With recent news that fathers of British athletes Derek Redmond (a former Olympic athlete) and Chris Mears (a 2012 hopeful) will be carrying the Olympic torch in the relay across the UK, it is worth looking at where the torch will travel on its journey to London for the 2012 Olympics.

The relay will start in May 2012 and it will visit locations such as the Tyne Bridge (where it ascends by zip wire), Mount Snowdon in Wales and across Loch Ness in Scotland. Other locations include UK landmarks such as the Giant’s Causeway and Stonehenge.

The relay will consist of an impressive 8,000 torch bearers travelling an equally interesting 8,000 miles. The idea is that the torch will be carried through every single county in England, and through all the local authorities of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. Locog (the company responsible for the journey planning) claim the torch will visit within 10 miles of nearly all of the UK’s population.

No location will be too remote with places such as the Shetland Islands and Jersey seeing the torch on its Olympic relay. The Torch will start off at Land’s End and it will be:

Travelling in an Isle of Man TT sidecar, taking the chair lift at the Needles, Isle of Wight, floating in a rainforest balloon at the Eden Project, braving the white water rapids at Lee Valley , taking a trip on the Flying Scotsman, the North Yorkshire Moors Railway and the Manx electric railway, abseiling down the Dock Tower in Grimsby, visiting the Jodrell Bank observatory in Cheshire, taking a rigid inflatable boat (Rib) across Lough Neagh and Loch Ness, riding a Ceredigion Cobb Horse in Aberaeron, crossing the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct on a boat, travelling on a tram and a canal boat at the Black Country Living Museum in Dudley, take a steamer across Windermere, skating at the National Ice Centre, riding the Heights of Abraham Cable Car in Matlock, trying Paralympic cycling at Brands Hatch, travelling in a rowing boat at Henley on Thames and on the River Bann.

The Olympic Torch will pass through 1,018 locations on its journey around Britain, starting on the 19^th May and ending on the 27^th July. The final leg of the 70 day journey will be a trip down the River Thames to London’s Olympic Park. This will hopefully be in time for the grand Olympic opening ceremony.

Sports news east london, London 2012, London Olympic Games, Olympic Games 2012, Olympic Torch, Olympic Torch route, stratford, United kingdom

Fauja Singh oldest marathon runner

A 100-year-old Briton has become the world’s oldest marathon runner after finishing a race in Canada.

Fauja Singh, from Ilford, east London, ran the Toronto Waterfront Marathon in eight hours, 25 minutes and 16 seconds.

The record-holder “hit the wall” at 22 miles but soldiered on for another two hours and finished in 3,850th place, ahead of five other competitors.

Mr Singh, who took up running 11 years ago after his wife and son died, trains every day by running 10 miles.

source: bbc

Sports news

Instead of having a rest after completing the Chicago Marathon, pregnant Amber Miller gave birth.

Mrs Miller, who was nearly 39 weeks pregnant, said “it was the longest day of my life”. She gave birth to a healthy 7.7lb (3.5kg) girl, June.

The marathon was the eighth for the 27-year-old, who already had one child. On her doctor’s orders she ran half and walked half the distance.

“Lots of people were cheering me on: ‘Go pregnant lady’,” she said.

“For me, it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. I was running up until that point anyway,” she told Associated Press news agency.

“I am crazy about running.”

surce: bbc

Sports news

Belgian Man run 365 marathons a day

There was a saying that an apple a day keeps the doctor away (that was before it was revised to 5 portion a day), doctors also advise that you take regular exercise, not sure doctors will recommend Stefaan Engels a marathon a day record breaking endeavours.

He crossed the finish line in the Spanish city of Barcelona after running 15,000km (9,569 miles) in a year. The 49 year old man said he considers his marathons as a regular job instead of a torture.

He averaged about four hours to complete a marathon. He said his best time was 2 hours and 56 minutes.

Engels suffered from asthma as a child and had been told by doctors to avoid sport.

Before Engels, the record marathon man was Akinori Kusuda of Japan – who ran 52 races in a row at the age of 65 in 2009.

