASS, Medvedev said: “The Olympic Games are underway, and we are cheering for our athletes who are being in rather complicated conditions there.

“However, athletes who were not admitted to the Olympics on a spurious pretext, because of a vociferous political campaign unleashed against our country, suffered even more.

“I have [therefore] signed an order assigning the Sports Ministry to hold open sports competitions in some sports, both Olympic and Paralympic, with payment of appropriate rewards.

“In order to preserve our potential in winter sports, support athletes and give them a chance to fulfill themselves, an order has been signed for five sports – skiing, biathlon, bobsleigh, short track and speed skating, in which almost all Russian athletes were not admitted to the Games.

“The competitions for these sports will be held over several weeks right after the Olympic Games.”

Russian deputy prime minister Vitaly Mutko, who is currently fighting a lifetime ban by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), said that the prize money offered to the athletes would be similar to that won by Olympic medallists.

Mutko did not specify all the cities that would host the events but did name Saint Petersburg and Khanty-Mansiysk as two venues.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport dismissed the cases of 45 Russian athletes hoping to compete at Pyeongchang 2018 on the eve of the Winter Olympics in South Korea last week.

They were all banned by the IOC following revelations of Russia’s sample manipulation doping scheme at their home Sochi 2014 Games.

Russian athletes who have been permitted to compete are doing so neutrally under the Olympic Athletes from Russia banner.

The Paralympic team will also take part under a neutral flag next month.

By Thomas Giles

Republished with permission from insidethegames.biz

Germany Recognizes ESports as an Official Sport

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Germany Recognizes ESports as an Official Sport
Photo: iq.intel.com

The German coalition Government has agreed to recognize esports as an official sport, as it continues its quest for acceptance in the Olympics.

Germany has joined South Korea, China, Russia, Italy and South Africa by officially recognizing esports.

As well as this being another boost towards esports’ hopeful acceptance at the Olympic Games, German clubs will now be able to apply for non-profit status.

This means they will be entitled to reduced corporate and commercial taxes whilst it will also make it easier for foreign esports players to compete in Germany.

Hans Jagnow, President of Germany’s national esports association, expressed his delight at the official recognition in comments to Deutsche Welle.

“It’s great news, but also not a surprise,” he said

“It’s been preceded by long dialogue.

“After the dialogue process, it was determined that esports not only has a huge economic aspect but also has a social component.

“People want to organize, meet up, play and train.

“Esports connects people, just like in traditional sports.

“This recognition has simply enforced that esport also has a social component.”

The official recognition could also see state investment into facilities and stadia at grassroots level, as well as the subsidizing of equipment.

In giving this recognition to esports, the German Government has backed a discipline which will be a showpiece event at the 2022 Asian Games in Hangzhou.

There is, however, a conflict of interest as the German Olympics Sports Confederation has refused to recognize esports in the past, concerned that a lack of movement has the potential to cause health issues.

Jagnow was quick to dismiss those fears.

“There are precision sports, such as archery or motorsport, with little physical effect,” he said.

“No-one has said, ‘youth decays in motorsport’.

“That’s how we see it in esports.”

A potential barrier to Olympic acceptance could be the use of violent video games with Germany’s International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach recently saying that they need to “draw a clear line” on accepting anything “which is about violence, explosions and killing”.

Jagnow was also quick to counter this argument.

“We have a lot of diversity in esports, from sports simulations to strategy games to fantasy games,” he said.

“They aren’t first-person shooter games.

“They are big, popular games.

“Lots of games have an age rating.

“Counterstrike is 16 plus, League of Legends is 12 plus and FIFA is for all ages.”

By Thomas Giles

Republished with permission from insidethegames.biz

Finishing Second is Still an Accomplishment, isn’t It?

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Finishing Second is Still an Accomplishment, isn’t It?
(Minneapolis, MN, 02/04/18) New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady gets stripped sacked during the fourth quarter of Super Bowl LII against the Philadelphia Eagles at the U.S. Bank Stadium on Monday, April 02, 2018. Boston Herald Staff photo by Matt Stone

Following the most recent Super Bowl, several sports pundits including Fox Sports’ Cris Carter commented on the issue of Tom Brady’s legacy by saying it was diminished because of the recent loss in Minneapolis. The logic of the argument was simple: 5 wins and 2 losses has a higher winning percentage than 5 wins and 3 losses, so it must be better. This is the same logic people often use to say that Joe Montana (four Super Bowl wins and no losses) was a better quarterback than Tom Brady.

