Venus, Djokovic cruise: Venus Williams underlined her desire for a fourth Olympic gold medal as the American raced into the third round with a 6-1, 6-3 victory over Canada’s Aleksandra Wozniak at Wimbledon yesterday. Venus hasn’t won a tennis Grand Slam since 2008, but the American is clearly deter-mined to emulate her singles success at the 2000 Sydney Games. In men’s singles, Novak Djokovic produced a stunning display to beat Andy Roddick 6-2 6-1 in the second round. Other result: Tsonga bt Raonic 6-3, 3-6, 25-23.
Playmakers power Russia: Russia’s Andrei Kirilenko and Alexey Shved, future NBA team-mates for Minnesota Timber-wolves, powered a veteran Rus-sian side over China 73-54 yesterday to stay unbeaten in round-robin play. Kirilenko, a 2.06m centre, scored 16 points and grabbed nine rebounds while Shved, a 23-year-old point guard, added 14 points and six assists as Russia improved to 2-0 in Group B, having beaten Britain 95-75 on Sunday.
China notch diving gold: World champions Chen Ruolin and Wang Hao won the women’s 10m synchro platform to give dominant China their third diving gold medal at the Olympics yesterday. Chen, the individual 10m platform champion from Beijing, teamed with Wang to tally 368.40 points from their five dives off the tower. Mexico’s Paola Espinosa Sanchez and Alejandra Orozco Loza took the silver with 343.32 with Canada’s Meaghan Benfeito and Roseline Filion getting the bronze with 337.62.
Slovenia judo landmark: Urska Zolnir won Slovenia’s first ever Olympic title in judo as she beat China’s Xu Lili in the women’s U-63kg final. The 30-year-old scored a decisive waza-ari half point early in the bout with a dropping shoulder throw that even looked worthy of an ippon, a technical knockout, which would have ended the fight there and then. Yoshie Ueno won Japan’s second women’s medal of the Games with a narrow win over Mongolia’s Munkhzaya Tse-devsuren by a penalty for the bronze medal.
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Canoing three-peat: French slalom canoeist Tony Estanguet (picture) sealed his third gold medal yesterday with victory in the C1 class final at the Lee Valley Basin. The 34-year-old emulated his wins at the 2000 and 2004 Games with a superb display to take gold ahead of Germany’s Sideris Tasiadis and Slovakia’s Michal Martikan. The triumph made up for Estanguet’s nightmare at the 2008 Beijing Games, where he failed to reach the C1 final.
Boy arrested over tweets: British police arrested a teenager yesterday in connection with malicious Twitter messages directed at Tom Daley after the young Olympic diver missed out on a medal. Officers arrested the 17-year-old at a guesthouse in Weymouth, a coastal town in southwest England, hours after British pin-up Daley received the messages referring to his dead father on Monday.