The Star Online: Sports
The Star Online: Sports |
- China's Li still smarting from Clijsters heartbreak
- I'll knock you off, Hewitt warns Tipsarevic
- Armstrong has yet more to lose if he admits doping
| China's Li still smarting from Clijsters heartbreak Posted: 12 Jan 2013 07:34 PM PST MELBOURNE: Fiery Chinese star Li Na bristled at the mention of the retired Kim Clijsters Sunday and said she was disappointed not to have the chance to avenge her Australian Open losses to the Belgian ace. Former French Open winner Li, among the leading contenders at Melbourne Park, was foiled by Clijsters in the 2011 final and let slip four match points against her in last year's fourth round, a defeat that left her in tears. Asked whether she was happy not to have to play Clijsters, who retired last year, again in Melbourne, Li said: "Why should I be happy? I was really looking forward to playing her again. "I played her last year in the fourth round. I never had a chance to come back, so I'm not happy." She added: "Every time I play against her, it's always a tough match. It's a really good challenge." The world number six failed to go beyond the fourth round at any of the Grand Slam tournaments last year but she has shown progress under new coach Carlos Rodriguez and started the year by winning in Shenzhen, China. Li, 30, admitted that she was already feeling the pace after a frenetic start to the year and had been a fixture on the massage table as she prepares for the year's first Grand Slam. "I've just had two days totally off. Now I'm feeling fresh again. The team was working so hard. Two days ago my body was feeling really, really tired," she said. "The physio does a very good massage. On the massage table he was really killing me. But now I'm feeling much better, so I'm looking forward to this year for Australia." She said Rodriguez, former handler of seven-time Grand Slam-winner Justine Henin, had tried to make her feel more relaxed ahead of the first round, where she will play Kazakhstan's Sesil Karatantcheva on Monday. "I feel more relaxed working with him. He never gives me pressure. He says, 'You never know what will happen on the tennis court, so just try to win the first round. If you can't win the first round, nothing will happen after'." - AFP |
| I'll knock you off, Hewitt warns Tipsarevic Posted: 12 Jan 2013 07:32 PM PST MELBOURNE: A fired-up Lleyton Hewitt Sunday warned his Australian Open first round opponent Janko Tipsarevic that he plans to "knock him off" after showing vintage form to win the Kooyong Classic. Veteran Hewitt, 31, is bursting with confidence after demolishing Juan Martin Del Potro in the final of the warm-up tournament 6-1, 6-4 on Saturday, his third victory over top-15 opposition in the past week. World number nine Tipsarevic is next in the Australian's line of fire, at a Grand Slam he is playing for a record 17th consecutive time, three more than closest challenger Roger Federer. And Hewitt has no fear of the Serb, who won the ATP Chennai Open in his preparation for Melbourne. "I don't care. I'll knock him off, try to take his spot in the draw," said Hewitt, who made the fourth round of the Open last year. "I look forward to the challenge. "The last couple matches I've hit the ball as well as I can remember. I feel confident with where my game is at the moment. "There's still a couple things I got to try to take care of when I'm on the match court. "But all in all, when my moving comes together and I'm serving well, my returns and obviously passing shots and counter-punching has been pretty good anyways." The two-time Grand Slam winner's form belies his 81st place ranking and his confidence his sky high after beating Tomas Berdych and Milos Raonic as well as Del Potro at Kooyong. "It's confidence in terms of going out there and matching it with the best players. They've got extremely big weapons. I was able to work around that, sort of open them up out there," he said. "I felt the way I was able to be aggressive with the bigger, stronger guys, all three matches are three of the biggest hitters out there." Hewitt's longevity on the tour is matched only by Federer, who is also 31. They have both played in 55 Grand Slams, more than any other current player, although still well short of Fabrice Santoro's 70. "I've missed a lot more Slams than Rog, too. I started before him," he said. "I've had a few more injuries than Rog and had to come back from a few surgeries, which is pretty tough. "But to play 17 Australian Opens in a row, main draw in singles, is something not easy to do. "To be fit, I haven't been 100 percent for all of them, but in terms of the staying power, being able to play through generations, is something I'll look back on and be pretty proud of." - AFP |
| Armstrong has yet more to lose if he admits doping Posted: 12 Jan 2013 05:34 PM PST WASHINGTON: The cyclist Lance Armstrong could lose much more than his already ravaged reputation if he confesses to doping this week during a television interview with Oprah Winfrey - he could end up in jail. The disgraced Texan's decision to talk to the famed US talk show host has divided opinion, as some say he needs to do something radical to rehabilitate his public profile, while others say speaking out will only make matters once. The crux of the matter is whether Armstrong, having been stripped of his seven Tour de France titles, will finally admit that he was a drugs cheat. Such a confession would overturn more than a decade of strenuous denials. "If I were his lawyer, I'd be telling him not to do it. I think he's crazy," said Peter Keane, law professor at Golden Gate University in San Francisco, of the cyclist's decision to give the interview, which will be aired Thursday. "He's in considerable jeopardy of some sort of criminal prosecution... for which he could go to prison," Keane said. The threats to Armstrong's liberty stem from the fallen icon's role in the US Postal Service team, where he spent his most successful years in the saddle. Having been paid by the government, the former team leader could face criminal charges for making fraudulent statements to his bosses. He could also be accused of perjury over disclosures made under oath to a US federal jury in 2005. If convicted, each false statement could lead to five years in jail. Armstrong has always maintained that he did not use banned substances during his stellar career, but in August last year he chose not to contest charges put forward by the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) that he was a serial drugs cheat. The pitfalls of speaking to Winfrey, considered the favored TV forum for "tell all" confessional style interviews, appear to have been weighed, and a decision taken that it is worthwhile to reveal something new. "I'm anticipating a major announcement," said Jordan Kobritz, chair of the State University of New York at Cortland's International Sport Management graduate program, noting that Armstrong would otherwise have no reason to talk. "You don't have to go on Oprah to do what he's been doing in his entire athletic life, and that is deny, deny and deny that he ever engaged in illegal drugs," Kobritz said, agreeing with Keane that perjury and criminal charges are possible. One possibility is that justice officials in California will re-open a file they closed last year concerning alleged drug use and misuse of funds when Armstrong was with the US Postal Service team. Another case that could come back to haunt the cyclist is an arbitration hearing in Dallas in 2005 where he said under oath that he had never taken banned substances, a statement which raises the specter of perjury charges. But Armstrong's profile, albeit diminished, as a cancer survivor who raised awareness and hundreds of millions of dollars to fight the disease, is likely the chip that could spare him the worst possible outcome. "Regardless of whether he comes out and makes a flat admission, I guarantee there will still be a majority of US citizens who will say 'I don't care what he did, he's still my hero,'" Kobritz said, citing Armstrong's cancer survival. "Unless there's a prosecutor who wants to stake his reputation and his future political career," on putting Armstrong in the dock, "I suspect they're going to leave him alone," Kobritz added. But Michael McCann, director of the sports law institute at Vermont Law School, said there could be an upside to speaking out, if not immediately then in the mid-term, even if that means going to jail beforehand for perjury. "It wouldn't be five years, but it could be six months, any amount of time would be pretty bad," he said. But there could be "a sense of coming clean, having a cleaner conscience... public forgiveness, and relief maybe," added McCann, who is soon to head up a new sports and entertainment law institute at the University of New Hampshire. - AFP |
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