Olympic news

India's Sania Mirza retired with a wrist injury against Czech Iveta Benesova in the first round of the Olympic tennis event yesterday.

Mirza was trailing 6-2 2-1 when her right wrist became too painful.

"It was hurting before I even came to Beijing but it's the Olympics so you have to try and give it your best shot," Mirza told reporters.

Mirza, who recently had wrist surgery, said she may still try and play doubles with Sunitha Rao. They were given a walkover into the second round when French pair Tatiana Golovin and Pauline Parmentier pulled out.

Mirza's injury follows the withdrawal of top seed Ana Ivanovic on Sunday with a thumb injury.

Police rapped for 'stone faces'

Chinese police and military are frightening tourists with a "stone face" at the Beijing Games and should smile more, a senior IOC member was quoted as saying.

Norwegian Gerhard Heiberg, chairman of the IOC's marketing commission, said he had taken the matter up with Chinese officials and urged a happier and more welcoming attitude.

"We think that in particular the military and police can behave in a different manner," Heiberg said.

"They look like stone faces."

Hijab no problem for Muslims

Egyptian fencer Shaimaa El Gammal, a third-timer at the Olympics, is donning Islamic headgear in Beijing for the first time. She says it is a sign she has come of age and she feels more empowered than ever.

This year's Games will see a sizable sprinkling of veiled athletes who are determined to avoid offending devout Muslims back home while showing skimpily dressed rivals there is nothing constricting about wearing "hijab".

Two of them, Bahrain's Al Ghasara and veiled Iranian rower Homa Hosseini, won the honour of being flag bearers for their countries at the opening ceremony's parade of athletes.

"People see us wearing the scarf and think we ride camels. But Muslim women can do anything they want," said El Gammal.

"When I fence I'm proud that I'm a Muslim. It's very symbolic for women in my country," El Gammal told Reuters.

Uniforms can affect refs' decision

Red might be more than just a lucky colour for Chinese athletes competing at the Olympics.

A study has found choosing the colour red for a uniform in competitive sports can affect the referee's split-second decision-making ability and even promote a scoring bias.

Red is thought to bring good luck for Chinese and is the colour of items ranging from packets of lucky money handed out at Lunar New Year to wedding dresses.

Now psychologists Norbert Hagemann, Bernd Strauss and Jan Leissing from Germany's University of Muenster have found referees tended to assign more points to taekwondo competitors dressed in red than those dressed in blue.

The study was conducted by the researchers presenting 42 taekwondo referees with videos of blue- and red-clad competitors sparring.

The psychologists said competitors wearing red were awarded an average of 13 per cent more points and the points seemed to increase after the blue athlete was digitally transformed into a red athlete and decrease when the red competitor turned blue.

Storms wash away pollution

Beijing woke up to a cool but overcast morning on day three of the Olympics yesterday after thunderstorms cleared away the city's notorious smog.

Forecasters say cooler, wet weather will continue, easing fears that heat and humidity would make conditions intolerable for tennis players and others hunting medals outside air-conditioned venues.

But the next bout of heavy rain is not expected until early next week, the official Xinhua news agency said.

"In the coming week, the highest temperature Beijing will experience will probably be 32 degrees Celsius, and it will not be hot and muggy as it was before."

A third of cyclists dropped out of the men's road race on Saturday saying the suffocating and dirty air, in the mid-30s Celsius, had exhausted them.

Shooter weeps after missing gold

Shooter Zhu Qinan, 23, wept on the podium as he collected his silver medal yesterday and sobbed uncontrollably at a news conference, showing the huge pressure on Chinese athletes to win on home turf at the Beijing Olympics.

The hot favourite to defend his title in the 10m air rifle, Zhu had stumbled late in the qualification when he had to rush his final shots.

He was still within striking range of gold until the end but lost to Abhinav Bindra who stormed ahead from fourth place.

"After 2004 my only target was to defend my title in Beijing," Zhu said as his voice quivered. He bowed his head down, wiped away his tears and paused for a moment.

"Getting a silver medal is already a very good consolation for me because I really worked hard for it," who admitted he felt enormous pressure to win another gold medal to add to China's medal tally. "But my luck wasn't good enough."