Olympics
Brazil hope for revival with clash against Nigeria’s Super Falcons
For the Brazil women’s team facing Nigeria’s Super Falconets this evening in Bordeaux, the match is one the country hopes to use to reconstruct their long-awaited gold medal in Women’s football. Despite the country’s pedigree in world football, the Olympic gold medal has been elusive.
They are two-time Olympic silver medallist (Athens, 2004, and Beijing, 2008) as well as being runners-up in the 2007 Women’s World Cup and third in the 1999 World Cup.
The match with Nigeria is therefore being taken with all seriousness. Other matches with Japan and Sapin will follow. Two teams qualify for the next round while the third placed may qualify as one of the two bests in that category.
The Brazilian coach, Arthur Elias is optimistic of good outing in the opening match with Nigeria. He has been with the team in the past 12 months. He believes that his team is among the probable seven or eight teams that may get the the podium.
. He reiterated that he will line up against Nigeria, a team with “high expectations”, knowing that he has a group of very high-quality athletes on his hands.
“It will be an Olympics marked by balance, with great teams in a position to advance to the final round. In the case of the Brazilian team, we have worked hard on the idea of taking things step by step, game by game. We have studied our opponents in detail and we are prepared.”
In a team that combines youth with experience, Marta is the most remembered name for obvious reasons. Voted the best player in the world six times, she will be competing in her sixth Olympics. She won silver in 2004 and 2008 and has scored goals in the last five editions of the Games.
The forward was called up because of her excellent season with Orlando Pride and the recent friendlies with the National Team, in which she performed very well, physically and technically.
Since training in Teresópolis, Arthur has been implementing different game plans for each of Brazil’s matches in the first phase. The space between one match and another is short, just three days. He has tested several formations in defense, midfield and attack. He does not like to work with the concept of starters.
The team lineup will only be announced moments before the match and will remain so until Brazil’s last game at the Olympics.
Brazil had two outstanding campaigns in women’s Olympic football. In 2004 and 2008, when they won silver. After that, in 2012, 2016 and 2021, they advanced well from the first phase, but were ineffective in the knockout stages. This is directly related to the fact that the coach called up seven attackers for the Games.
Both in Teresópolis and in Bordeaux, the National Team trained several attacking options, which reinforces the coach’s idea that he is in charge of a group in which all of them are capable of being selected at any time.
Olympics
Paris 2024 Games break record ticket sales
Paris 2024 sold a record 12 million tickets for the Olympics and Paralympics, beating the Games record previously set by London 2012, organisers said on Sunday.
Some 9.5 million tickets were sold for the Olympics and 2.5 million for the Paralympics, which end on Sunday.
In 2012, London organisers set the record for the Paralympics with 2.7 million tickets sold but only 8.2 million were sold for the Olympics.
-Reuters
Olympics
Paris to name sports venue after dead Ugandan Olympian Cheptegei
The French capital will pay tribute to Ugandan Olympian Rebecca Cheptegei, who was set on fire by her boyfriend, by naming a sports facility in her honour, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo announced on Friday.
The marathon runner, who competed in the Paris Games last month died on Thursday, four days after she was doused in petrol and ignited by her boyfriend in Kenya, in the latest attack on a female athlete in the country.
The 33-year-old, who finished 44th in her Olympic Games debut, suffered burns to more than 75% of her body in Sunday’s attack, Kenyan and Ugandan media reported.
“She dazzled us here in Paris. We saw her. Her beauty, her strength, her freedom, and it was in all likelihood her beauty, strength and freedom which were intolerable for the person who committed this murder,” Hidalgo told reporters.
“Paris will not forget her. We’ll dedicate a sports venue to her so that her memory and her story remains among us and helps carry the message of equality, which is a message carried by the Olympic and Paralympic Games.”
Cheptegei is the third prominent sportswoman to be killed in Kenya since October 2021. Kenyan Sports Minister Kipchumba Murkomen described Cheptegei’s death as a loss “to the entire region”.
“This is a critical moment— not just to mourn the loss of a remarkable Olympian, but to commit ourselves to creating a society that respects and protects the dignity of every individual,” Uganda’s Athletes commission Chair Ganzi Semu Mugula said on Friday.
-Reuters
Olympics
Row over plan to keep Olympic rings on Eiffel Tower
Engineer’s descendants say French capital landmark ‘not intended as advertising platform’
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has triggered a heated debate by saying she wants to keep the Olympic rings on the Eiffel Tower after the summer Games are over.
“The decision is up to me, and I have the agreement of the IOC [International Olympic Committee],” she told the Ouest-France newspaper over the weekend.
“So yes, they [the rings] will stay on the Eiffel Tower,” she added.
Some Parisians backed the move, but others – including heritage campaigners – said it was a bad idea and would “defile” the French capital’s iconic monument.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has triggered a heated debate by saying she wants to keep the Olympic rings on the Eiffel Tower after the summer Games are over.
“The decision is up to me, and I have the agreement of the IOC [International Olympic Committee],” she told the Ouest-France newspaper over the weekend.
“So yes, they [the rings] will stay on the Eiffel Tower,” she added.
Some Parisians backed the move, but others – including heritage campaigners – said it was a bad idea and would “defile” the French capital’s iconic monument.
The five rings – 29m (95ft) wide, 15m high and weighing 30 tonnes – were installed on the Eiffel Tower before the Paris Olympics opened on 26 July, and were expected to be taken down after the Paralympics’ closing ceremony on 8 September.
But Ms Hidalgo said she wanted to keep the interlaced rings of blue, yellow, black, green and red, symbolising the five continents.
She added that the current rings – each one measuring 9m in diameter – were too heavy and would be replaced by a lighter version at some point.
The Socialist mayor also claimed that “the French have fallen in love with Paris again” during the Games, and she wanted “this festive spirit to remain”.
Some Parisians as well as visitors to the French capital supported the mayor.
“The Eiffel Tower is very beautiful, the rings add colour. It’s very nice to see it like this,” a young woman, who identified herself as Solène, told the France Bleu website.
But Manon, a local resident, said this was “a really bad idea”.
“It’s a historic monument, why defile it with rings? It was good for the Olympics but now it’s over, we can move on, maybe we should remove them and return the Eiffel Tower to how it was before,” he told France Bleu.
Social media user Christophe Robin said Ms Hidalgo should have consulted Parisians before going ahead with her plan.
In a post on X, he reminded that the Eiffel Tower featured a Citroën advert in 1925-36.
The Eiffel Tower was built in1889 for the World’s Fair. The wrought-iron lattice tower was initially heavily criticised by Parisian artists and intellectuals – but is now seen by many as the symbol of the “City of Light”.
Ms Hidalgo, who has been running Paris since 2014, is known for her bold – and sometimes controversial – reforms.
Under her tenure, many city streets, including the banks of the river Seine, have been pedestrianised.
Last year, she won convincingly a city referendum to ban rental electric scooters. However, fewer than 8% of those eligible turned out to vote.
But both drivers’ groups and opposition figures attacked the scheme, saying the SUV classification was misleading as many family-size cars would be affected.
France’s Environment Minister Christophe Béchu said at the time that the surcharge amounted to “punitive environmentalism”.
And just before the Paris Olympics, Ms Hidalgo and other officials went into the Seine to prove the river was safe to swim.
-BBC
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