Off track ...

SARAJEVO SYMBOLISM

The secretary general of the United Nations took a symbolic run through the former Olympic city of Sarajevo before he comes to London to carry the Olympic torch toward the 2012 Games.

Ban Ki-moon carried a torch on Thursday morning in the Olympic Stadium in Sarajevo, home to the 1984 Winter Olympics - and years of war and hard times afterward. Ban ran alongside Sarajevo's marathon runner Islam Djugum, who even during Bosnia's 1992-95 war trained daily - but only after dark, to avoid snipers.

Ban said he saw in Sarajevo a city that has risen from ashes and ruins and is now pulsing with "real life".

LATE-NIGHT FIREWORKS

It was a midnight Olympic light show - unexpected and free - for residents of London's Stratford section.

A technical rehearsal for the opening ceremony wrapped up past midnight with two full minutes of fireworks early Thursday over the Olympic Stadium, a spectacular (if loud) treat for the neighborhood that adjoins Olympic Park. On Stratford's High Street, people making their way home stopped, looked up and oohed and ahhed.

Will it offset the expected gridlock they're girding for in their community? Maybe not. But it was a nice late-night gift for those out and about at the late hour.

RISE, SHINE

Lots of visitors were up and at it early. But then again, it was easy to be fresh in the morning.

Why? Because most pubs in London close between 11 pm and midnight - far earlier than much of the world is used to.

That's old news to the locals, but it was a bit of a bummer to visitors who were just getting warmed up at that hour.

Maybe it was a blessing, though. With the Olympic torch hitting central London on Thursday and due to pass many landmarks, navigating was sure to be tricky and probably best done without a pounding headache.

MINISTERS BET

Britain's sports minister will be forced to put on an Australia hockey shirt and knock a ball around central London if the host nation fails to win more gold medals than its former colony at the Olympics, his Australian counterpart said on Thursday.

Kate Lundy, Australia's sports minister, told a news conference at Olympic Park that she had made a bet with Hugh Robertson on which of the nations would finish higher in the medal table.

"It's all in good humor, of course, both of us play a little bit of sport and so if we come out on top, he will don a Kookaburra shirt and a hockey stick and dribble a ball around Australia house right in the center of London," she said.

"If the result goes the other way, I have to wear a Stella McCartney Union Jack T-shirt and row a length of the lake at the Olympic venue at Eton Dorney."

At the last Olympics in Beijing, Britain (fourth) finished above Australia (sixth) in the medal table for the first time since the 1988 Seoul Games.

OFFENDERS BANNED

Two weightlifters have been kicked out of Turkey's Olympic squad on suspicion of doping offenses, the Anatolia news agency reported on Thursday.

Turkey Weightlifting Federation (THF) president Hasan Akkus confirmed that weightlifters Fatih Baydar and Ibrahim Arat had been expelled after failing dope tests on July 7.

Baydar, 29, won a silver medal in the 85kg category during the European Championships in Antalya, Turkey earlier this year. Arat, 23, finished fourth in the 94kg class at the same championships.

Weightlifting, which has been wracked by drugs controversies over the years, is one of Turkey's strongest sporting disciplines, along with wrestling.

(China Daily 07/27/2012 page11)