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President Goodluck
Jonathan yesterday, stressed the need for the country to promote
efforts that forge unity of the country, such as sports, without which
the country would find it difficult to develop.

He made the call
during the lighting of the torch for the national sports festival at
the Presidential Villa, Abuja. The festival will hold in Port Harcourt,
Rivers State in July this year.

During the
ceremony, the torch of unity was handed over to officials of the
Federal Capital Territory for the start of its tour round the 36 states
of the federation, with Rivers State as the final destination on the
day the festival begins.

The Kaduna State
governor, Patrick Yakowa whose state hosted the last national sports
festival, handed over the torch to the minister of sports, Taoheed
Adedoja who in turn handed it over to Mr Jonathan.

He then passed it
over to the Rivers State governor, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi who then
handed it over to the minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Bala
Muhammed.

Mr Jonathan noted
that sporting events bind youth together, irrespective of differences
in ethnic affiliation, religion or other persuasions and stressed the
need for it to be strengthened.

“Sports brings
unity to both young and old. To camp our young ones together will bring
that spirit of unity, especially after the election,” he said. “It is
like the unity schools that united Nigerians together because each
person bonded with the classmates and by the time they leave school,
they have friends across the states and sections of the country.

“The country
belongs to us and unless we are together as one, the nation cannot go
far and that is what sports does, it unifies us. This flag of unity
must continue to fly and the unity torch must continue to burn.”

Nigeria’s sports image

The President
pointed out that Nigeria was noted for sports and can easily be
remembered by all countries around the world, especially for football
and asked that all be put in place to sustain the reputation of the
country.

Mr Adedoja
commended the government of Kaduna State for the quality of the
organisation put into the last national sports festival. He said he was
sure nothing more would be expected from Rivers State, whom he said had
shown commitment to hosting it.

Mr Amaechi promised that the state is ready to host the games and
have committed everything to ensure that the best comes out of the
festival.

Roger Federer
rejects the idea that the balance of power in men’s tennis has tipped
towards Novak Djokovic after a 32-match winning run and believes he can
still beat Pete Sampras’s record for time spent as world number one.

The Swiss world
number three, who has a record 16 grand slam titles to his name, has
been left in the shade by Rafa Nadal for much of the past 12 months and
has now seen Djokovic supplant him as the Spaniard’s main rival.

However, Federer
feels he can reclaim his throne and move ahead of American great Sampras
who spent a total of 286 weeks as world number one to Federer’s current
285.

“It’s still
important for me to get back to being world number one,” Federer told
reporters in Italy ahead of his second round match against France’s
Jo-Wilfried Tsonga at the Rome Masters. “I mentioned after Wimbledon it
was a goal of mine.

“It’s still very real and possible. I think I can do it if I win one of those grand slams.”

First in seven years

Serbia’s Djokovic
could become the first player other than Federer or Nadal to hold the
top ranking since 2004 if he wins the Rome Masters this week, but
Federer remains confident he can still challenge the top two.

“They (Djokovic and
Nadal) are playing better than me but I’m close to winning those
tournaments,” said Federer, who lost to Nadal in the semi-finals of the
Madrid Masters last week.

“It’s not as if I’m losing in the first or second rounds.

“I feel I’m playing
well myself. Apart from Novak not losing all year not much has changed
in the game. Everybody can play well on all surfaces these days.

“It doesn’t feel
more different apart from having three more questions to answer at a
press conference, but they deserve their press and it’s all good
stories.” While the 29-year-old did not watch Djokovic’s straight sets
defeat of Nadal in the Madrid final Sunday, he felt the Serb would have
it tougher in Rome and Paris.

“It was surprising
to see Rafa lose on clay but it was just one tournament,” he said. “It
was a quick clay court so he (Djokovic) had a better chance of beating
Rafa.” This year the Rome Masters, which for the first time in decades
features men and women in one tournament, takes place after the Madrid
Open.

