LONDON (Reuters) – Mist clears to reveal white marble images from classical Greece culminating in Myron’s celebrated statue of an athlete poised to launch a discus in the prologue to Leni Riefenstahl’s remarkable documentary film “Olympia”.

The statue rotates and melts into an identical image of a contemporary discus thrower. It is succeeded by further paeans to the sculptured Greek ideal of physical beauty with pictures of a shot putter, a javelin thrower and rhythmic gymnasts.

Finally, flame floods the screen followed by a bare-chested runner embarking on the first torch relay of the modern Olympics.

Like the remainder of Riefenstahl’s lengthy masterwork, the relay footage is both haunting and disturbing.

The torch travels from Olympia in Greece through Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Austria and Czechoslovakia to Berlin and the 1936 Nazi Games. It is a journey the German army was destined to retrace.

A mighty roar and a sea of fascist salutes greets the final torchbearer Fritz Schilgen as he runs into the Berlin stadium to light the cauldron. Greece lead the 51 nations parading at the opening ceremony, under the gaze of German Chancellor Adolf Hitler.

The flame, the five rings, the Olympic oath, the hymn and the anthems were products of the fanatical nationalism poisoning Europe during the inter-war years.

LONDON, May 9 (Reuters) – Mist clears to reveal white marble images from classical Greece culminating in Myron’s celebrated statue of an athlete poised to launch a discus in the prologue to Leni Riefenstahl’s remarkable documentary film “Olympia”.

The statue rotates and melts into an identical image of a contemporary discus thrower. It is succeeded by further paeans to the sculptured Greek ideal of physical beauty with pictures of a shot putter, a javelin thrower and rhythmic gymnasts.

Finally, flame floods the screen followed by a bare-chested runner embarking on the first torch relay of the modern Olympics.

Like the remainder of Riefenstahl’s lengthy masterwork, the relay footage is both haunting and disturbing.

The torch travels from Olympia in Greece through Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Austria and Czechoslovakia to Berlin and the 1936 Nazi Games. It is a journey the German army was destined to retrace.

A mighty roar and a sea of fascist salutes greets the final torchbearer Fritz Schilgen as he runs into the Berlin stadium to light the cauldron. Greece lead the 51 nations parading at the opening ceremony, under the gaze of German Chancellor Adolf Hitler.

The flame, the five rings, the Olympic oath, the hymn and the anthems were products of the fanatical nationalism poisoning Europe during the inter-war years.

LONDON (Reuters) – Sprinter Dwain Chambers and cyclist David Miller will be cleared to compete in this year’s London Olympics when the Court of Arbitration (CAS) over-rules a British Olympic life ban on drug offenders, a source with knowledge of the ruling told Reuters on Sunday.

CAS is set to announce on Monday that the British Olympic Association (BOA) lifetime ban does not comply with the World Anti-Doping Agency’s global code which provides for a two-year suspension for first offenders.

The decision from the Lausanne-based independent court is due to be released at 1400GMT.

The BOA said on Sunday it had received the written CAS decision.

“The British Olympic Association can confirm that today, it has received from the Court of Arbitration for Sport the written decision in the arbitration between the BOA and the World Anti-Doping Association,” it said in a statement.

“As the decision is to be announced first by CAS, and out of respect for CAS and the Arbitration Panel, the BOA will be offering no comment today.”

The BOA has already asked WADA to double its two-year ban for a first serious doping offence, including missing one Olympics.

LONDON (Reuters) – Sprinter Dwain Chambers and cyclist David Miller will be cleared to compete in this year’s London Olympics when the Court of Arbitration (CAS) over-rules a British Olympic life ban on drug offenders, a source with knowledge of the ruling told Reuters on Sunday.

CAS is set to announce on Monday that the British Olympic Association (BOA) lifetime ban does not comply with the World Anti-Doping Agency’s global code which provides for a two-year suspension for first offenders.

The decision from the Lausanne-based independent court is due to be released at 3:00 p.m. British time.

The BOA said on Sunday it had received the written CAS decision.

“The British Olympic Association can confirm that today, it has received from the Court of Arbitration for Sport the written decision in the arbitration between the BOA and the World Anti-Doping Association,” it said in a statement.

“As the decision is to be announced first by CAS, and out of respect for CAS and the Arbitration Panel, the BOA will be offering no comment today.”

The BOA has already asked WADA to double its two-year ban for a first serious doping offence, including missing one Olympics.

LONDON, April 29 (Reuters) – Sprinter Dwain Chambers and cyclist David Miller will be cleared to compete in this year’s London Olympics when the Court of Arbitration (CAS) over-rules a British Olympic life ban on drug offenders, a source with knowledge of the ruling told Reuters on Sunday.

CAS is set to announce on Monday that the British Olympic Association (BOA) lifetime ban does not comply with the World Anti-Doping Agency’s global code which provides for a two-year suspension for first offenders.

The decision from the Lausanne-based independent court is due to be released at 1400GMT.

The BOA said on Sunday it had received the written CAS decision.

“The British Olympic Association can confirm that today, it has received from the Court of Arbitration for Sport the written decision in the arbitration between the BOA and the World Anti-Doping Association,” it said in a statement.

“As the decision is to be announced first by CAS, and out of respect for CAS and the Arbitration Panel, the BOA will be offering no comment today.”

The BOA has already asked WADA to double its two-year ban for a first serious doping offence, including missing one Olympics.

