Earlier, we brought you how Australia’s Brenton Rickard trains for the Olympics. Now, let’s have Olympic 800m champion Yuriy Borzakovskiy tell us something about his training:

I train twice a day, six days per week. With this I need 8 to 9 hours of sleep each night and one-and-a-half hours of sleep in the afternoon. On Wednesday or Thursday I usually have one practice, and instead of the second one I go to a banya, and on Sunday I have banya too.

Eight to nine hours of sleep? You’re luckier than me, Yuriy. But then, with all that running you’re doing, you do need more hours of sleep to recover physically. By the way for those of you who don’t know, a banya is a Russian sauna.

What other things does Yuriy do apart from training and visiting banyas?

I like to cook and used to cook tasty food, but my wife does not let me now. She says that it is the women’s job to cook, and everyone must do their job, and she does all cooking at home.

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China’s Xing Huina will not defend her Olympic title (women’s 10,000-meter) because of a thigh injury which prevented her from training for the Beijing Games. That leaves Liu Xiang as the only legitimate gold medal favorite among Chinese athletes competing in track events.

PHOTO SOURCE: BBC

If AP writer Nancy Armour really believes that the Speedo controversy is much ado about nothing, why doesn’t she ask American athletes not to wear the LZR swimsuit. If it doesn’t make any difference in how an athlete performs, then why do they have to change suits?

Turkish weightlifter Halil Mutlu is a three time Olympic gold medalist. He hopes to get another gold when he goes to Beijing in August. Who could stop him from getting his fourth gold medal? Chinese weightlifters who’ve been trying to out-lift him for years.

Here’s a quote from Halil Mutlu about his prospects in Beijing: “The Chinese have been trying to beat me for years without success. They will try to be successful this time. I need to be more careful not to let them do this.”

PHOTO SOURCE: mynet.com

You will become our idol if you will also speak out for aboriginal rights before Vancouver’s 2010 Winter Games in 2010? Maybe you should also ask athletes to think about Canada’s treatment of Native Canadians before they participate in the Vancouver Games.

If you will say something like that, we will be happy to include you in our honor list of people (Archbishop Desmond Tutu, etc) and institutions (Amnesty International, etc) who have an admirable human rights record.

If you will not say anything in 2010, we will include you in our list of poseurs who are bashing China’s human rights record but who were silent about the human rights violations committed by former Olympic host countries. You will be in good company. Our list currently includes Hillary Clinton (who will say anything to get elected), Angela Merkel, and other wannabe human rights advocates whose advocacies are cheapened by their selectiveness.

Will you rise up to the challenge, Elvis?

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