Sonny Side of Sports

Amantle Montsho: Botswana’s First Olympic Medalist?

Amantle Montsho hopes to wave Botswana’s flag high at the London Olympics

Amantle Montsho says she has her eyes set on London, where she hopes to become the first athlete from Botswana to win an Olympic medal. The 400 meter specialist has already won world, African and Commonwealth titles, but it’s Olympic gold she craves the most. Montsho, who turns 29 on July 4th, won Botswana’s first world title in thrilling fashion last year in Daegu, South Korea. She held off a fierce challenge from American star Allyson Felix and set a Botswana national record of 49.56 seconds.

Amantle Montsho made her Olympic debut at the 2004 Games in Athens. During the first round heats in the Greek capital, she set a then national record of 53.77 seconds. That time, though, was not fast enough to qualify for the semifinals. At the 2008 Games in Beijing, Montsho reached the final, clocking 51.18 seconds, which placed her last in the field of eight runners.

For the past six years, the muscular Montsho has steadily improved her strength and speed at an international training center in Dakar, Senegal. An Ivorian coach at the center, Anthony Koffi, has watched Montsho’s progress and says she has desire to improve and that’s important. As for the importance of a winning a gold medal in London, Amantle Montsho says simply, “it would mean everything to me.”

Didier Drogba Packs His Bags For Shanghai

(Official Shanghai Shenhua Photo)

Ivorian football star Didier Drogba says he’s looking forward to a new challenge and experiencing a new culture in China. The 34-year-old Drogba has signed a two-year contract with Shanghai Shenhua club that will reportedly make him China’s highest-paid player. Financial terms were not announced, but local Chinese news reports say the two-time African Footballer of the Year could make as much as $15 million per year.

In Shanghai, Drogba will be reunited with former Chelsea teammate Nicolas Anelka. Drogba played a heroic role last month in Chelsea winning its first UEFA Champions League title. He scored the equalizer in the 88th minute against host Bayern Munich, to take Chelsea into extra time and then a penalty kick shootout. And then the muscular striker scored the winning penalty kick in Chelsea’s 4-3 penalty shootout victory. During his eight years with Chelsea, Drogba delivered 157 goals, and Shanghai fans are hoping he’ll continue his scoring prowess in the Chinese Super League.

“The fans are crazy about him,” Shanghai club spokesman Ma Yue told the Associated Press. “There has never been a foreign player who has stirred up such a reaction in China. It means a lot to Chinese football and will be of immense help in spreading the CSL brand.” For his part, Drogba says he hopes to promote Chinese football around the world and further improve the links between China and Africa.

The Chinese are huge investors in Africa and they have built football stadiums all across the continent, including more than a half dozen for the last three Nations Cups, Africa’s premier soccer event.

London’s Olympic Stadium To Become A British Meadow

Danny Boyle

The artistic director of the London 2012 Olympic Games opening ceremony is promising to transform the Olympic Stadium into a British meadow on July 27th. Danny Boyle says the festivities will include fields, cows, ducks, horses and a game of village cricket. During a briefing in the British capital, Boyle said, “this land 200 years ago was a meadow and it went through an extraordinary transformation and obviously one of the delights of the (Olympic) legacy, if you like, will be handing back a park to London really and east London especially.”

The 55-year-old Boyle won an Academy award as Best Director for his 2008 film, Slumdog Millionaire. He says the opening ceremony is scheduled to start at 9 p.m. London time and go about three hours, which, if you’re keeping score, is about one hour longer than the running time of Slumdog Millionaire. However, Boyle admits it will be difficult to keep the festivities on schedule, especially with a procession of about 10,500 athletes from all over the world.

Boyle says the athletes will walk around the meadow and the British electronic group Underworld will provide music. He says he wants to make the ceremony a spectacle for the crowd in the Olympic Stadium as well as for the huge international television audience, which is

London's Olympic Stadium

expected to top one billion people.

