Notebook

Gebrselassie is not done yet, wants to go for another world record

SAINT-DENIS, France (AP) -- Is the Champagne glass half full or half empty?

Going into the final weekend, the host nation is still without a gold medal. But with four medals overall, France has already beaten its previous record.

"The meter stands at four," headlined the French daily sports paper L'Equipe, after Manuela Montebrun finished third in the hammer throw. Her bronze gave France one more medal than it won at three previous World Championships.

"Everything coming on top of that is a bonus," said team leader Robert Poirier.

What's lacking is a gold.

France had counted on Eunice Barber to win the heptathlon but she finished second. It had counted on Robert Mesnil in the pole vault but he bombed out in qualifying.

It hoped for a sprint upset for Christine Arron in the 100 and Muriel Hurtis in the 200, but both failed to medal.

They will get another chance during the relays over the weekend.

The fans at the 71,000 Stade de France will also be rooting for Barber to come back in the long jump for another medal on Saturday. She had the top qualifying mark.

France could well become the second host nation in a row not to win gold. Two years ago in Edmonton, Canada even failed to win a single medal.

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OLYMPICS ON TIME? NO PROBLEM: Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, the chief of the Athens Olympics, stressed Friday the Greek capital will be ready for the 2004 Games and said the problems exposed by recent test events would be fixed in time.

Greek organizers have also battled construction delays and fears that Olympic sites won't be ready for the Games.

"The day the Games start, we'll be ready," Angelopoulos-Daskalaki said during a visit to the Athletics World Championships.

"If we are ready one year before the games, three years before the games, do they give a medal for that?" the president of the organizing committee asked.

She said the purpose of the test events was to "expose problems in 2003" and not when the Games start.

"That's exactly what happened," Angelopoulos-Daskalaki said. "We learned from mistakes, we reacted to events that were outside our control, we identified problems and we took immediate and effective solutions."

"The Games will be better organized now," she said, but did not go into the details about problems that surfaced during the test events.

The rowing event was marred by gale-force winds and a salmonella outbreak that forced the entire German rowing team to withdraw.

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IF IT'S 3:20 PM, IT MUST BE THE EIFFEL TOWER: For television viewers not interested in the marathon, they will always have Paris.

The 2 1/2 hours races for men and women this weekend will highlight all the best this candidate city for the 2012 Olympics has to offer.

When the runners pass the Eiffel Tower they will know they are halfway home.

The race starts at the ornate City Hall close to the Seine river, and will then immediately swing by the Notre Dame cathedral, made famous by the tale of the hunchback.

Then it moves past the Louvre Museum, home of the Mona Lisa. They go straight on to the Champs Elysees and the Arc de Triomphe. After the Eiffel Tower, things will get serious and runners will start to get top billing again. For the last dozen kilometers (eight miles) the only famous sight will be the Stade de France, where the French team won the World Cup in 1998, and home of these championships.

The Athens Olympics next year will also have a special course, running the 42.195 kilometers (26 miles, 385 yards) along the historic road from Marathon into the capital.

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OLYMPIC BETS: The World championships must have done Paris some good in its quest to land the 2012 Olympics -- at least with the bookies.

Bookmakers Williams Hill in London improved the rating of Paris to 13/8 from 15/8, catching up with London as joint favorite to land the Games. London dropped back from 11/8.

The games will be awarded during an IOC session in Singapore in July, 2005.

Madrid was in third place with 11/2 odds, but still beat out New York with 9/1. Rio stood at 10/1, Leipzig and Moscow at 16/1. The rank outsiders are Istanbul and Havana, both at 50/1.

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QUIET GUN: U.S. hurdler Chris Phillips is the latest athlete to complain about the quiet starting gun at the World Championships.

"When I first heard it, everybody was gone already," Phillips said Friday night after barely qualifying for the finals in the 110-meter hurdles. "It sounds like a little firecracker. I didn't even know it was a gun. I thought it was something in the crowd maybe."

Phillips would like meet officials to do something to increase the volume.

"If there's any way they could get speakers on the blocks. They have to do something to make it so we can all have an even reaction," he said. "The speaker may be over here where somebody can hear it better. They definitely need to put speakers behind where the gun can go off."