Stadium Collapse Highlights Brazil Stadium Problems
Seven people died in a collapse at Fonte Nova stadium in the northeast Brazil city of Salvador on Nov. 25.
Dozens more were injured as they fell 15 meters from stands that crumbled under their weight.
The stadium is the structurally worst in Brazil, according to a recent study of 29 major Brazilian stadia. The National Association of Architectural and of Consulting Engineering Companies undertook the survey of Brazil's stadiums as part of 2014 FIFA World Cup preparations. Eighty percent need structural improvements, according to the report.
Fonte Nova is not on the preliminary list of venues proposed for the World Cup, but each of the stadia on that list are decades old.
Constructing 12 new stadia for the World Cup and repairing others will cost about $1.1 billion, the Brazilian soccer federation estimates.
Cambodia Hosts First Ever World Cup Event
The Cambodia tournament prize is a trophy made of melted down AK-47s. (Getty Images)The World Organization for Disabled Volleyball World Cup puts Cambodia onto the world sports calendar this week.
The WOVD event is for standing disabled volleyball – bringing together athletes who can stand with or without prostheses. The Cambodian National Volleyball League (Disabled) has a national league soon to expand to 17 teams. Most of Cambodia's players are amputees due to landmine accidents. The event doubles as a publicity effort of the International Campaign to Ban the Landmine.
While sitting volleyball is a Paralympic event, the standing version was removed from the Games program after 2000 due to lack of international participation. WOVD is working to get the event reinstated. Eight teams are joining the Phnom Penh tournament, which ends Dec. 2.
UAE Could Bid for 2013 Pan Arab Games
The Secretary General of United Arab Emirates NOC said the UAE has the ability to host the Pan Arab Games and said there is a possibility for a bid to host the 2013 version.
Speaking on the final day of competition Nov. 26, Ibrahim Abdul Malik Mohammad said “to host this type of tournament you need around four years to prepare. But in the UAE we have hosted big events before. We held the Youth World Cup in 2003 and that was considered one of the best ever. I hope that the UAE could host the Games”.
The Pan Arab Games ended with hosts Egypt topping the medal count. Lebanon will hold the next games in 2011.
Ellen Mueller-Preis, Austrian Fencing Champion, 95
Los Angeles Games fencing champion Ellen Muller-Pries died of kidney failure at a Vienna hospital on Nov. 18, at the age of 95. Ellen Mueller-Preis is the only Austrian to become an Olympic fencing champion. (OOC)
The 1932 individual foil champion also won bronzes in 1936 and 1948. She was named Austria's female athlete of the year in 1949. She made her last Olympic appearance in Melbourne, at the age of 44.
For her 95th birthday, the Austrian Olympic Committee presented her with the Sport and Promotion of Olympism trophy.
After retiring from competition, Mueller-Preis taught fencing techniques in several Vienna theatres and later joined the Vienna University for Music and Performing Arts where she taught breathing and fencing techniques to aspiring performers.
Herb McKenley, Jamaican Sprinter, 85
One of the first two Caribbean athletes to win an Olympic track medal has died in Kingston, Jamaica. Herb McKenley sandwiched between two runners in the 1952 100m race. (IOC)
Herb McKenley won a 400 meter silver in 1948 – coming in second to his compatriot Arthur Wint. The first two Caribbean track medalists went on to win gold on Jamaica's 1952 400m-relay team.
Much of McKenley's fame in Jamaica rests on his coaching contributions – both at the head of his country's track team and in the Jamaica Athletics Association.
Young Jamaican runners regularly name him as a role model.
"When I got to the elite level I always thought about the things that he told me," Olympian Brandon Simpson tells Jamaican media.
Homepage photo by Getty Images
Written by Maggie Lee
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