RIO OLYMPICS: Michael Phelps still No. 1 in the pool

Thu, Aug 11, 2016 AFP and Reuters, RIO DE JANEIRO

In an unforgettable display of Olympic power, Michael Phelps won two more finals to take his historic all-time record load to 21 golds and cement his legendary status.

Phelps beat Japan’s Masato Sakai by just 0.04 seconds to take the 200m butterfly and later anchored the US 4x200m freestyle relay team to victory. At 31 — the oldest individual Olympic swimming gold medalist ever — Phelps is still the master of the pool.

After claiming his 20th title in five Olympics — beating old rival Chad le Clos in the process — Phelps stood in the water striking a pose like a Roman emperor, soaking up the acclaim.

The 200m butterfly was his first world record in 2001 and he was determined to win back the Olympic title he lost to South Africa’s Le Clos in 2012.

However, Phelps said that was also the last time he would race it.

“That event is kind of like my bread and butter,” Phelps said. “There wasn’t a shot in hell I was losing that race and if I did, I was leaving everything in the pool.”

Even a late wardrobe malfunction could not stop Phelps from winning his 21st gold.

The most medaled Olympian of all time, now with an unprecedented collection of 25, tore his swim cap in half as he was putting it on just before the start of the freestyle relay.

Teammate Conor Dwyer swam the opening leg and then handed over his cap, turning it inside out to avoid any conflict with rival sponsors.

Phelps wears his own MP brand made by Italian company Aqua Sphere.

“I finished my leg and he tapped me on the shoulder when I was cheering Townley [Haas] on,” Dwyer told reporters. “I heard him say: ‘Diddy, look at my cap. I don’t have a cap.’ So I handed him mine.”

“We all have ... different sponsors, so I think he had to wear just an all-black cap, so we reversed it and put on,” Dwyer said. “We’ve seen that guy go through a lot of adversity, from winning gold medals without goggles, so I think a different cap won’t stop that guy from having a good split [time].”

Dwyer had handed over to Haas in the relay, who was then followed by Ryan Lochte before Phelps swam the anchor leg to victory.

In the butterfly final at the 2008 Beijing Games Phelps won gold despite swimming with water-filled goggles that left him having to count his strokes.

In other sports, the US are looking forward to a new era of gymnastics domination, with Simone Biles making a flying start to her bid for five Rio Olympic golds.

Biles helped the US women’s team to victory by eight points over Russia.

“It’s everything and more than I’d hoped it to be,” said the tiny 19-year-old Texan, who has set gymnastics alight with 10 world titles in the past three years.

As her Olympic odyssey got under way, another crumbled as defending tennis champion Serena Williams suffered a shock 6-4, 6-3 defeat to Ukraine’s Elina Svitolina in the third round.

Williams, hampered by a shoulder injury, served five double faults in one game of the second set as her own bid to reach five gold medals ended.

The 34-year-old and her sister Venus were knocked out of the women’s doubles, the three-time champions’ first ever defeat together in Olympic competition.

“It was a great opportunity. It didn’t work out the way I wanted it to, but at least I was able to make it to Rio. That was one of my goals,” Serena said.

Structure of the Lead：

WHO: Michael Phelps

WHERE: RIO OLYMPICS

Keywords:

1.malfunction 失靈

2.unprecedented 史前無例的

3.rival 對手

來源:http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/sport/archives/2016/08/11/2003652884

Obama and Castro to meet in rare talks

Tue, Mar 22, 2016 AFP, HAVANA

US President Barack Obama was to hold rare talks with Cuban President Raul Castro yesterday in Havana, setting aside a more than half-century bitter standoff between the US and the communist nation.

The meeting in the Cuban capital’s Palace of the Revolution is only the third formal encounter between Obama and the brother of Fidel Castro, who handed over the presidency in 2008.

At stake is the historic shift to end the Cold War conflict, which has seen Washington try to bring Cuba to its knees through an economic embargo, while Havana, a close Soviet ally, became enemy territory.

Obama, who arrived on Sunday with his family, is the first US president to touch down on the island, barely an hour’s flight from Florida, in 88 years.

As Air Force One landed in Havana, Obama cheerfully began the landmark trip by tweeting in local slang: “Que bola Cuba?” — or “What’s up?”

Later he said that the last US president to visit, Calvin Coolidge in 1928, needed three days to make the trip by train and navy ship.

“This is a historic visit,” he remarked to staff at the freshly reopened US embassy in Havana.

The trip has been touted mostly for its huge symbolic value, and comes more than a year after Obama and Castro surprised the world in December 2014 by announcing that their countries would begin normalizing relations.

“The presence of a US president on the island for the first time since the 1959 revolution marks a transcendental change in relations between the US and Cuba,” said Michael Shifter, head of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington.

However, some tough issues are up for discussion.

Although the embargo can only be lifted by the US Congress, where Republicans are far less keen on rapprochement, the Obama administration is chipping away at the edges of the sanctions.

For example, a trickle of US visitors over recent years is soon expected to turn into a flood with the lifting of an onerous requirement that they go to Cuba as part of pre-approved groups.

However, while pushing for an easing of the decades-long sanctions regime, the White House continues to press for greater human rights in a country where the Cuban Communist Party maintains its grip on every key institution and little dissent is tolerated.

Just hours before Obama’s arrival on Sunday, police in Havana arrested dozens of people from a banned group demanding greater human rights. Several had been freed by the end of the day and the rest were expected to be released shortly.

“I don’t think Obama’s visit will have an immediate impact on Cuban politics, much less on the near-term decisions of the regime,” Shifter said. “Full normalization will take a lot of time and will be a complex process. To advance, the US Congress needs to go further in lifting the embargo and Cuba needs to speed up its political and economic opening and improve its human rights.”

A heavy police presence was evident when Obama went on his first official event, a visit to the beautifully restored Havana Old Town late on Sunday. Plainclothes agents swarmed through the narrow streets and access to ordinary Cubans was all but impossible, leaving the neighborhood eerily empty.

“Maybe they let me come here because they think I’m a tourist with my backpack,” said civil engineer Ariel Hernandez, 42, who was trying to get a glimpse of the president.

Tomorrow, Obama is scheduled to meet with a few human rights activists. He is also to give a speech — the main set piece of his trip — that is to be carried live on Cuban television, an unprecedented concession from the authorities.

He is to round off the trip by attending a baseball game between the Cuban national team and Major League Baseball’s Tampa Bay Rays.

Although meant to be a celebration of shared love for the game, the occasion is also to highlight yet another cause of tension: the talent drain of Cuban stars attracted by the lure of the big-money US circuit.

In another major piece of Latin American business, US Secretary of State John Kerry, who is traveling with Obama, was yesterday due to meet separately with representatives of the Colombian government and the Marxist FARC rebels, according to a Colombian negotiator.

They have been negotiating in Cuba since 2012 to end their more than 50-year war. Both sides have acknowledged that a deadline of tomorrow they had set themselves will pass without the signing of a final accord

Structure of the Lead：

WHO: Obama and Castro

WHERE: Havana

Keywords:

1.standoff 僵局

2.communist 共產主義者

3.embargo禁運

4.normalizing 狀況恢復正常

來源:http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2016/03/22/2003642188/1