Hong Kong: Horses competing in the Olympic Games in August are to be pampered in six-star, luxury stables complete with play rooms and warm and cold showers, equestrian officials said on Wednesday.
The stables, which are due to be handed over in May to the Hong Kong Equestrian Committee, also feature automatic drink dispensers, air conditioning and rubber walls and flooring to prevent horses accidentally injuring themselves.
The Hong Kong Jockey Club has spent about 800 million Hong Kong dollars ($102 million) on facilities in Shatin and Beas River, where the equestrian events of the Games will be held in August.
The Jockey Club's Olympic stables manager Tony Shea said representatives from several countries had already visited the facilities, and all agreed that they were excellent.
Shea said it was the first time "rolling boxes" - play rooms for horses - had been included in an Olympic equestrian venue. The entrances to each of the four specially-built stable blocks will also feature an air curtain to stop hot air entering from outside, to keep the stable's temperature steady at 23 degrees Celsius.
Top Chinese swimmers yet to peak
Shaoxing (China): China's top butterfly swimmers Wu Peng and Jiao Liuyang can and need to be faster at the Olympic Games in Beijing in August. In the final of the men's 200 metres butterfly at the Olympic trials here Wednesday, Wu touched the wall first in 1:55.19 seconds, but failed in his bid to break the Asian record of 1:54.56 set by Japanese veteran Takashi Yamamoto.
Liuyang, fifth in last year's world ranking, was edged to second place in the women's 200 metres butterfly by Liu Zige, who achieved her personal best clocking 2:07.76 sec. "I was in my best state last year, but it's been a downturn since the winter training. The plateau training in winter did not really pay off," Jiao said. "I have to regroup myself before the Olympics. My 200 butterfly was already better than the 100."
'Nigeria is ill-prepared for Olympics'
Lagos (Xinhua): Nigeria's 1996 Olympics bronze medallist Falilat Ogunkoya has said the country's contingent to the Bejing Olympics is ill-prepared and could have a woeful outing.
"With only about four months to the Olympics we have nothing on ground to show that we are preparing to feature at the Games," Ogunkoya said.
She said in Abuja that it was sad that while most countries were busy preparing their athletes for the summer games, Nigeria was yet to start. "It is sad that we are always used to the fire brigade approach which in any way does not take us anywhere," said Ogunkoya, now a technical official with the Athletics Federation of Nigeria.
Nigeria won the football gold at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, and both the men's and women's football teams have qualified for the Beijing Olympics.
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