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London: The pool is filled, the humidity is high, and there’s even a brightly coloured water polo ball floating in its place right in the middle.
Two weeks before the opening ceremony of the London Olympics, the first fully “dressed” venue was opened Friday. “It’s not finished, but it’s the closest we’ve got,” said Greg Nugent, the London organising committee’s director of marketing. “There are still adjustments that we need to make. It’s all very fine-tuning now.”
The water polo arena will seat 5,000 spectators, and has already been sold out for the Games.
Dope taint
New York: Relay sprinter Debbie Dunn took her name off the US team roster Friday after testing positive for excessive testosterone. Dunn, who finished fourth in the 400 metres at Olympic trials, was selected for the American relay pool. She is the 2010 world indoor champion at 400 metres and would have been a likely candidate to run in the Olympic 4x400 metre relay, which the American women have won every year since 1996.
But she released a statement acknowledging a positive doping test and said she was withdrawing from the Olympics while the US Anti-Doping Agency pursues the case.
Idowu sorry
London: Phillips Idowu has apologised for pulling out of the triple jump at the London Grand Prix — just three days after insisting injury was not behind his long lay-off this season.
Olympic silver medallist Idowu has competed just three times in 2012, with his last appearance coming in Oregon on June 1, when he took three jumps before sitting out the rest of the competition.
The 33-year-old subsequently withdrew from meetings in Oslo and Paris and the Olympic trials in Birmingham, with UK Athletics head coach Charles van Commenee declining to clarify Idowu’s situation due to issues of ‘medical confidentiality’.
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