Sports news

We all know the famous cartoons with Popeye the Sailor Man, right? Each and every time he was in trouble he had a secret weapon to boost his strength – spinach! You might say those are only cartoons, however The Daily Telegraph recently reported that those cartoons were not lying at all when it comes to spinach and by eating 300g of spinach the amount of oxygen needed to give strength to muscles went down to 5% when doing daily exercises.

This study was not based solely on spinach but on the fantastic properties that nitrate (a spinach compound) has when taken as supplement. 14 volunteers were tested and all of them needed less oxygen when doing the exercises, after taking the nitrate supplement for three days. One thing has been proven thus: nitrates have a beneficial effect, however we do not know for sure whether this is on long or short term. Lesson that should be learned from this study is that vegetables and fruits contain important nutrients that should definitely be a part of our daily diets.

The study was published in Cell Metabolism – a scientific journal – and took place in Sweden, at Karolinska Institutet and it was not solely based on spinach properties but on nitrated ones, nitrates that can be found in tea, leafy veggies and some meats. The main purpose of this study was to demonstrate that mitochondrial function is improved on people that consume nitrate supplements.

How was the study made? 14 non-smokers volunteers participated and some of them received nitrate supplements while other received placebo supplements for three days. After three days they did the test than a 6-day break period followed and they repeated the process afterwards. After the test ended, the results were quite concludent: those taking nitrate supplements were using less oxygen to produce energy while the ones with placebo pills remained at the same level.

Researchers’ conclusion was that “nitrates have a profound effect on mitochondrial function” and “these findings may have implications for exercise physiology – and lifestyle-related disorders that involve dysfunctional mitochondria”.

Uncategorized nitrates effects, spinach and muscles

In order to achieve their goals, most athletes are aware that they need improved balance, strength and flexibility. Therefore, when Power Balance Bracelet appeared on the market, many athletes thought that it would be idea if they used this item. After all, the producers were guaranteeing the results.

Unfortunately, the Power Balance bracelet was proven to be useless. Even more than that, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) to retreat its claims, even though top NBA stars like Shaquille O’Neill and Kevin Pietersen are wearing the bracelet.

According to the ACCC chairman, Graeme Samuel, the producers of this type of objects should be honest with their clients. Therefore, it won’t happen again to any client to buy items like the above one, and do not receive the expected results, as most of the items as Power Balance bracelet are nothing more than an ordinary rubber.

As for the company producing the above item, Power Balance was forced to change their whole website and to remove fancy words – as “performance technology” – from their product description, as long as there is no study on the bracelet that would sustain the description. As well, they have been forced to give back the money to the unsatisfied the clients, as well as they had to chance 100% their marketing strategy and all their ads.

Sports news power balance bracelet

On 17 April, champions Tsegaye Kebede and Liliya Sjobukhova will have to defend their marathon titles against two fantastic athletes announced by the organisers. However, these two athletes are not the only one that will be great competitors while all six medal winners from this year will be at start line in 2011, so gaining a medal will be a tough job.

Ethiopian Kebede and Russian Shobukhova are the best runners at this years’ marathon and they will face Olympic and World champions; race director Mr Bedford said that next year’s marathons will be the toughest ever, for both men and women.

Sammy Wanjiru – Olympic champion from Kenia – will be Kebede’s main competitor. He managed to beat him in Chicago this October and is keen to repeat this in 2011 as well. Moreover, he set the course record at 2:05:10 while Kebede arrived 9 seconds after him. Wanjiru is not the only one to be afraid while among the competitors we will see big names like Bazu Worku – 3rd in Berlin, Bouramdane Abderrahime – 4th in London, Marilson Gomes dos Santos- two times winner in New York and Victor Rothlin – European title winner in August.

On the other hand, next year’s favourite is Russian Shobukhova for women – Chicago Marathon and World Marathon Majors winner. Her top competitors will be Irina Mikitenko – champ in 2008 and 2009 and China’s Zhou Chunxiu – champ in 2007. From China as well, World champion Bai Xue will compete as well, from Romania Constantina Dita, for her 10th London run, Tafa and Bekele from Ethiopia and Aberu Kebede, winner in Berlin.