I will say upfront that I am not a Patriots fan or the fan of any other sports team. I do watch American football occasionally and at least know who people like Cam Newton and Aaron Rogers are but the outcomes of games don’t matter to me in the least. What got me thinking about this issue was a conversation I overheard in the airport between an American father and his young son. The father was taking the same line of reasoning Carter was, saying Tom Brady had embarrassed himself by losing the game and decreasing his winning percentage. The more I thought about it, however, the more I started to believe this was a very bad message to be sending to a child.

In professional sports, it is true the ultimate goal is to win a championship. Everyone wants to be the best, to win that ring or gold medal. But is a silver medal really so bad? I would have to argue “no”. You still proved you were the second best by beating everyone else. Surely that is something to be proud of and celebrated?

Let us say, for argument’s sake, that winning the Super Bowl is like winning a gold medal and that winning an AFC or NFC championship is like winning a silver medal. I think all of us can agree that it is still better for a country or team to win 5 golds and 3 silvers instead of just 5 golds and 2 silvers. Yet, when people talk about Tom Brady’s Super Bowl record, this logic doesn’t seem to apply: it seems not having the extra silver is somehow better.

As an educator, this reasoning concerns me the most when it is conveyed to children. It suggests that finishing second or third in a tournament might actually be worse than falling out in qualifiers. How is a child to interpret this? Is it better to lose on purpose early and avoid losing in the final?

The mentality of anything other than first place being a failure has been especially prevalent in the country where I teach: South Korea. Here, parents are rarely satisfied when their children finish second or third. This cultural pressure is one of the reasons why Korea has the highest youth suicide rate in the world along with one of the highest youth depression rates.

Dear parents, please let your children know it’s ok to be second.

By Justin Fendos, Ph.D.

Dr. Justin Fendos is a professor at Dongseo University in South Korea and the associate director of the Tan School at Fudan University in Shanghai. He conducts research on a wide range of topics including East Asian culture and education psychology. He is a regular contributor for the Korea Herald and The Diplomat.

Armour: With Dangerous Sports, Death is Never Far at the Winter Olympics

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Armour: With Dangerous Sports, Death is Never Far at the Winter Olympics
Japan's Asami Hirono falls in the women's snowboard slopestyle final at the Phoenix Park Monday during the Winter Olympics. Photo: AFP Photo/Martin BUREAU

These aren’t just fun and games.

Oh, it’s easy to think that, lulled by the style and flair with which snowboarders and aerial skiers do their tricks. Or the speeds produced by skiers, lugers and skeleton racers. Make no mistake, however. What athletes in several Winter Olympic sports do could kill them.

No hyperbole, no exaggeration. Literally kill them.

This weekend was a blunt reminder of that. Gale-force winds forced two Alpine skiing events to be rescheduled, and should have caused the women’s slopestyle finals Sunday to be postponed. Riders were being blown sideways while flipping and twisting 20-plus feet in the air. That no one was seriously injured – or worse – was a matter of sheer luck.

“I’m glad that on that last jump that I walked away from it,” Britain’s Aimee Fuller said. “Once you’ve taken off the jump, you’re in the air and it is what it is and you’ve then got to recover it. I thought I was fine and then as I came around I felt this absolute — it literally took me off my feet.”

Heart attacks and congenital defects aside, sports are generally not life-threatening. Scan the program for the Summer Olympics, and there’s very little that would petrify anyone’s mother. There’s some danger in gymnastics, equestrian and cycling, yes, where the wrong moves could land you on your head or your back.

But there’s no fear of an Olympic swimmer drowning during a race. Or a basketball player suffering a closed-head injury during a game. Or a sprinter shattering multiple bones or lacerating his or her spleen during the 100 meters.

In the Winter Olympics, however, skiers, snowboarders, bobsledders, lugers and skeleton racers — they all flirt with death every time they take a run.

Eight years ago, Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili was killed when he lost control of his sled and was thrown headfirst into a pole during a training run at the Vancouver Olympics. He was going almost 90 mph when he crashed.

Sarah Burke, a freeskiing pioneer who helped bring halfpipe skiing to the Olympics, died after she crashed at the bottom of a pipe during training in January 2012. It was the same pipe where Vancouver medal favorite Kevin Pearce suffered a traumatic brain injury a few weeks before the 2010 Olympics.

Three months ago, French Alpine skier David Poisson died after hitting a tree while training for World Cup races he hoped would earn him a spot in Pyeongchang. Shaun White still has stitches in his tongue after slamming his face on the lip of the halfpipe in late October while training in New Zealand.

