President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (r) plays football along with Mohammad Aliabadi, head of Iran's Physical Education Organization, at Tehran's Azadi Stadium (File Photo).

Tehran, Feb. 9--Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been invited to Beijing to attend the Olympic Games.
Announcing this, Mohammad Aliabadi, head of Iran’s PEO (Physical Education Organization) also said that Ahmadinejad is unlikely to participate in the event.
“We invited him verbally to attend the Paralympic Games but have yet to receive any response,“ Vice President of the Islamic Republic of Iran told ISNA.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had earlier attended the Asian Games which was held in Doha in 2006.

QOM, Feb. 9--Iran takes first place in the fourth international Greco-Roman wrestling competition which took place in the Iranian city of Qom.
Turkey and Armenia came second and third respectively in the event, which is known as the Yadegar-e Emam trophy, Press TV said.
103 wrestlers from six countries participated in the competitions.
The first place in each category comes with $5,000 in prize money, silver with $3,000 and bronze with $2,000.
Head of the wrestling committee of Qom, Mahdi Zamanian, highlighted the need to develop the quality of wrestling competitions to attract the country’s younger generation to the sport.

TEHRAN, Feb. 9--Iran will host the First West Asian Taekwondo tournament to be held in November 2008.
Dai-soon Lee, vice president of the World Taekwondo Federation (WTF), stated the above on the sidelines of the 20th Fajr Taekwondo Tournament opened on Saturday in Bandar Abbas, Hormuzgan province, IRNA wrote.
Commenting on the quality of the Fajr tournament, he said, “Top teams have taken part in the event,“ adding that all the teams will be evaluated by the Olympic International Committee.
He encouraged the teams to do their best in the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games to introduce taekwondo as an official Olympic sport.
The First West Asian Taekwondo tournament will be held with participants from Middle East and West Asia.

Franck Ribery

BERLIN, Feb. 9-- Bayern Munich will have to make do without Franck Ribery when they bid to move six points clear in the Bundesliga by winning at home to Werder Bremen in their ’summit meeting’ on Sunday.
According to Reuters, French midfielder Ribery, who signed from Olympique Marseille for 25 million euros ($36.62 million) last year, was Bayern’s best player in the first half of the season and scored the opening goal in last weekend’s 2-1 win over Hansa Rostock.
Unfortunately for the Bavarians, he went off at halftime with a hamstring injury and will be out for about three weeks.
The good news for coach Ottmar Hitzfeld is that striker Miroslav Klose is in great form, scoring his 37th international goal in Germany’s 3-0 win over Austria on Wednesday.
Bayern will expect a furious challenge from Werder, who were stung by a 2-1 defeat at home to Bochum in their first league match back after the long mid-season break.
That result gave Bayern a three-point cushion at the top and, after Hamburg SV also dropped points, Hitzfeld’s team suddenly have a chance to build a substantial lead.
’It would be a small milestone on the way to the title,’ Hitzfeld told reporters with an eye on a win against Werder.
He also hopes to have Brazilian centre-back Lucio fit again after an Achilles problem.
That is important because the Bayern defence will have to be at their best to see off a Werder side who are by far the highest scorers in the Bundesliga with 43 goals.

TEHRAN, Feb. 9--Iranian cycling team will leave for Denmark to participate in the World Cycling Championship to be held in Ballerup.
The three-person team which includes Mahmoud Parash, Farshid Farse-Nejadian and Hassanali Varposhti will take part in the event, IRNA wrote.
The event is also considered as 2008 Olympics qualifiers.
The World Cycling Championship will be held from February 15-17. More than 400 cyclists and 200 staff members are expected in the event.

TEHRAN, Feb. 9--A newly established sporting complex in Ardebil province has been named after Ali Daei, the talisman of the Iranian national team over the past decade.
Announcing this, Seyyed Shervin Asbaqian, director general of Ardebil Physical Education Department, told IRNA that the move has been coordinated with the provincial Governor General Office.
“Daei is one of the popular athletic figures in Iran and our national football is indebted to him,“ he said.
The official added that the complex will be officially launched in May to host a warm-up against one of the Asian football teams.
“We have proposed the National Football Federation to invite Azerbaijan national team to attend the event,“ he said.
Ali Daei Sports Complex, covering an area of 40,000 square meters, includes a stadium with a seating capacity of 20,000.

