Sports Event

Norway's Therese Johaug won the women's cross country 10km freestyle event at the Nordic Ski World Championship at Val di Femme on Tuesday, 10.2 seconds ahead of team mate Marit Bjørgen.

 

Russia's Julia Tsjekaleva captured bronze, 32.7 seconds behind Johaug.

 

Norway's Heidi Weng placed sixth and Kristin Størmer Steira ninth.

 

Flamboyant retired US basketball player Dennis Rodman, known for his "bad boy" image, is visiting North Korea.

 

Rodman, along with three current members of the Harlem Globetrotters basketball show team, will be filming a TV show for a US media company.

 

The company told the Associated Press news agency they hoped to engage in some "basketball diplomacy".

 

North Korea leader Kim Jong-un, who oversaw the country's recent nuclear test, is known to be a basketball fan.

 

The visit by the players comes at a time of heightened tensions between the US and North Korea over the test and Pyongyang's launch of a three-stage rocket, a move condemned by the UN as a banned test of missile technology.

 

Both were seen as a breach of UN resolutions and condemned as a threat to stability in the region.

 

"Is sending the Harlem Globetrotters and Dennis Rodman to the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] strange? In a word, yes,'' Shane Smith, the founder of US media company Vice and host of the planned TV show, told AP. "But finding common ground on the basketball court is a beautiful thing.

 

"These channels of cultural communication might appear untraditional, and perhaps they are, but we think it's important just to keep the lines open," he said.

 

'A lot of wizardry'

 

As the delegation arrived at Pyongyang's airport, Rodman told reporters: ''It's my first time, I think it's most of these guys' first time here, so hopefully everything's going to be OK, and hoping the kids have a good time for the game."

 

Bull Bullard, one of the three Harlem Globetrotters on the tour, said they were hoping to teach North Koreans some of the team's signature basketball skills.

 

"We're going to teach them, we're going to show them what we do,... a lot of magic with the basketball, a lot of wizardry, a lot of fun and entertainment," he said.

 

It was not clear exactly what the players would be doing while in North Korea, but Vice said the TV show, which would be broadcast in April, was part of "documentary-style news reports from around the world".

 

Rodman, who is 1.98m tall and known as "The Worm", is famous for his multiple tattoos and piercings, bleached hair, occasional cross-dressing and at times explosive on-court behaviour.

 

He used to play for the Chicago Bulls which, according to a memoir written by Kim Jong-un's former sushi chef, were the North Korean leader's favourite basketball team as a young man.

 

Since retiring from basketball he has tried his hand at wrestling and acting.

 

Basketball is a popular sport in North Korea, but few citizens would have the chance to watch televised international games.

 

Rodman and his group will be in the country until 5 March, China's Xinhua news agency reported.

 

The world’s oldest marathon runner ran his last race on Sunday at the age of 101.

 

Fauja Singh finished the Hong Kong marathon’s 10-kilometer (6.25-mile) race in a time of 1 hour, 32 minutes and 28 seconds.

 

Singh, a Sikh, wore a saffron turban and sported a flowing white beard. As he followed the route along the northern lip of Hong Kong island, he was accompanied by a group from the city’s local Sikh community, joining about 72,000 other runners taking part in the marathon.

 

The Indian-born runner, nicknamed the Turbaned Torpedo, had said that he would hang up his sneakers after the race in the southern Chinese city, just before his 102nd birthday.

 

"I will remember this day. I will miss it," Singh said minutes after crossing the finish line.

 

Singh, a great-grandfather, became the oldest man to run a full marathon at Toronto in 2011, at the age of 100. But his record was not recognized by Guinness World Records because he doesn’t have a birth certificate to prove his age. Singh has a British passport that shows his date of birth as April 1, 1911, while a letter from Indian government officials states that birth records were not kept in 1911.

 

"I am feeling a bit of happiness and a bit of sadness mixed together. I am happy that I am retiring at the top of the game but I am sad that the time has come for me to not be part of it," Singh said in a pre-race interview. "And there will always be times in the future where I will be thinking, ’Well, I used to do that (running)," the Punjabi-speaking Singh said through his coach and interpreter, Harmander Singh.

 

Singh took up running as a way to get over depression after his wife and son died in quick succession in India. The death in 1994 of his son took a particularly hard toll on Singh because of its grisly nature. Singh and his son, Kuldip, both farmers, were checking on their fields in the middle of a storm when a piece of corrugated metal blown by the wind decapitated Kuldip in front of his father’s eyes.

 

Singh, whose five other children had emigrated, was left all alone. "He didn’t think his life was worth living without his son" following the traumatic incident, coach Harmander Singh said. He went to live with his youngest son in London. That’s where the sports enthusiast Singh attended tournaments organized by the Sikh community and he took part in sprints. He met some Sikh marathon runners who encouraged him to take up long-distance running. One day he saw a marathon on television for the first time and decided that’s what he wanted to do too.

 

In 2000, at the age of 89, he ran the London marathon, his first, and went on to do eight more. His best time was 5 hours and 40 minutes at the 2003 Toronto marathon.

 

"From a tragedy has come a lot of success and happiness," Singh said before the race as he explained how running has changed his life, allowing an illiterate farmer to travel the world, meet dignitaries and stay in five-star hotels.

 

Following his retirement from racing, he said he hoped "people will remember me and not forget me." He also wanted people to continue to invite him to events "rather than forget me altogether just because I don’t run anymore."