“I scared myself,” White said in a video of the crash posted last month. “I haven’t really had that much blood coming out of me before.”

And Canada’s Mark McMorris won the bronze medal in men’s slopestyle Sunday – less than a year after rupturing his spleen and breaking his jaw, left arm, pelvis and several ribs when he hit a tree. That accident came 11 months after he broke his femur in another snowboarding crash.

“I’m just really looking forward to riding my snowboard and going in the backcountry because I’ve missed two years of that, doing the fun side for me,” McMorris said. “I’ve been pretty stuck in the contest scene for a while.

“Or a death bed.”

Athletes in high-risk sports accept that there’s an inherent danger in what they do. But that doesn’t mean they have a death wish. They control what they can and, particularly at this point in their careers, back off when they encounter conditions that are too dangerous.

Like winds so strong they blow people over.

“We can actually get super hurt and it’s just really unfair,” said slopestyler Silje Norendal of Norway, who broke her arm in similar conditions during last year’s test event.

“To be honest, I didn’t get through the course once in practice. I hated it,” Norendal said. “All I wanted to do was sit up top and cry.”

The International Ski Federation defended its decision to go ahead with the women’s slopestyle event, saying the weather was “stable enough” to proceed. While acknowledging the many complaints from athletes, the FIS said “the nature of outdoor sports also requires adapting to the elements.”

Adapting to the elements means breaking out an umbrella when it rains or adding an extra layer to ward off the cold.

Not risking a broken neck.

For some Winter Olympians, there’s a chance of dying anytime they compete. Olympic officials don’t need to shorten their odds.

By Nancy Armour

This article was republished with permission from the original author and 2015 Ronald Reagan Media Award recipient, Nancy Armour, and the original publisher, USA Today. Follow columnist Nancy Armour on Twitter @nrarmour.

Rachel Axon contributed to this report. 

Pyeongchang 2018 Already Offering a Feast for Television Viewers

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Pyeongchang 2018 Already Offering a Feast for Television Viewers
David Gleirscher of Austria celebrates his gold medal win during final heats of the men's luge competition. Photo: AP

Watching on from afar, it has looked like an impressive start to proceedings at the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympics.

If organizers wanted to write a script for the Games, they would probably have begun with some favorites coming to the fore and a couple of shock results to really whet the appetite for the days ahead.

They certainly have had that.

The surprise result in the men’s sprint biathlon race was an example of this, as France’s pre-race favorite Martin Fourcade surprisingly saw his first shot of gold go up in smoke. Having, well, not shot accurately enough.

A rare couple of errors for the Frenchman, who has been a dominant on the World Cup circuit, allowed Germany’s Arnd Peiffer the opportunity to celebrate an unlikely gold.

The BBC had just finished picking through the bones of the result, when most people’s attention shifted to watch a German luger lock up another gold medal.

Just as co-commentator – and probably future Sochi 2014 four-man bobsleigh bronze medalist – John Jackson was complimenting Felix Loch for three faultless runs, the pitch and tone of commentary went from procession to pandemonium.

With the error seeing Loch drop not just out of the gold medal position, but off the podium entirely, the cameras struggled to know where to look moments after.

There was Loch at the bottom of the course near motionless with his head planted sullenly in his hands.

Then, David Gleirscher becoming the first Austrian for 50 years to clinch the men’s luge Olympic title being swarmed by team-mates and coaching staff.

I am not entirely sure where the United States’ Chris Madzer was. Given that he hurdled the barriers to celebrate with the American fans after securing their first ever men’s Olympic luge medal when he confirmed bronze, one imagines he was halfway towards Seoul in celebrating his bump up to silver.

If anything, the best reaction of all was that of Johannes Ludwig. When the cameras panned to the German, his near expressionless face showed the awkwardness of the situation for him.

“My team-mate has just seen hopes of a third consecutive gold dashed, but I have won the bronze, how on earth to I react.”

It was also one of those moments where you truly appreciated having the commentators there. Despite following the World Cup season, I honestly did not remember seeing Gleirscher’s name too many times. If someone had said an Austrian would win, then surely it would be world champion Wolfgang Kindl.

There the commentators, offering the snippet that Gleirscher’s highest result of the World Cup season was a fourth place finish.

Clearly it is their job to have done their homework and know about the sliders, but I wonder whether the same level of information would have been made clear to those spectators at the venue.

