Olympic news

Iceland, the surprise package of the Olympic men's handball tournament, shot to the semi-finals after a 32-30 win against Poland yesterday.

Powerhouse France also advanced after beating Russia 27-24, with centre-back Daniel Narcisse doing a somersault after he scored a goal in the last minute.

"It was great, I still cannot believe it. We're such a small country and we won against a 40-million-people country," Iceland's top scorer Alexander Petersson told Reuters after the match.

"Now there's going to be a handball boom in Iceland."

Several Icelandic handballers successfully play for clubs outside their fire-and-ice island, home to only 300,000 people.

Back home, few of their compatriots follow their games, preferring to watch football or basketball on television.

Russia clawed back against France in the second half and briefly stood at 21-22, only to see Narcisse and left wing Olivier Girault hammer in three goals in less than ten minutes.

AIBA wants women's boxing in London

The International Boxing Association (AIBA) will press for the introduction of women's boxing at the 2012 London Olympics, AIBA president Wu Ching-Kuo said.

"We will make a proposal and submit it to the International Olympic Committee," Wu told reporters after a meeting of the AIBA's executive committee in Beijing.

"Boxing is the only sport in the Olympic programme without women and we believe we are ready," he added.

The AIBA was expecting a decision by December, said Joyce Bowen, who chairs the ruling body's women's commission.

There would be 11 weight classes, like in men's boxing, and the bouts would be held over four two-minute rounds, she said, with existing world and continental championships used as qualifiers.

'Two Anastasias' defend synchro gold

Russia's reigning Olympic champions, the 'two Anastasias', defended their synchronised swimming duet gold medal yesterday with an almost perfect routine swum to the strains of Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt suite.

Anastasia Davydova and Anastasia Ermakova, undefeated at a major championships since finishing second at the 2001 worlds, scored a perfect 10 for technical merit from all five judges and earned another three 10s for artistic impression.

Spain's Gemma Mengual and Andrea Fuentes won silver, their country's first medal in the sport, with a second-placed free routine that won the only other perfect 10 of the final.

Japan's Saho Harada and Emiko Suzuki came in third, narrowly edging Chinese twin hopefuls Jiang Tingting and Jiang Wenwen.

Gold medal bite practice

Ever noticed how many Olympians bite their medals for the cameras?

Chinese Internet surfers have, sparking speculation about the origins of the practice and whether biting is not just for the cameras but has psychological benefits.

The custom of biting a gold medal could stem from an ancient method of testing the value of gold with one's teeth. The purer the gold, the softer the coin.

At the Olympics, the biting is largely fuelled by the calls of mainly European photographers: "Kiss it, bite it."

Gold medal winners may be disappointed, however. Gold medals are actually made of 92.5 per cent pure silver plated with at least six grams of gold, in accordance with the Olympic Charter.

Maradona slams 'stingy' Brazil

Diego Maradona said he had rarely seen Brazil play as negatively as they did in their Olympic Games semi-final 3-0 defeat to Argentina.

"It's a long time since I've seen Brazil so stingy and defensive," the former Argentina national team captain was quoted in his country's media as saying.

"I didn't think they could do any damage. They never managed to play their way out of defence, nobody helped Ronaldinho and they never played coherently.

"I think Argentina were better in every metre of the field."

Russian horse goes from cop to fop

For years, Russian rider Alexandra Korelova quietly observed a particular police horse that lived at her riding club's stables and decided that he was a champion.

Balagur, a grey stallion so pale that he appears to have been daubed pink in places, made such an impression on Korelova between its shifts with the local police that she decided to speak to her trainer about the horse.

"I saw him for a long time, for years, and I spoke with my trainer, who said 'take him now quickly and come to me,'" said the 31-year-old from Nizhny Novgorod, in Russia's north-west.

"(My trainer) saw in this horse a personality and character, and made a sportsman out of him."

Korelova rode Balagur to grab sixth place in the final of the Olympics individual dressage grand prix on Tuesday. The event was won by the Netherlands' Anky Van Grunsven.