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Birds, bugs bother athletes at Games

First it was bugs, now it's the birds. Assorted beasties seem bent on harassing athletes at the Asian Games.

The Chinese team has lodged a formal complaint that its weightlifters are being showered by insulation foam. The culprits: sparrows trying to build nests in the rooftop of the indoor weightlifting arena.

Small pieces of foam have been falling at the exact spot where the lifters are to compete.

"The heaviest downpour is right at the centre of the competition area and we have to sweep it up every 30 minutes," The Bangkok Post quoted a Thai weightlifting official as saying.

Col Jakrit Intharatat, secretary-general of the Weightlifting Association of Thailand, said the falling foam could cause serious problems for competitors, and the International Weightlifting Confederation might not approve of the venue.

As officials scurried to find a solution before the start of competition later today, anti-bug patrols fanned out to several other venues to control mosquitoes and other insects.

The first alarm was raised when an unusual number of insects were discovered in the Asian Games swimming pool last week. Since then there have been complaints that mosquitoes infiltrate some indoor arenas at dusk.

Taiwan expected to bowl 'em over

With one world champion and three gold medallists from the last Games, Taiwan's bowling team is expected to roll to victory at the 13th Asiad.

The team includes Tseng Su-Fen, the former women's world champion and gold-medal winner at the Hiroshima Asian Games in 1994, as well as Hiroshima gold medallists Lin Han-Cheng and Chou Miao-Lin.

Ten gold medals are at stake in the bowling competition, which begins on December 9. South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand are also fielding strong squads.

Bronze on a platter

Win some, lose some, say the Thais.

The hosts of the Asian Games got a guaranteed bronze medal after Siwaporn Mayer received a first-round bye in the tae kwon do competition.

But her three team-mates will be facing tough competitors from South Korea, China and Taiwan when the Asian martial art event begins today.

Meanwhile, Thailand was guaranteed not to get any medals in the men's 4km pursuit because most of the cyclists were declared unfit.

Only Panupong Maneepong and Thongchai Wankerdjai-Ngarm were able to complete the twelve-lap race in training while the rest of the team could not keep up after the halfway point, ruining the team combination.

Economy route to gold

By trying to save some yen, the parents of Naoko Takahashi set the Japanese marathon runner on the road to a near-world-record performance at the Asian Games.

With her parents cheering "Gambare, gambare (fight hard, fight hard)," Takahashi grabbed the Games' first gold yesterday by winning the women's marathon in the fifth best time ever.

In her early teens, when she asked her parents which school club to join in her hometown of Gifu, they strongly suggested athletics.

"They said to join the least expensive one, which was the athletics club," the 26-year-old remembered. "They were right."

Their advice paid off as Takahashi glided into the Games' main stadium in a time of 2 hours, 21 minutes, 47 seconds, less than a minute off the world mark.

"I could see my parents and I heard them crying out, 'Gambare, gambare'. It was wonderful," the petite runner said.

Takahashi, who runs and works for a chemical company in Nagoya, is regarded a top contender for the marathon crown at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney.

Ticket bonanza

Thailand, which badly needs to revive its economy, expects to reap 200 million baht ($5.6 million) from ticket sales at the Asian Games, the organisers said today.

The Games got off to a good start by collecting 63 million baht ($1.7 million) from tickets sold at the opening ceremony on Sunday. The 60,000-seat stadium appeared filled to capacity.

An official release said only a few more tickets were left for the closing ceremony on December 20.

UNI