A round-up of today's other Beijing stories in brief...
Mighty Ming
BASKETBALL:A chest-thumping Yao Ming powered hosts China to their first victory in the Olympic men's basketball competition yesterday. Title favourites the US booked a quarter-final place with a 92-69 win over Greece.
China's giant centre scored 30 points in a 85-68 Group B triumph over Angola.
Lithuania upset European champions Russia, winning 86-79 in Group A.
China add to gold-medal haul
MEDALS: China had its best single-day haul of the Beijing Games yesterday in winning five gold medals. Liu Zige won China's first swimming title of the Games, gymnast Yang Wei took the men's individual all-around title and Du Li won the women's 50-metre rifle after a surprise loss in her first event six days ago. Also winning gold for the hosts were Zhang Juanjuan in the women's individual archery and Yang Xiuli in the women's 78-kilogram judo class.
Lynch faces wait to get going
EQUESTRIAN: Denis Lynch, Ireland's sole representative in show jumping at the Games, has been drawn 64th of 77 in today's first qualifier which gets under way in Sha Tin at 19.15 local time, writes Margie Mcloone.
Lynch rides Flaminia Straumann's 10-year-old Hannovarian gelding Lantinus considered to be the best horse in the world. This year the partnership has won the Global Champions Tour in Doha and Grand Prix events at La Baule and in Rome.
Sixteen nations will contest the team event with Germany favourite to add to its record of 13 golds.
For the first time since 1984, Ireland has no rider competing in the dressage section of the Games which also takes place at the Hong Kong racecourse. Yesterday, Germany won its seventh straight team gold medal in the discipline, its 12th in all, with great rival the Netherlands taking silver and Denmark the bronze.
Although the top 25 competitors will start tomorrow's Grand Prix special with clean sheets, Germany's Isabell Werth holds a physiological advantage as she topped yesterday's leaderboard on a score of 76.417 per cent.
O'Loughlin geared up for qualifier
CYCLING: Years of competition, two seasons of track preparation and several days of pre-event fine-tuning will all come together today when David O'Loughlin lines out in the qualification round of the individual pursuit in Beijing, writes Shane Stokes.
The Mayo rider has broken the Irish record several times since making his track debut, setting an initial standard of four minutes 29.9 seconds in September, 2006.
The most recent improvement was four minutes 20.91 seconds, 4.4 seconds faster than the previous national record he set during the Beijing World Cup last December.
This took place during the world track championships in Manchester in March, and saw him finish sixth overall. O'Loughlin will look for a strong performance in the qualifiers of the 4,000-metre event.
The placings there will determine which riders are paired off for tomorrow's first round, with the two quickest riders there fighting it out for gold in the evening session. The next two will compete for bronze.
Matching his top-six ride in the worlds would be an excellent performance; going higher again would be a superb ride.
Federer and Williamses bow out
TENNIS: Three of the biggest names in tennis, Roger Federer and sisters Venus and Serena Williams, crashed out at the quarter-final stage of the Olympics in a night of shocks last.
Federer lost to American James Blake, a player he had beaten in all eight of their previous meetings. The Swiss top seed's game went out 6-4, 7-6.
Serena Williams became the second of the night's big casualties when she lost to Russian fifth seed Elena Dementieva 3-6, 6-4, 6-3.
Home favourite Li Na then stole the show, out-hitting double Olympic champion Venus Williams in a sensational 7-5, 7-5 victory.
Second seed Rafael Nadal thrashed Austria's Jurgen Melzer 6-0, 6-4 to set up a semi-final with Serbian third seed Novak Djokovic who beat Frenchman Gael Monfils 4-6, 6-1, 6-4.
Yang makes up for past errors
GYMNASTICS: The Beijing Olympics gave Yang Wei the chance to lead China's men to team glory on home soil and put the misery of Athens behind him with the all-around title. The muscle-bound Chinese had the all-around gold medal within his grasp in 2004 after American Paul Hamm fell from the vault, but Yang's slip off the horizontal bar meant he returned home without a medal.
Tumbles also relegated China, the world champions, to fifth in the team competition in Athens and it was something Yang was determined to put right in front of his compatriots at the National Indoor Stadium.
They barely faltered on their way to team gold on Tuesday, while 28-year-old Yang easily outclassed his rivals with his complex routines to win the all-around by a convincing 2.6 points two days later.
Yang had been tempted to retire after Athens.