The spectators would certainly have been able to revel in the atmosphere of a thrilling conclusion to the competition, one they will no doubt feature heavily in the montages at the end of the Games and well into the future as part of the Olympic Channel’s Twitter and Facebook clips.

But, perhaps while they benefit from the atmosphere first hand, maybe they miss out on some of the nuances offered by the event amid the chaos at the end.

While it is no substitute for actually being at a single event, the Olympics are clearly a wonderfully television friendly event.

One minute you are watching a snowboarder fly up a ramp before producing an outrageous trick, then the other you could have switched over to watch an entirely different sport in curling.

With a good chunk of people having very little awareness of winter sports, outside the traditional winter sport nations, the commentators certainly earn their corn here.

The untrained eye can normally make a half decent stab at whether a slopestyle run is good or not. Touching the snow with your hand or backside see the judges mark you harshly, while a snowboarder sliding down headfirst, with their arms outstretched and appearing to be sighing, normally suggest things have gone fairly disastrously.

However, it is the intricacies over a snowboarder’s certain style or why it is more important for a short track speed skater to hit the opening turn of the race first, instead of a rival, that provide some added depth to proceedings back home.

Television succeeds in other areas with the Games, particularly in showing off Pyeongchang as a place. It really does look like a winter sports resort, as organizers would have hoped. The shots panning around do also show the scope of the Games and the facilities in the area.

As previously mentioned, it does fall down on the atmosphere, which is never likely to compare to actually being there.

It also does not provide the intimate feel of a venue, something which became apparent to me when watching the ski jumping competition.

Sure, the ski jumping facility looks high up on television. But having been fortunate to stand at the top of the venue a year ago and look down, as well as watching tiny athletes get every bigger as they come out of the sky from the bottom, the scale of the drop does not compare in the slightest.

Fortunately, there is not the biting cold watching on television, compared to the minus numbers which you would have to stand in to watch ski jumping.

Mind you, there 1 a.m. starts to competition back home might be a downside. But, if competition continues as it has done on the first two days, it’ll be worth it to carry on watching live.

By Michael Pavitt

Republished with permission from insidethegames.biz

Anderson Defends Olympic Snowboard Slopestyle Title

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Anderson Defends Olympic Snowboard Slopestyle Title
Jamie Anderson celebrates after winning her second consecutive slopestyle gold medal. Photo: AP

The United States’ Jamie Anderson retained her Olympic slopestyle snowboarding title amid difficult conditions at Pyeongchang 2018.

Anderson’s first-run score of 83.00 points proved to be enough for victory at the Phoenix Park.

She becomes the first woman to win two Olympic gold medals in snowboard.

“I’m feeling so happy,” Anderson said.

“I’ve gone through so much this last year just preparing for the Games and defending the gold is definitely not an easy position to be in.

“I had a lot of pressure and I’m just so proud of myself.

“It was really tough conditions today and a lot of people were struggling.”

World champion Laurie Blouin of Canada finished second with 76.33 points, while Finland’s Enni Rukajarvi, the Sochi 2014 silver medalist, came third with 75.38.

Anderson had a 9.09-point lead over nearest challenger Silje Norendal of Norway after the first run, while compatriot Jessika Jenson was a further 1.65 behind.

Neither Norendal nor Jenson improved on their first-run scores and finished fourth and fifth respectively.

Victory for Anderson was confirmed when team-mate Julia Marino, the last competitors to have the opportunity to better her score, fell short of the leading mark.

Anderson was asked if she wanted to take her second run and the 27-year-old opted to do so.

Her score of 34.56 points was inconsequential.

Owing to bad weather conditions and strong winds in Pyeongchang, the snowboarders competed in two runs rather than the normal three.

The best score of the two runs counted.

Many of the snowboarders fell on the second run as conditions worsened.

Australian snowboarder Tess Coady took to social media to blame the wind for the injury she suffered during practice for qualifying yesterday.

“[I] got picked up in the wind on the bottom jump in practice and my ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) was not a big fan!” Coady wrote in an Instagram post.

Pyeongchang 2018’s chief spokesperson Sung Baik-you said earlier today that the windy conditions, which also caused the scheduled women’s giant slalom event to be postponed until Thursday (February 15), would continue through to Wednesday (February 14).

“The temperature in the mountains is minus 15 to minus 25 degrees celsius,” he told reporters at a media briefing.

“The wind speed is five to 10 metres per second and it is making competitions very difficult.”