LONDON, Feb. 9-- Arsene Wenger has been hit by an injury crisis that threatens to derail Arsenal’s Premier League title challenge.
Wenger is facing the unpalatable prospect of taking on Blackburn on Monday without 10 first team stars, AFP wrote.
Tomas Rosicky, Robin van Persie and Johan Djourou are already sidelined but during Wednesday’s internationals Swiss defender Phillipe Senderos aggravated a knee ligament problem and Mathieu Flamini suffered a hamstring injury playing for France.
To add to Wenger’s woes, Spanish goalkeeper Manuel Almunia, already a doubt with a finger injury, has gone down with an illness that forced Wenger to send him home from training on Friday.
Abou Diaby is also likely to miss the Emirates Stadium clash with a calf injury sustained against Manchester City last weekend.
“It is a big problem. At the moment we are down to the bare bones. We are really, really short,“ Wenger said.
“Rosicky, Van Persie and Djourou are out and Almunia is a doubt. We lost Diaby against Manchester City with a calf problem. We might lose Flamini as well. He had to come out of the French national team.
“Philippe Senderos was injured as well. He has a medial knee ligament. I don’t rule him out completely. He is positive about it, the medical team a bit less.
“Almunia has sickness. We will see about his thumb on Sunday.“
With William Gallas the only central defender available to Wenger, the French coach refused to rule out the possibility of Kolo Toure and Emmanuel Eboue flying back from the African Nations Cup in time to feature against Rovers.
If Toure doesn’t return in time, Wenger will be forced to play Brazil midfielder Gilberto Silva or young right-back Justin Hoye alongside Gallas.

PATTAYA, Thailand, Feb. 9-- Polish teenager Agnieszka Radwanska dismissed Russian Ekaterina Bychkova 6-1 6-1 in under an hour on Saturday to line up a Pattaya Open final against American Jill Craybas.
Even under the afternoon sun, the top seed barely broke into a sweat in their semifinal, zipping through both sets in just 54 minutes to reach the third final of her career, Reuters said.
Bychkova’s powerful serves and heavy groundstrokes failed to make an impression on Radwanska, who returned almost everything the unseeded Russian sent towards her and double-faulted only once in the match.
“It was pretty easy, I think she was tired from her quarterfinal match,“ the 18-year-old Radwanska told reporters.
“She was serving well but she wasn’t moving very good. My first few matches this week were the hardest. Today, I felt much better.“
She will now play seventh-seeded Craybas, who beat towering Uzbek Akgul Amanmuradova 6-4 6-0.
Craybas, 30 centimeters shorter than her opponent, survived a torrent of fierce, high-bouncing returns to take the first set before racing through the second to reach her first final since winning the 2002 Tokyo Open.
“It feels good to get to a final again, I feel excited, but I have to follow my game plan,“ Craybas told reporters.
“We’ll see how it goes tomorrow. We’re both fighters and we’re both consistent, it should be a good match.“

Major League Baseball pitcher Roger Clemens signs autographs after his meeting with Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) on Capitol Hill February 8, 2008.

WASHINGTON,
Feb. 9-- Baseball star Roger Clemens dismissed as bogus on Thursday new claims of evidence by his former trainer--including needles and bloody gauze pads--that Clemens used performance-enhancing drugs.
“This is a fabricated story,“ Clemens’ attorney, Rusty Hardin, said after the pitcher’s former trainer, Brian McNamee, testified behind closed doors for about seven hours to US congressional investigators.
Clemens let his attorneys do most of talking at a brief news conference, but said, “I’m looking forward to Wednesday of next week,“ when he and McNamee will be sworn in to testify before the US House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
McNamee’s attorneys held a news conference of their own about an hour earlier, Reuters wrote.
They distributed to reporters photographs of needles, blood-stained gauze pads and a syringe McNamee says he kept after injecting Clemens with steroids and human growth hormone (HGH) in 2000 and 2001.
Clemens says McNamee injected him with the painkiller lidocaine and vitamin B-12, but not steroids or HGH.
Major League Baseball banned HGH in 2005 but there are no effective tests for it. Baseball banned steroids in 1991 but did not start testing for it until 2003.
Richard Emery, one of McNamee’s attorneys, insisted that the materials presented by his client were authentic and said McNamee kept them all these years to protect himself.

STOCKPORT, England, Feb. 9--Ricky Hatton has said that he would like a rematch with Floyd Mayweather, despite being well beaten in their first fight last December.
According to BBC, Hatton, 29, suffered a 10th-round knockout in Las Vegas, his first defeat in 44 professional encounters.
“It’s a very difficult bitter pill for me to swallow losing my first fight,“ said light-welterweight king Hatton.
“But I would fight him again, even though he knocked me out - just with a different referee.“
Hatton was well beaten by the American after 10 rounds in December but has revealed a surprising mutual respect has developed between the two fighters.
“He has texted me a few times, and he has phoned me a few times, he wants to come over to Britain and watch one of my fights,“ said Hatton.
Hatton was speaking at the recording of ’A Question of Sport Relief’ and explained why he wants people to sign-up for the Mile and get involved in the campaign.
“There is no better cause for a sportsman, I am really happy to show my support, I think it’s as much a part of my job as what I get paid for in the ring.“
The 29-year-old ’Hitman’ also revealed that the brash-but-brilliant American fighter known as ’Pretty Boy Floyd’ has confessed he is jealous of Hatton’s huge fan base.