Formanova out, Zelezny in top form
Yes, sport now, and there was more bad news for the Czech Olympic team today after yesterday's expulsion of cyclist Jan Hruska following confirmation of a positive drug test. World champion Ludmila Formanova is out of the Sydney Games after abandoning her 800 metres heat with injury problems. Formanova dropped out with 200 metres remaining in the third heat of the day. She told reporters it was an aggravation of an old foot injury, leaving her with pain in her left ankle which had swelled up during the flight to Sydney. "Running faster makes the pain worse," she said, adding that she would probably need surgery.
Staying with athletics, and Jan Zelezny, gold medallist at the 1996 and 1992 Games, showed his rivals he was back in business with an opening qualifying throw of 89.39 metres in the Javelin, the best of the series and almost a metre ahead of Konstantinos Gatsioudis of Greece. German rival Boris Henry said Zelezny was "in awesome form. If he'd had one more throw today it would have been over 90 metres. He's in perfect shape."
And finally most people's memory of the Munich Games is not a happy one--the 1972 Olympics saw the murder of Israeli athletes by a Palestinian commando unit. But the Games did resume, and one of the people with fonder memories is Karel Pilny, the president of the Czech Athletics Association:
