In brief - 2004-08-26

Latvian athlete Ineta Radevica got into the sporting spirit of things when she posed nude for the August issue of Playboy magazine along with several other female participants. Radevica, who competed in the long jump at Athens, has caused a bit of a stir with her spread, and has certainly raised her profile at the games. The other athletes are: Amy Acuff and Haley Cope from the U.S.A., Zhanna Block from Ukraine and Fanni Juhasz from Hungary.

There are fresh concerns that the highly controversial 757 million pound new Wembley Stadium won't be completed on time after a strike by steel workers went into effect on Aug. 23. The strike is in reaction to the dismissal of 200 men in a dispute over working hours and breaks. The English Football Association has once again insisted that the stadium will be ready by early 2006, although the project has been dogged by problems since the very beginning. With a seating capacity of 90,000 people, the new Wembley will be the largest football stadium in the world.

Tiger Woods' final-hole birdie at the NEC Invitational was enough to extend his record stay at the top of the world rankings to a 263rd consecutive week. Woods was four shots behind in a three-way tie for third in Akron when he sank the four-foot putt at the last for a 69 and a share of second place. That result meant Woods ended the week on 12.64 ranking points - just enough to deny Vijay Singh the top spot.

Sebastien Loeb won the German Rally on Aug. 22 to increase his lead in the World Rally Championship to 29 points. The Frenchman, driving for Citroen, recorded a total time of four hours one minute 57.4 seconds to beat Ford driver Francois Duval by 29.1 seconds. Loeb's Citroen team-mate Carlos Sainz was third with Estonia's Markko Martin for Ford in fourth. After 10 rounds Loeb leads the overall standings on 76 points, with Martin on 47 and Sainz on 46. World champion Petter Solberg's hopes of retaining his tile were severly damaged when he crashed out of the race.

World Snooker, the governing body of the sport, has announced that it will hold a ranking tournament in China next season. Snooker is hugely popular in the Far East and World Snooker is keen to get a make the sport more appealing to its many Asian fans. Other changes to the sport include plans for the Challenge Tour - the tier below the main tour - to be replaced in the 2005-06 season by an Open series of events, linking into a new qualifying format for the main tour..