Athletics: Kenenisa Bekele, the 5,000 and 10,000 metres world record holder, has been left out of Ethiopia’s athletics squad for the Rio Olympics. The triple Olympic gold medal winner failed to make the team in both the marathon and the 10,000 metres. Bekele had appealed a decision to leave him out of the marathon team due to a lack of race time, while his hopes of running the 10,000 metres in Rio were effectively dashed when he failed to finish a race in Hengelo, which doubled up as an Olympic trial.
Tennis: Canadian player Eugenie Bouchard is undecided about her participation in next month’s Rio Olympics over concerns about the Zika virus, the 22-year-old said. The world number 40 shared her fears after her shock defeat by Camila Giorgi of Italy in the opening round of the women’s singles in the Washington Open on Tuesday. “I’m kind of a last-minute person, so I’m going to make a decision next week, I guess, the week before (the Rio Olympic Games),” Bouchard told reporters.
Tennis: Former champions Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal have pulled out of the Rogers Cup in Toronto, leaving the tournament without three of the world’s top four players. The decision by Swiss world number three Federer and Spanish world number four Nadal comes a day after Wimbledon winner Andy Murray, ranked second, said he would not defend his Rogers Cup title so he can rest before defending his Olympic singles crown in Rio next month.
Skiing: A mix-up over the administration of asthma medicine has cost Norwegian cross-country skier Martin Johnsrud Sundby his World Cup and Tour de Ski titles from the 2014-15 season following a judgment by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). Johnsrud Sundby’s failure to declare his use of a nebuliser on the advice of team doctor Knut Gabrielsen breached WADA rules, and sport’s highest court CAS handed the skier a two-month ban effective from July 11. The dispute centred on dosage levels and the use of a nebuliser to administer the asthma medicine to the 31-year-old.
Olympics: Visa Inc, operator of the world’s largest payments network, said it had signed sponsorship deals with all ten members of the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) refugee team, essentially becoming their first corporate sponsor. The IOC introduced its inaugural refugee team in June to draw global attention to the plight of refugees. The athletes, six men and four women, will compete in the sports of swimming, judo and athletics and march with the Olympic flag just before host Brazil at the opening ceremony. The team includes five athletes from South Sudan, two from Syria, two from DR Congo and one from Ethiopia.
Match-fixing: Italian tennis player Marco Cecchinato has been banned for 18 months and fined €40,000 for match-fixing, the Italian tennis federation has announced. The 23-year-old, currently ranked 143 in the world, is one of three Italians to be banned, along with Riccardo Accardi and Antonio Campo. Cecchinato was found guilty of altering the outcome of his match against Poland’s Kamil Majchrzak at the ATP Challenger event in Morocco in October. Accardi was suspended for 12 months and fined €20,000, while Campo has been banned for four months and given a €10,000 fine for their roles in attempts to fix matches.