“I think that’s a better schedule,” said Federer. “You don’t have to
go (to the French Open) from altitude. Rome is more similar to Paris
than Madrid so it’s easier to get off to a good start there.”

Manchester
United captain Nemanja Vidic reckons Barcelona will start as favourites
to win the Champions League final at Wembley on May 28.

United lost to Barca in the 2009 final and are out for revenge on English turf.

“There will be no
surprises because they haven’t changed their style in years but they
will be a tough prospect and definitely the favourites in the final,”
the Serbia centre back told Belgarde’s B92 television website
(www.b92.net).

“Maybe we have a
little bit of an advantage in logistics because we are closer to the
venue, but we know that their fans will turn up in numbers just like
our own.”

Vidic, who scored
in Sunday’s 2-1 win over Chelsea which all but secured United the
Premier League title, said his side were still completely focused on a
record 19th domestic crown.

Blackburn before Barcelona

“We haven’t had
time to think about Barcelona yet because we have to concentrate on our
next game away to Blackburn and make mathematically sure that we’ve won
it,” he said.

“Only when we have
done that can we turn our attention to Barcelona, I’ve seen them
several times this season including their semi-final tie against Real
Madrid.”

United, who are six
points ahead of Chelsea with two matches left in the Premier League,
need only one point from their last two games against Blackburn and at
home to Blackpool to secure their 12th league title under manager Alex
Ferguson.

Vidic, who was
named captain this season, revealed anxiety had crept into United’s
dressing room after Chelsea were able to cut a 15-point deficit with
nine wins in 10 games prior to their visit to Old Trafford.

“The pressure was
immense after they whittled down our big advantage to just three points
before the showdown, but it makes the victory that much sweeter because
we are on the verge of winning the title after beating our closest
rivals,” he said.

“It means a lot to
me that I scored but the team comes first and the most important thing
is that we are now in a commanding position to cross the finish line
first.

“As the team’s captain I just try to do the same things I’ve always
done and be at my best all the time, because being the United captain
is a great honour and I know I have to repay the faith vested in me by
the club.”

The
national team of Liberia in the on-going West Africa Football Union
(WAFU) yesterday embarked on intensive prayers as they managed to roam
into the semi-finals of the championship taking place in Abeokuta, Ogun
State Capital.

The players had
played two matches in the competition losing the opening encounter to
Super Eagles by 1 goal, while they (Liberia) in their second match at
the Moshood Abiola Stadium defeated their Togo counterpart by 2 goals
to one.

However, at their
training session yesterday the team on arriving the pitch embarked on
what could be described as firebrand prayers which lasted for about 30
minutes with passionate appeal to God, to see them through to finals of
the match scheduled for Saturday.

At the stadium,
players in company of their coaching crew converged on the half side of
the pitch, which was allocated to them for training, while the host
Super Eagles was training on the other half side.

Before embarking on
their training, they commenced intensive praise worship given thanks to
God for their victory over Togo, and further call on God to be with
them in their next encounter which is expected to take place between
them and winner from Group A match which is between Ghana and Togo.

Not stopping there, the Liberia Team in their prayer session also
passionately appealed to God, to take them to finals, and subsequent
winning of the trophy. However, their next match scheduled for Thursday
will determine their better chances in getting to the finals .

Nigeria’s
Under-20 team, the Flying Eagles, on Tuesday suffered a shock 4-3
defeat at the hands of the Junior All Whites of New Zealand at the
Suwon U-20 Cup.

It was the first
loss at the four-nation tournament for the Flying Eagles and ended
their hopes of claiming top prize at the tourney which came to a close
yesterday in South Korea.

John Obuh’s side
had earlier beaten hosts South Korea 1-0 in their opening match of the
tourney before pulling off a 2-2 draw with Uruguay over the weekend.