Other competitors returning back to London Marathon are Liz Yelling – UK Olympian and Andrew Lemoncello – 8th place in 2009. This competition should be a tough one with strong competitors, big names returning and many vanities among contestants.

Uncategorized athletes, london marathon 2011

The first London Olympics 2012 venue to be built from scrathch open is to be declared open by the Princes Royal.

The £31m project, which incorporates the 2012 Olympic slalom canoe course, was finished on schedule and will be open to the public from April 2011.

Britain’s top canoeists have exclusive use of the facilities until that time.

“I’ve been waiting for this course for such a long time – it’s absolutely brilliant,” said GB’s Richard Hounslow.

Until now, World bronze medallist Hounslow and his British team-mates had trained at Nottingham’s Holme Pierrepont course.

But the entire squad will now move from Nottingham to Hertfordshire and base themselves at Lee Valley ahead of London 2012, offering what could prove a crucial home advantage.

“Our programme has chosen to relocate and, personally, I think that’s a brilliant idea,” said Hounslow.

“To train here day in, day out, will be so good for us.

“After April [once the course opens to the public] other international teams can relocate here if they want to, but I can’t see it happening, so for us it’ll be a really big advantage.”

source/full story: bbc

Sports news first olympics venue, london 2010

The bidding process has just end up recently, with Russia becoming the 2018 gues for the World Cup. This process began in January 2009 and after a tough head-to-head with England, Russia will host the World Cup in 2018.

Seven countries have registered to bid for one of those two tournaments – Australia, England, Japan, Qatar, Russia, South Korea and United States while Belgium and Netherlands and Portugal and Spain registered to bid together. Other two countries were in this « fight » from the start, however Mexico withdrew in September 2009 and Indonesia’s bid was not approved by FIFA. With the numbers of bids received, the 2018 Word Cup bid has been the most contested one in FIFA’s history.

Fifa’s president Sepp Blatter will be for a long time on all English football fans’ lips while it was the one that crushed England’s hope to host the WC 2018 and delivered this honor to world’s largest country, for the first time in history. Again, as the online environment tought us before, tweets have been heading from Switzerland to all over the world spreading rumours even before the official FIFA announcement to be released.

Boris Johnson, London Mayor tweeted : “Extremely disappointing. We had an awesome bid and knockout presentation. Can’t quite believe it.” The confidence in winning this bid was at highest levels after a brilliant last-minute presentation.

Russia will host this event in 13 cities and they plan to invest $3.82bn in building new stadiums and upgrading the old ones. Russia is the first East European country to host the World Cup ; as for its participation in international championships, it participated 2 times in Word Cup and three times in European Championship – in 2008 reaching semi-finals.

As for the 2022 World Cup, it seems that it will be hosted by Qatar.

Sports news qatar 2022 world cup, russia world cup host, russia world cup organiser, world cup 2018

David Haye beats Audley Harrison to retain his WBA heavy weight title in Manchester

Harrison crumbled under a barrage of blows as the all-British showdown briefly came to life after a tentative opening two rounds with few punches.

Haye, 30, clinically took his chance as he floored his 39-year-old fellow Londoner after less than eight minutes.

Former Olympic champion Harrison, 39, had said it was his destiny to triumph, but landed just one punch.

The fight had been marketed as ‘The Best of Enemies’ as the two former friends met in what was the biggest heavyweight clash in British boxing since Lennox Lewis beat Frank Bruno in 1993.

However Harrison, who has been criticised for failing to build on the promise of his gold at the Sydney Games in 2000, appeared nervy and offered little resistance before the fight was halted one minute and 53 seconds into the third round.

A victorious Haye said: “I told everyone I’d knock him out in three rounds.

“As soon as I started putting my punches together the fight was effectively over.

“I was hoping he would come out and try to engage a little bit more, because I’m a very good counter-puncher, but I said it wouldn’t go past three rounds.

“Adam [Booth, Haye's trainer] was happy with what I was doing because he knew eventually I’d nail him. Once I’ve got a guy hurt, they’re going over.”

The beaten older man Harrison, nicknamed ‘A-Force’, was downbeat and claimed the referee stopped the fight prematurely.

When asked if he would now retire, he replied: “I’ve got to sit down and reflect.

source: bbc

Sports news