Weightlifter Zekra Zaki is the first Iraqi female athlete to qualify for the Paralympic Games scheduled September after the Beijing Olympic Games. Read her story here.

PHOTO CREDIT: AFP

If you think we will never blog about fashion here at The Olympics Blog, you should think again. Actually, we never intended to blog about fashion but the Kiwis down under forced us to blog about it when they unveiled their Olympic uniform.

How can we not upload the above picture right? We’re sure the legions of you who’ve got a foot fetish will go crazy with New Zealand’s crocs.

What about the second picture? Are we the only ones who think that New Zealand swimmer Dean Kent looks kinda sorrowful in this pic? With the all-black uniform and his not too happy face it is as if he just attended a wake. What’s up, mate?

Now we’re talking. To use a cliche, swimmer Helen Norfolk strikes a pose. She’s also the model for the crocs above which foot fetishists are going crazy about.

PHOTO SOURCE: stuff.co.nz.
Outside Reading: NZ Olympic uniform unveiled (+pics)

What is it with sports officials that they seem to have a propensity to snub their former sports stars. First we have former Olympians from Malaysia complaining about being snubbed during the Olympic torch relay in Kuala Lumpur.

Now we have, Indian Olympians also feeling slighted. From Sportstar:

[T]he sole criterion concerning the selection of a sports personality says, the person should “be distinguished for contributions to the Olympic Movement or for extraordinary performance at past Olympic Games.”

Three such personalities were available in Delhi, but they were not called. Sriram Singh, one of the finest athletes India has produced, a finalist in the 800 metres in the 1976 Montreal Olympics, was hoping to get a call, but it never came. Sriram still holds the National record of 1:45.77 that he set in the final in Montreal.

At the same Games, Hari Chand set another National record, that of 28:48.72 in the 10,000 metres that has remained intact. He too was ignored. Both Sriram and Hari Chand are also double gold medal winners in the Asian Games. Then there was R. S. Bhola, the hockey veteran of the 1956 Melbourne Games where India won the gold and Rome Olympics where India took the silver.

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Like the Olympic predictions we’ve been featuring here, we will soon find out in August whether Boris Gryzlov is correct or not.

Xinhua: Russian athletes may win 30 to 40 gold medals at the Beijing Olympic Games, Boris Gryzlov, speaker of the State Duma, lower house of the parliament, said on Wednesday.

Olympic games has become the “indicator by which one can judge the quality of a country’s sport development, and the effectiveness of the money used in this field,” Gryzov was quoted by the Itar-Tass news agency as saying.

He said that Russia had spent more than 12 billion roubles “on the training of our athletes for participation in the Beijing games,” and have chances to rank among the world’s three best sport states.

Russian lawmakers are closely watching the training of domestic athletes, as well as the legislative support of sport development.

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Pakistani sports writer Alam Zeb Safi isn’t optimistic that Pakistan will win any medals in Beijing:

For those Pakistanis who are anxious to learn about Pakistan’s chances of winning medals in the Beijing Olympiad which would be held from August 8 to 24, I would like to say that they should keep their expectations down regarding medals because of the precarious condition of sports in the country.

Why the pessimism? Apparently, Pakistan has not been investing in Olympic sports as it used to. Alam Zeb Safi on Pakistan’s past Olympic achievements and how it failed to build on them:

So far, out of ten Olympic medals Pakistan have claimed in the Olympiad history, hockey has a lion share of eight medals which includes three gold, three silver and two bronze. For the first time in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, Pakistan claimed a silver medal under the captaincy of Abdul Hameed, followed by gold in 1960 Rome Olympics, silver in 1964 Tokyo Olympics, gold in 1968 Mexico Olympics, silver in 1972 Munich Olympics, bronze in 1976 Montreal (Canada) Olympics, gold in 1984 Los Angeles Olympics and a bronze medal in the 1992 Barcelona (Spain) Olympics. But since 1992 Pakistan have been unable to win any medal in this inspiring event.

Apart from hockey, boxing was considered a potentially glorious sport and Pakistani boxer Syed Hussain Shah was the boxer who had claimed a bronze medal in the 1988 Seoul Olympics. But now like hockey this game too is fading away as it proved this year when Pakistani boxers failed to qualify for the Olympics for the first time in history.

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