The $42 million ceremony will also include 10,000 adult volunteers and 13,000 props. Explaining why he was revealing details of the extravaganza, titled “Isles of Wonder,” Boyle said: “You tend to try and keep these things secret and people think in terms of secrets. And of course part of the modern world means that you can’t really do that. All of the volunteers have phones and they all take pictures of things and we’ve asked them not to tweet them and send them around the world. But with so many thousands of people, not just the volunteers, but the crew and everything, it’s impossible to keep secrets.”

 

Rudisha Ready For London Olympics

World record holder David Rudisha is in great form ahead of next month’s Olympics in London, where he’ll be the favorite to win his first Olympic gold medal in the 800 meters. Competing for the first time in the United States over the weekend, the 23-year-old Kenyan blew away the field at the Adidas Grand Prix meet in New York, clocking 1:41.74, the fastest time in the world this year, and only 73/100ths of a second off his world record. Watch how Rudisha breaks away during the bell lap in this video.

Speaking after the race, Rudisha said it was fantastic to run 1:41. He said with a few more weeks of good training, he’ll be ready for anything in London. In the British capital, though, the Kenyan star will not have a pacemaker, as he did in New York. “The Olympic final might be a tactical race,” says Rudisha. “There will be no pacemakers. It might be fast or slow. I should be ready for whatever.”

David Rudisha certainly looks ready for a run at Olympic gold. Parker “Pick Up The Pace” Morse, Senior Writer at Running Times magazine, watched Rudisha’s sensational performance in New York and said the lanky Kenyan star’s “gap on the field was Bolt-esque (like Usain Bolt) and it’s quite possible the same will hold in London.”

Meb Keflezighi Runs For More Olympic Glory

Meb Keflezighi after winning 2009 New York City Marathon

Meb Keflezighi ran in his adopted hometown of San Diego June 3rd and successfully defended his title in the city’s annual Rock ‘n’ Roll Half Marathon, clocking one hour, three minutes and 11 seconds. It was a good Olympic tune-up race for the 37-year-old Keflezighi, who was born in Asmara, Eritrea, and moved with his family to San Diego when he was 12. In San Diego, Keflezighi beat fellow U.S. Olympian Ryan Hall, who also finished in second place, behind Keflezighi, at the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials in January in Houston, Texas.

Ryan Hall, Meb Keflezighi and Abdi Abdirahman make up the 2012 U.S. Olympic men's marathon team

Keflezighi became a U.S. citizen in 1998, the same year he graduated from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), where he earned All-American honors and numerous awards. At the 2004 Athens Olympics, he became the first American marathon runner to win a medal in 28 years  when he finished second behind Italy’s Stefano Baldini. At the 2012 London Olympics, the men’s marathon will be staged August 12th, the final day of competition, and Keflezighi wants to medal again. “I’m going to London to give it one more shot and whatever happens there I hope I get a medal,” says Keflezighi. “I’m not going to be choosy over what color the medal is going to be be but I hope to be on the podium.”

Meb Keflezighi running at 2009 London Marathon

To increase his chances of being on the podium in London, Keflezighi moved his family three years ago to Mammoth Lakes, California, where he trains in the high elevation of the eastern Sierra Nevada mountain range. “I always call this distance runners heaven,” says Keflezighi. “I mean if you’re going to be a distance runner in the United States, why not here? We’re at an elevation of 9,000 feet with the beautiful trees and the mountains, less oxygen and then when you go down to sea level you have more oxygen. You get fit and strong up here and then you go down to sea level and test yourself to the limits.”

At 37, Keflezighi will be testing his limits against younger athletes in London, but there is precedent for Olympic marathon success. Portugal’s Carlos Lopes was the same age when he won the gold medal at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. And Romania’s Constantina Dita was 38 when she won the gold medal in the women’s marathon at the 2008 Beijing Games.

Keflezighi has been running about 130 miles a week in his build-up to the London Olympics, but he says that’s only part of his training. “It’s not just the running part but the little details,” says Keflezighi, “such as stretching, drills, planks, weight training, ice bath, massage … you take care of yourself 24-7 because the rest, the nutrition and all of that stuff, the work that goes into it (running the marathon) year round is a lot. You better hope you nail it that day.”

And Meb Keflezighi would like nothing better than to nail it on August 12th and once again stand on the Olympic podium.