LONDON (Reuters) – Double Olympic pole vault champion Yelena Isinbayeva will compete three times before the London Olympics, starting with a meeting in Reims, France, on July 4, a source close to the Russian said on Friday.

The source said the world record holder would then compete in Sotteville, France, on July 10 and in Monaco 10 days later.

Meetings in Stockholm and Brussels after the July 27-August 12 Games have yet to be confirmed.

Isinbayeva, 29, the first woman to clear five metres, won the Olympic title in Athens in 2004 and again in Beijing four years later.

She failed to clear a height at the 2009 Berlin world championships and, after finishing fourth at the world indoor championships the following year, took an 11-month break.

This year, Isinbayeva showed she was back to her best by setting a world indoor record of 5.01 metres in Stockholm and subsequently needed only two jumps to win the world indoor title in Istanbul.

She now plans to become the first woman to win three successive Olympic track and field gold medals and then possibly beat Ukrainian Sergei Bubka’s 35 world records. Isinbayeva has broken the women’s mark 30 times.

LONDON, April 27 (Reuters) – Double Olympic pole vault champion Yelena Isinbayeva will compete three times before the London Olympics, starting with a meeting in Reims, France, on July 4, a source close to the Russian said on Friday.

The source said the world record holder would then compete in Sotteville, France, on July 10 and in Monaco 10 days later.

Meetings in Stockholm and Brussels after the July 27-Aug. 12 Games have yet to be confirmed.

Isinbayeva, 29, the first woman to clear five metres, won the Olympic title in Athens in 2004 and again in Beijing four years later.

She failed to clear a height at the 2009 Berlin world championships and, after finishing fourth at the world indoor championships the following year, took an 11-month break.

This year, Isinbayeva showed she was back to her best by setting a world indoor record of 5.01 metres in Stockholm and subsequently needed only two jumps to win the world indoor title in Istanbul.

She now plans to become the first woman to win three successive Olympic track and field gold medals and then possibly beat Ukrainian Sergei Bubka’s 35 world records. Isinbayeva has broken the women’s mark 30 times.

LONDON (Reuters) – Kenya confirmed they are poised to dominate this year’s Olympic marathons by winning the London men’s and women’s events on Sunday and taking five of the six podium positions for the second year in succession.

Wilson Kipsang finished four seconds outside the men’s course record with a time of two hours four minutes 44 seconds after Mary Kietany had retained the women’s title in an African record 2:18:37.

The race served as a Kenyan trial for this year’s London Games with the east African nation’s overall supremacy such that any combination of the 11 athletes who started on Sunday could conceivably sweep the medals in both the men and women’s events.

Last year, Kenyan men won all six world marathon major titles, sweeping the medals in three, and setting course records in London, Boston, Berlin, Chicago and New York.

Patrick Makau reduced Haile Gebrselassie’s world record by 21 seconds to 2:03:38 in Berlin and Kipsang clocked 2:03:42 shortly afterwards in Frankfurt.

With such a depth of talent available, the burning question after Sunday’s races was which six athletes the Kenyan selectors would choose.

In the men’s race three times champion Martin Lel grabbed second place in a frenzied sprint for the line with Ethiopia’s Tsegaye Kebede while twice world champion Abel Kirui finished sixth after looking certain to clinch a top three finish.

LONDON, April 22 (Reuters) – Kenya confirmed they are poised to dominate this year’s Olympic marathons by winning the London men’s and women’s events on Sunday and taking five of the six podium positions for the second year in succession.

Wilson Kipsang finished four seconds outside the men’s course record with a time of two hours four minutes 44 seconds after Mary Kietany had retained the women’s title in an African record 2:18:37.

The race served as a Kenyan trial for this year’s London Games with the east African nation’s overall supremacy such that any combination of the 11 athletes who started on Sunday could conceivably sweep the medals in both the men and women’s events.

Last year, Kenyan men won all six world marathon major titles, sweeping the medals in three, and setting course records in London, Boston, Berlin, Chicago and New York.

Patrick Makau reduced Haile Gebrselassie’s world record by 21 seconds to 2:03:38 in Berlin and Kipsang clocked 2:03:42 shortly afterwards in Frankfurt.

With such a depth of talent available, the burning question after Sunday’s races was which six athletes the Kenyan selectors would choose.

In the men’s race three times champion Martin Lel grabbed second place in a frenzied sprint for the line with Ethiopia’s Tsegaye Kebede while twice world champion Abel Kirui finished sixth after looking certain to clinch a top three finish.

LONDON (Reuters) – During an informative and entertaining address to an anti-doping conference last month, German researcher Mario Thevis referred to “80, 90, 100″ new performance-enhancing drugs for which no tests yet exist.

“They act like EPO (erythropietin) but they are structurally different and that means the current EPO tests will not pick them up,” he told delegates to the conference in London convened by worldsportslawreport.

Thevis added that “according to anecdotal evidence and rumors” the drugs, which replicate EPO’s blood-boosting qualities, were already used in elite sports.

EPO stimulates the bone marrow to produce more red blood cells. This increases the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood, allowing muscles to perform for longer.

News that up to 100 new drugs could be available in the runup to this year’s London Olympics will astonish only the naive.

“It doesn’t surprise me,” responded World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) director-general David Howman. “We are in the area where we are into third and fourth generations and they continue to climb. Whether they are detectable or not depends on the ability of the individual laboratory.”

One in two competitors will be tested during the London Games, including all medalists, and the estimated 400 daily tests are higher than any previous Olympics.