For their part, the
Junior All Whites began their quest at the Suwon Cup with a 1-0 loss to
Uruguay before succumbing by the same score line to South Korea, and
were expected to follow a similar path against the Flying Eagles in the
encounter played in the early hours of Tuesday, Nigerian time.

And the Junior All
Whites appeared to play along with the laid down script when Uche
Nwofor struck from 25 meters out to put the Flying Eagles ahead after
just 18 minutes on the clock.

But New Zealand
clawed their way back to level terms when Cameron Lindsay curled an
equaliser in from the edge of the box, just minutes after Dakota Lucas
failed to convert from close range.

The Flying Eagles
then had two opportunities to restore their lead before the end of the
first half but were denied, first by New Zealand goalkeeper Stefan
Marinovic and then by the offside flag.

But 15 minutes into
the second half, the Junior All Whites struck through captain Nick
Branch who volleyed a Marco Rojas free kick past the helpless Danjuma
Paul.

The lead was short lived as quick fire goals to Nigeria earned the Flying Eagles a 3-2 lead with 25 minutes left.

Delightful

But two goals
within the space of seven minutes, the second as a result of a poor
clearance by the Nigerian goalkeeper, saw the Junior All Whites
claiming their first win of the tournament which delighted their coach,
Chris Milicich.

“Today was very
pleasing for no other reason than we’re learning how to win,” said
Milicich. “We’ve had two really close results and in this one we’ve
come back twice to get the result.

He added: “This is
a team that beat Korea, drew with Uruguay and were trying to win the
tournament. They tried to beat us with everything they had. They are
African champions and we stood toe to toe with them and came out on the
right side of the ledger.”

The Suwon Cup
served as a preparatory tournament for all four teams who will later in
the year take part at the FIFA U-20 World Cup in Colombia.

The Nigerian team is expected back in the country on Thursday and
will thereafter observe a two-week break before commencing preparations
for the World Cup where they will come up against Guatemala, Croatia
and Saudi Arabia in Group D.

Former
FA chairman David Triesman has accused FIFA executive committee members
Jack Warner, Ricardo Teixeira, Nicolas Leoz and Worawi Makudi of asking
for favours in return for their votes for England’s 2018 World Cup bid.

Triesman was giving
evidence to a British parliamentary inquiry into the reasons why
England failed in its bid to secure the finals which were awarded to
Russia last December.

He said Warner, of
Trinidad and Tobago, asked for £2.5 million to be “channelled through
me” for a school while Paraguayan Leoz requested a knighthood.

Teixeira asked him
“What can you do for me?” and Thai Makudi wanted control of the
television rights for a proposed Thailand v England friendly.

“I will take my evidence to FIFA,” Triesman said.

‘Shocking accusation’

FIFA president Sepp
Blatter responded to Triesman’s comments. “I was shocked but one has to
see the evidence,” Batter told a news conference in Zurich.

“There is a new
round of information, give us time to digest that and start the
investigation by asking for evidence on what has been said.

“I repeat, we must
have the evidence and we will react immediately against all those in
breach of the ethics code rules.” Blatter said the executive committee
members were not elected by the same Congress as him.

“They are coming from the others (other confederations), so I cannot say that they are all angels or all devils,” he said.

Meanwhile, further shock claims were highlighted by MPs at the culture, media and sport committee in the House of Commons.

Tory MP Damian
Collins said that evidence submitted by the Sunday Times, which the
committee will publish, claimed that FIFA vice-president Issa Hayatou
from Cameroon and Jacques Anouma from the Ivory Coast were paid $1.5m
(£917,000) by Qatar.

Collins said: “The
Sunday Times’ submission, and this is to be published by us later,
claims that $1.5million was paid to FIFA executive committee members
Issa Hayatou and Jacques Anouma who went on to vote for Qatar.” FIFA’s
ethics committee last year banned two other executive committee members
after a Sunday Times investigation into World Cup bidding.

Collins said the submission claimed Qatar specifically employed a fixer to arrange deals with African members for their votes.