By Daniel Etchells

Republished with permission from insidethegames.biz

USOC Ends Prospects for 2026 Winter Olympics Bid

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USOC Ends Prospects for 2026 Winter Olympics Bid
Team USA marches in the parade of athletes around BC Place stadium during the Opening Ceremony of the XXI Olympic Winter Games, Feb. 12, 2010, in Vancouver. Photo: Tim Hipps via Wikimedia Commons

Any prospect of a United States bid for the 2026 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games seems to be over after fears it would disrupt Los Angeles’ preparations for the 2028 Summer edition.

United States Olympic Committee (USOC) chairman Larry Probst revealed that they will instead consider a 2030 attempt.

Salt Lake City, Reno and Denver have all announced that they are exploring a possible bid for future editions of the Winter Olympics.

“We don’t currently have any plans to bid for 2026 and will keep our options open for 2030,” Probst said a press conference at Pyeongchang 2018.

When pressed as to why, he answered: “It would make things extremely complicated from a financial standpoint with the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games.”

Probst was also asked whether they would consider submitted a bid by the deadline of March 31.

He added that, “if the IOC are prepared to go down the path” of a joint allocation for 2026 and 2030, they would “consider being part of those discussions.”

The US has hosted the Winter Olympics on four occasions – at Lake Placid in 1932 and 1980, Squaw Valley in 1960 and Salt Lake City in 2002.

Los Angeles 2028 chairman Casey Wasserman said in September warned a US attempt to host the 2026 Games would “require a lot of conversation” with the Californian city before a bid is formally launched.

It is likely that he strongly opposed it on the grounds that it would come before the Californian cities edition and thus deviate resources and make it harder to raise sponsorship money.

Los Angeles already faced the prospect of having to compete with the 2026 FIFA World Cup, expected to be awarded in June to a joint bid between the United States and Canada and Mexico.

Calgary in Canada, Sion in Switzerland, Stockholm in Sweden and Sapporo in Japan remain likely contenders for the 2026 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games

They must submit their interest by March 31 before an IOC Session decision on which bids to approve as candidates due in Buenos Aires in October.

A host city is expected to be chosen in 2019.

By Nick Butler

Republished with permission from insidethegames.biz

World Record Holder Coleman to Make IAAF Indoor Tour Debut in Boston

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World Record Holder Coleman to Make IAAF Indoor Tour Debut in Boston
American sprinter Christian Coleman. Photo: Matthias Schrader/AP

World 60 meter indoor record holder Christian Coleman will make his debut on the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) Indoor Tour Saturday as it reaches the Reggie Lewis Center in American city Boston.

The 21-year-old world 100 meter silver medalist, who recorded a time of 6.37 seconds at the Clemson Invitational meeting in South Carolina on January 19, takes on a field that includes another super-talented US sprinter in Noah Lyles, the IAAF Diamond League 200 meter champion.

Lyles ran 6.57 seconds last week in New York, as did China’s Xie Zhenye, who is also in the field along with Britain’s former world junior champion Harry Aikines-Aryeetey.

The women’s 60 meter hurdles is also stacked with talent in the form of the two fastest women so far this year, home athletes Christina Manning and Sharika Nelvis, and fellow US athletes Jasmin Stowers and Queen Harrison.

The women’s 400 meters will feature three-time world indoor 4x400m champion Natasha Hastings, but also 2015 world 400m hurdles silver medalist Shamier Little, who has run 52.84 this season without barriers in her way.

The event will conclude with a men’s 3,000m featuring two past winners at this meeting – Dejen Gebremeskel, who beat Britain’s Mo Farah at the same distance in 2011 despite losing a shoe early in the race, and fellow Ethiopian Hagos Gebrehiwet, who beat Gebremeskel in 2013 and set a still-standing world under-20 indoor record of 7:32.87.

The women’s 3,000m is not a World Indoor Tour scoring event but will feature two stellar home athletes in world steeplechase champion Emma Coburn and the 2011 world 1,500m champion Jenny Simpson, formerly a steeplechaser.

An intriguing middle-distance race is in prospect in the men’s 800m, where world indoor champion Boris Berian of the US will start putting an injury-hampered 2017 season behind him.

Berian will face a tough challenger in Donavan Brazier, whose 1:45.35 in New York put him third on the 2018 performance list and second on the North American indoor all-time list.

World indoor 1,500m silver medalist Dawit Seyaum, who won over that distance in this meeting two years ago, returns in that event to face Britain’s Hannah England and Violah Lagat of Kenya.

Bahamian record-holder Leevan Sands, Olympic finalist Troy Doris and 2014 world indoor finalist Chris Carter will contest the men’s triple jump.

