Olympics
Notebook: Sprinters will learn their fate today

By Seattle Times news services

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ATHENS — A world-champion sprinter from the United States and two Olympic sprint medalists from Greece will have drug hearings today to decide whether they can run in Athens.

Torri Edwards, the 100-meter world title-holder, will ask the Court of Arbitration for Sport to overturn her two-year suspension for using a banned stimulant and put her back on the U.S. team.

At another Athens hotel, an International Olympic Committee disciplinary panel will hear the case of defending 200 champion Kostas Kenteris and women's 100 silver medalist Ekaterini Thonau, who were missing when IOC testers went to collect samples the day before the Games began. Neither will be at today's hearing because of injuries sustained in a motor-scooter crash on Friday.

Drug testers tried unsuccessfully for two days to track down the pair in Chicago just before the Olympics, IAAF president Lamine Diack told a news conference.

Overweight protest?

International judo officials are investigating whether a two-time champion from Iran who reportedly said he wouldn't fight an Israeli opponent deliberately avoided the Olympic bout by showing up overweight.

Arash Miresmaeili, a favorite in the under-146-pound (66kg) class, was declared overweight at the morning weigh-in and disqualified for his first-round bout against Ehud Vaks.

After Thursday's draw, the Iranian press agency IRNA quoted Miresmaeili as saying: "I refused to play against an Israeli rival to sympathize with the oppressed Palestinian people."

Tepid ticket sales
 
In the Olympic tennis stadium, Venus Williams' grunts echoed loudly off several thousand empty seats. There were so few people at the gymnastics preliminaries that it looked like a high-school meet.

Across Athens, on the opening weekend of the Olympics, the scene was the same. So far, the Olympics are a box-office bust.

At gymnastics, huge sections of seats had no one in them while the women competed, a fact Greek state television duly noted.

Organizers say it's too early to judge the Games by a few empty arenas. They claim to have sold more than 2.9 million tickets out of a total of 5.3 million. Spokesman Michael Zacharatos predicted sales will increase as the games become "more exciting."

Notes

• Following China's 83-58 loss to Spain in men's basketball, Yao Ming, a center for the NBA's Houston Rockets, expressed his frustration.

"I am thinking to retire from national team," Yao said. "Not now, but soon I will."