Red
Bull champion Abdul Aziz Turki Al Faisal was the pride of all Saudis in
particular and Arabs in general with his world class victory.

Achievements are
recognised indeed by their size and importance on the global scene, and
this is exactly the kind of achievement achieved by Abdul Aziz, the
first Saudi to take part in the GT3 European championship. His
historical victory added the element of pride to his athletic career
and wining an international medal in the name of his country.

Abdul Aziz won the
championship title in the first GT3 European championship round
organized in the Algarve international circuit in Portugal. He came
first with his co-pilot Edward Sandstroem on a BMW Z4 on the Need for
Speed Schubert team. With this success, Abdul Aziz Al Faisal became the
first Saudi to participate and win a GT3 European Championship Race.

The team’s
happiness was completed when Csaba Walter and Claudia Huertgen of the
same team came in second after the Graff Racing team on a Mercedes-Benz
SLS AMG driven by Mike Parisy and Philippe Giauque was penalized for
violating the stopping rules. Third place went to the Faster Racing DB
motorsport team also driving a BMW Z4. With that BMW won the first
three places in the launch of the GT3 European championship.

Car was a breeze

After his victory, Red Bull champion Abdul Aziz expressed his feelings saying:

“When I came into
the race, I did not know if the car I had just over taken was from the
competitor’s team. I then asked the engineers on the radio, and as soon
as they informed me that it was one of our competitiors’, I increased
my speed. There wasn’t a lot of pressure; the car was easy to drive.

Edward did a good
job in maintaining the tires and he had to advance from the start. As
for me, I brought the car to the finish line. The problem in such races
is that you don’t know your position. I used the radio a few times to
check my position and to see if I needed to move forward, the answer
was ‘no, just keep your position’. I suffered from the cars lagging
behind since they were not moving aside so I can overtake them when the
blue flag was raised, I worried about their moves. In reality, I drove
the car to the finish line.” “This victory is very important for the
Gulf region and especially for KSA where car racing is growing rapidly.
It’s a new sport that started in 2004 with the Formula 1 in Bahrain. I
competed for 2 years in the Porsche GT3 Middle East championship,
winning the title last year and coming in second, this year. In fact,
my participation in this international championship is a very important
step. Frankly the victory was quite unexpected. But we have a great
team and great colleagues as well as a highly performing car”, he added.

Excellent performance

Edward Sandstroem,
the Red Bull champion’s co-pilot and member of the Need for Speed
Schubert team, said: “I am very happy to be a member of this team
especially with the presence of my colleague Abdul Aziz Al Faisal and
his excellent performance during the race. I am also very happy with
the results we achieved especially at the beginning of the season. The
car is better than last year when we struggled a lot and our journey
was hard if it were not for the tires that had helped us a lot. Now
it’s easier because we have all the factors for success. I thank the
Schubert team which has exerted a lot of effort. Now we have a stronger
car than last year, and we have become on the same level with other
cars, so we are able to compete for the title”.

Former
Greek sprinters Kostas Kenteris and Katerina Thanou received suspended
jail sentences for staging a motorcycle crash to avoid a doping test
before the 2004 Athens Olympics, court officials said on Tuesday.

The Sydney 2000
Olympic medallists and their coach Christos Tzekos were accused of
staging a crash on the eve of their home Games.

Kenteris, 37 and Thanou, 36, were each sentenced to 31 months in jail as the much delayed trial finally came to a conclusion.

“The crash never happened,” one of the judges said.

Tzekos, the only one of the trio present in court, was sentenced to 33 months in jail.

Two witnesses who
gave testimonies were sentenced to seven and 15 months in jail
respectively while the doctors who testified received sentences of
between six and eight months.

All the sentences
were suspended pending appeals. Court officials said all the guilty
parties intended to appeal, adding that the appeals would be heard
within 10 days.

Big scandal

The trial, which
took years to start after frequent postponements, began in January and
suffered several delays due to the absence of witnesses.

