Argentina takes the gold and defeats Nigeria

The players of Argentina football team won a gold medal after defeating the Nigerian team 1- 0. Angel di Maria scored the only goal in the 58th minute. It was a beautiful one. Lionel Messi set him free in front of goalkeeper Ambruse Vanzek with a perfect pass. Di Maria kept his head cool and lobbed the ball over the goalkeeper in the net.

Argentina won the gold in Athens in 2004, and the silver in 1996 when they were beaten in the final by Nigeria. This time, the Nigerians did not really had a change.

The crowd roared every time the ball came to Lionel Messi, but Nigeria swarmed the Argentinian star every time he took possession of the ball.

Nigeria came close to tying the game in the 84th minute, but Victor Anichebe couldn’t get enough on the ball to edge it past Argentinian keeper Sergio Romero.

The Nigerians continuted to fight to even the score until the end of the game but couldn’t find the back of the net, sealing the win for Argentina.

Maria Mutola bids bye to Olympics

Mozambique lady athlete Maria Mutola successfully completed sixth and the last cap despite falling flat to the Kenyan runner Pamela Jelimo in 800 m at the current Olympics in Beijing. She has complete with a bye to Olympics and there will be no more for her in future.During the race Mutola was though not able to relive her championship performance at 2000 in Sydney. However she is proud to have completed the sixth participation at the game with a distinction finishing in the enviable fifth position in the finals with fifth this season’s best.Her story in international athletics begins with mentioning the age 15. She was 15 when she had the honour of being the flag bearer for her native Mozambique at the opening ceremony of the 1988 Olympics in Seoul.

At the Beijing Games 20 years later, she finally crossed the finishing line of an outstanding athletics career.
The three-times world champion was one of the fastest in the women’s 800 metres final on Monday evening, narrowly missing out on a medal.”I gave it everything I had,” the 35-year-old said a quarter-of- an-hour after the race won by Kenya’s Pamela Jelimo in 1:54.87 minutes. “For an 18-year-old she’s really, really fast.”

Mutola’s six Olympic appearances have been surpassed by only one other female track and field star – Jamaican sprint diva Merlene Ottey.Maria de Lurdes Mutola was her country’s first sportswoman to win Olympic gold – at the Sydney Games in 2000. Four years earlier she won bronze in Atlanta. She finished fourth in the 2004 Athens Games and came fifth in Barcelona in 1992, the same position she finished her Olympics career with in Beijing.

“Seventeen years of sport at the highest level is a long time. After another Olympic season I’m convinced it’s the right time for me to turn my attention to other things.”This season is definitely my last,” said Mutola, who plans to play a more active role in the organization she founded to work in social projects.No one knows how many laps Mutola has clocked in her long career. But she has certainly seen a lot of the world.

The former football player from Maputo went to live with an American couple in Oregon when she was 18 and now resides near Johannesburg in South Africa,The seven-times indoor champion landed her greatest successes between 1992-96 when she was undefeated in 50 finals. The only setback was in the World Cup semi-final of 1995 when she was disqualified for overstepping the track boundary.Her biggest payday was in 2003 when she was the sole winner of the Gold League jackpot, which earned here a purse of one million dollars in gold.

Kenyan Jelimo breaks 11 year world record

18 year old lady athlete Pamela Jelimo from Kenya has not only added gold medal into her already rich shelf at the on going Beijing Olympics, she has also broken into a club of the world’s only six fastest runners in eleven years.Aljazeera says Jelimo is the first Kenyan woman to ever win gold medal in Olympic athletics and she did it by stretching her all conquering season scooping Olympic 800 meters in grand style.She is the fastest runner in eleven years and the sixth fastest of all the time in two-lapper. She ruled majestically in the big European meetings this year and was looking unstoppable after hitting the front half way.Jelimo only started running 800m this year, and went on to scoop the precious gold medal, a thing which makes her achievement extra unique at the Olympics. at Beijing to add into her luster into an ever conquering season.

She drove home to win easily in one minute 54.87 seconds ahead of team mate Janeth Jepkosgei Buseinei with Morocco’s Hasna Benhassi taking bronze.Jep led off a hard 55 second lap first, enough even for a world record and Jelimo took control on the second last as she powered down the back stretch down the back stretch to put the race away.

Given Kenya’s stunning reputation in distance running it was perhaps surprising that with Jelimo’s victory, she became the first woman ever.Notably absent was Russia’s Yelena Soboleva, the fastest woman over 800 meters this year, after she and six others were banned after being found in systematic doping as described by International Olympic Committee.If Soboleva’s times are discounted, Jelimo ran the six fastest races this year and is the only one to have breached 1:56