Australia: Stephanie Rice stands taller today after making her tweet mistake at the weekend. At a press conference today, following the loss of her Jaguar endorsement as a direct result of her reaction to an Aussie rugby victory, a tearful Olympic medley champion said: "I owe it to those who I have offended to publicly say, I am sorry. It is not me to give offense to other people no matter who they are. I am not a person who judges others or speaks in a way that hurts others. My comments were thoughtless and careless but I can assure you when I made those comments on Twitter I never intended to offend anybody. I've learned a lot in the last couple of days. I've learned I must think before I speak and this has been a very important lesson. I've also learned that some things you say can mean more to others than they do to you. I felt I've let a lot of people down. I just want people to know how sorry I am." So easy to make a momentary slip, so hard to give such a public apology.
India: After three swimmers tested positive, debate has shifted to the use of dietary supplements in the host nation of the Commonwealth Games. The Swimming Federation of India (SFI) today accuses the Sports Authority of India, in charge of procuring and supplying the supplements, of failing to carry out its responsibility, leading to the swimmers buying the supplements from the open market. The swim federation officials ought to know better and will doubtless have kept themselves informed of events in the United States and the sage words of head US coach Mark Schubert: eat well, drink well, take good advice when it comes to diet and regime - but don't take supplements, especially when it is impossible to truly say what they contain. An SAI official told The Times of India: "The government provided SAI with enough funds but SAI was not able to get the supplements. In some cases, SAI paid the money to the federations and asked them to buy the supplements. Obviously, swimming was not one of them." SFI officials said they were no experts to ascertain whether the supplements were of dubious quality. "How do we make sure they are the best? Barring the fact that the swimmers bought the same supplements which they had been using for a long time, there was no other guarantee." Answer: you don't need to make sure of anything other than making sure that your athletes have the right food and drink available to them, void of chemical supplementation.
