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Klüft injury puts Olympic hopes in doubt

Swedish long jumper Carolina Klüft has been left with a race to be fit for the London Olympics after pulling out of a meet in Finland on Sunday with a leg injury.

Published: 22 July 2012 18:10 CEST
Klüft injury puts Olympic hopes in doubt

29-year-old Klüft was competing in the long jump in Kurotane when she was forced to abort her first jump after feeling a soreness in the back of her leg.

Her coach Oscar Gidwell told the Aftonbladet daily that the 2004 Olympic heptahlon champion is downbeat about her chances of competing in the games.

“I thought perhaps that it could be sported out in time for the Olympics, but I don’t think Carro is herself thinking along those lines,” he told the newspaper.

Klüft has been battling a stress fracture in her shin and had hoped that the Finnish meet would prove her form for the Olympics, which begin in London on July 27th.

The injury is the latest of a string of setbacks for the Swedish star since she quit the heptathlon in 2008 after dominating the event for the best part of five years.

She won her first major senior title in the 2003 World Championships with 7,001 points, becoming only the third woman ever to break the magic 7,000 point barrier.

While she never managed to claim the world record for herself, she is one of very few athletes to have held all five available international titles – Olympic, World Outdoor, Regional (European) Outdoor, World Indoor and Regional Indoor.

Klüft surprised Swedish athletics when she announced in March 2008 that she was turning her back on the event that had made her a popular world star to focus on the long jump and triple jump.

She has previously indicated that the London Olympics would be her last competition before retiring from athletics.

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SPORT

Nuns on the run: Vatican launches its first athletics team

Faster, higher...holier. The newly-formed Vatican Athletics team, which is aiming to compete in international competitions, including the Olympics, was officially launched on Thursday after reaching a bilateral agreement with the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI).

Published: 11 January 2019 08:49 CET
Nuns on the run: Vatican launches its first athletics team
Priests take part in a fun run in front of St Peter's in 2013. Photo: Tiziana Fabi/AFP

So far there are 60 members of Vatican Athletics — the first Sports Association constituted in the Holy See — which includes nuns, priests, Swiss Guards and other workers.

Monsignor Melchor José Sánchez de Toca y Alameda, president of Vatican Athletics, said at the launch that the Olympic Games were “the dream but not in the short term”.

“The dream that we have often had is to see the Holy See flag among the delegations at the opening of the Olympic Games,” he said. But in the immediate future Vatican Athletics would like to be present at smaller competitions such as the Mediterranean Games.

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Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) president Giovanni Malago praised the latest initiative at the Holy See, which already has football and cricket teams.

“It will be necessary to affiliate with other federations,” he told Vatican News. “I'm sure this will happen, today we have started a courageous and winning start up.”

The CONI agreement allows the team to take part in national and internationally sanctioned events and to have access to Italian national coaching and medical facilities.

Team members wearing navy track suits with the Holy See's crossed keys seal were present at the launch. The youngest athlete is a 19-year-old Swiss guard, and the oldest a 62-year-old professor of the Vatican Apostolic Library.


Priests play football by the Vatican as part of the Clericus Cup. Photo: Tiziana Fabi/AFP

Two young Muslim asylum seekers, Jallow Buba, a 20-year-old Gambian, and Anszou Cissè, a 19-year-old Senegalese, have also been registered as honorary members.

Vatican pharmacist and runner Michela Ciprietti said she welcomed the initiative as “sport is the means of bringing people together.”

The team's first official event will be the Corsa di Miguel on January 20th, a 10km race in Rome honouring Miguel Sanchez, an Argentine distance runner who disappeared during the country's dictatorship.