Kenteris, the 200
metres gold medallist at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, and 100 metres
silver medallist Thanou were acquitted of doping charges in a Greek
athletics federation probe in 2005.

The International
Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) appealed the verdict at the
Court of Arbitration for Sport. They settled out of court in 2006 and
subsequently admitted only to anti-doping rule violations, essentially
serving out their unofficial two-year suspensions.

The 2004 scandal, widely regarded as the biggest at an Olympics
since Canadian Ben Johnson lost his 100 metres gold medal in Seoul in
1988 after a positive doping test, cast a huge cloud over the Athens
Games for the host country.

REUTERS

After
achieving promotion to World Cricket League Division 6 from Division 7
last week in Botswana, the national cricket team are back in South
Africa preparing for another assault on promotion.

The ICC Africa T-20
Division 2 tournament will bat off in Johannesburg on Saturday, 14 May
2011. Nigeria came second behind Kuwait in the just concluded Division
7 tournament that took place in Gaborone. The Nigerian lost two matches
and they were both to Kuwait. The player cum coach of the team, Sean
Philips said afterwards that Nigeria has an array of talented cricket
players and he was not surprised at the good performance and subsequent
promotion.

Philips said: “I
think when the players first arrived in South Africa for our training
camp ahead of this tournament they didn’t really have the ambition but
with the pre-tournament games these guys got some belief and that’s
what we bought to the tournament.

“We lost two games
this tournament – both to Kuwait – but the rest of their games the guys
really stood up and wanted to go to Malaysia. We achieved the goal we
set and I’m very proud of them.”

New challenge

After that comes
the challenge of qualifying for Division 1 in South Africa and that
challenge begins on Saturday with a match against Mozambique.

But Philips said
the team will continue to improve as the players want to make the
country proud. “I am pleased that we are creating such a vibe in
Nigeria about our performances. It really inspires the team to doing
well.

“The sudden
improvement is due to this squad working extremely hard to achieve
their goals. I am sure everyone agrees that there is exceptional talent
in Nigeria.

My job is to use the mind to access that talent. That is why we are improving”, he concluded.

The top two
qualifiers from this tournament will proceed to the ICC – Africa T20
division one tournament which is scheduled to be held in Entebbe,
Uganda. This division one tournament will take place in mid July 2011.

Teams that will be battling for promotion with Nigeria are Tanzania,
Botswana, Ghana,Swaziland, Sierra Leone, Mozambique, Malawi and Rwanda.

France coach Laurent Blanc has been cleared of any wrongdoing by the Sports Ministry’s investigation into the racism row that has shaken French football, Sports Minister Chantal Jouanno said on Tuesday.

Blanc attended a meeting in November at which members of the French football federation (FFF) discussed the idea of enforcing limits on black and Arab players in youth academies.

“There is nothing leading to say that Laurent Blanc is backing discriminatory practices,” Jouanno told a news conference.

“Laurent Blanc was attending this kind of meeting for the very first time. He did not have any project (to limit the number of Black and Arab players), no fixed opinion.”

Jouanno added that the investigation did not find enough evidence to launch a judicial procedure although she reiterated that racial quota enforcement was illegal in France.

“There is no element, no accumulation of evidence that leads us to believe there was discrimination,” she said. “There are not enough grounds to refer it to the prosecutor’s office.”

Federation technical director Francois Blaquart, who used the word ‘quotas’ in the November meeting, has been suspended pending the inquiry and a separate federation probe is also looking into the issue.

Jouanno said she did not have the authority to sanction the technical director, but would ask the FFF to launch an audit into Blaquart’s responsibilities.

The FFF will present its investigation’s findings at a news conference later on Tuesday with Blanc still not totally in the clear.

The coach has been slammed by former team mates from the multicultural 1998 World Cup-winning France side but others such as then captain Didier Deschamps and influential French great Zinedine Zidane have backed Blanc to stay on.

REUTERS