By Mike Rowbottom

Republished with permission from insidethegames.biz

Serena Williams ‘Ready to Go’ as She Prepares for Fed Cup Comeback

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Serena Williams ‘Ready to Go’ as She Prepares for Fed Cup Comeback
Serena Williams. Photo: USA TODAY Sports / Susan Mullane

Serena Williams will be “ready to go” when she makes her first tournament appearance since giving birth as part of the United States’ defense of the Fed Cup this weekend.

The 36-year-old Williams – who had a daughter, Alexis, on September 1 last year – has not played a Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) tournament since she achieved an Open-era record 23rd Grand Slam singles title at the Australian Open in January 2017, skipping defending her title last month due to concerns over her fitness.

She lost to French Open champion Jelena Ostapenko in an exhibition match in Abu Dhabi last December.

But she is due to join her elder sister Venus in the World Group first round tie against The Netherlands on hard courts at Asheville, North Carolina, and team captain Kathy Rinaldi believes she will make a smooth transition back to tournament play.

“Serena’s just coming back,” Rinaldi told a press conference in Asheville, with two days of action starting tomorrow.

“She played an exhibition and it’s incredible.

‘It’s a quick turnaround after having her first child.

“She’s very professional and she has a lot of pride for playing for her country.

“She’ll be ready to go.”

For Williams, this weekend will mark the first time she has competed in a Fed Cup tie since April 2015.

She has a 13-0 singles record and 3-1 doubles record in the competition.

Venus Williams, meanwhile, will be seeking to recover from her first-round loss in Australia.

Coco Vandeweghe and Lauren Davis complete a US line-up that is expected to earn a relatively easy victory over a Dutch team, all of whom are ranked outside the top 100 in the WTA singles rankings.

In other World Group matches this weekend, the Czech Republic will require top performances in Prague from a highly experienced quartet including double Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova to overcome a strong Swiss team for whom Belinda Bencic, who defeated Venus Williams at the Australian Open, is in excellent form.

Alongside Timea Bacsinsky, the two can take on the best names in the game, and will take advantage of any below-par performances.

The form of the volatile talent Kristina Mladenovic could play a key role in France’s fortunes in their home match at La-Roche-sur-Yon against a strong Belgian team that includes Australian Open semi-finalist Elise Mertens.

Last year’s finalists Belarus will have their stellar talents, Aryna Sabalenka and Aliaksandra Sasnovich, available for their first round match against Germany in Minsk.

Both players were instrumental in getting Belarus to their first-ever Fed Cup final in 2017, and they will be looking to go one step further this year.

The German team is depleted by the absence of 2016 Australian and US Open winner Angelique Kerber and Julia Goerges.

Meanwhile Australia’s team starts its bid to return to the World Group with a match against Ukraine on grass in Canberra.

By Mike Rowbottom

Republished with permission from insidethegames.biz

Yarnold Stresses Education in Fight Against Olympic Doping

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Yarnold Stresses Education in Fight Against Olympic Doping
Olympic medalist Lizzy Yarnold. Photo: BBC

Olympic skeleton champion Lizzy Yarnold has stressed the importance of education in the fight against doping in sport after UK Anti-Doping (UKAD) completed its “Clean Games” program.

Yarnold, who will carry Britain’s flag at the Opening Ceremony of the Winter Olympic Games, claimed it was “key” to educate people on how to protect clean sport.

UKAD conducted its program with every athlete who is due to represent Britain at Pyeongchang 2018.

Each of the 59 British competitors here have been drugs tested in addition to the initiative, UKAD said.

“Education is key in the fight against doping in sport, especially ahead of a major games,” Yarnold, an outspoken figure on the issue of doping in sport in recent years, said.

“We need the programs to help educate everyone involved why clean sport is so important and how we can protect it.”

UKAD completed 56 anti-doping education sessions during the initiative, claiming it has now reached more than 150 Olympic and Paralympic athletes.

“We are delighted all our British athletes and their support personnel heading to the Winter Olympics are meeting their responsibilities outlined in our Clean Games Policy, by taking part in UKAD’s Olympic Games education program,” Mike Hay, Britain’s Chef de Mission for the Games here, said.

“It is imperative athletes and their support personnel are aware of their anti-doping responsibilities in relation to clean sport, as well as how to mitigate the risks of inadvertent doping when competing abroad.

“UKAD’s Olympic Games education program is vital to achieving this.”

By Liam Morgan

Republished with permission from insidethegames.biz.