Vorlagen » Mowasalat speaks of excellent housing facilities

SOELDEN, Austria - If skiings opening weekend was any indication, the United States is in for quite an Olympic season. Ted Ligety, Mikaela Shiffrin, Bode Miller and Tim Jitloff underlined the squads enormous potential on the Rettenbach glacier in Austria. "Im really happy with how things are going," U.S. Alpine director Patrick Riml said. "The coaches and staff did an unbelievable job getting the athletes ready." And with Lindsey Vonn planning to return in a month from right knee surgery and Julia Mancuso always a threat on a big stage, the Americans could surpass their eight medals from the 2010 Vancouver Olympics at the Sochi Games, which run Feb. 7-23. "Everything is going on track," Riml said. "Im feeling confident with our whole setup." Ligety won the opening giant slalom for the third consecutive year. The 18-year-old Shiffrin matched her career-best World Cup result in the discipline with a sixth-place finish. Miller marked his return from 20 months off by placing 19th after starting outside the top 30. Jitloff was 20th with one big error that probably cost him about 10 positions. Perhaps the only negative note was Mancuso finishing 27th. But Mancuso always seems to save her best for major championships, as evidenced by her gold medal in giant slalom at the 2006 Turin Games and two silvers in Vancouver. "Julia is always showing she does well at the big events," former U.S. mens head coach Phil McNichol said. "Lindsey is Lindsey. Ted is coming off three (gold) medals at the world championships. Bodes back in the mix. Mikaela is going to be a force to be reckoned with. So its going to be a very interesting Olympic cycle." Ligety dominated giant slalom last season, winning six of eight races on the World Cup plus the world championship race in Schladming, Austria, where he was also a surprise winner in super-G and super-combined. "Last year we had an awesome prep here but this year was less so, so I wasnt 100 per cent confident of how I was skiing," Ligety said. "But then we had good training here in Soelden and the last couple of weeks I started to feel a little better. Its nice to have some confirmation." Ligety is enjoying having his childhood friend and former junior world downhill champion Adam Cole on the coaching staff this season. "We grew up together," Ligety said. "Hes also young and athletic so he can do dry-land with us and we can go play other sports and push each other." Shiffrin dominated in slalom last season with four wins plus the world title and now looks like a two-event threat with her giant slalom vastly improved. After the Olympics, Shiffrin could expand into the speed events. Shiffrin is also maturing off the hill. Her mother, who has accompanied her in Europe for the past two seasons, said this is probably the last season shell be there. "I may not have to stay here as she keeps getting more and more comfortable," Eileen Shiffrin said. Shiffrin has improved so much in GS that she was beating male teammates in training the past couple of weeks. Which guys was she beating? Thats still a secret. "Shiffrin was skiing unbelievably fast," mens head coach Sasha Rearick said. "Im not going to tell you." As for the 36-year-old Miller — yes, hes twice Shiffrins age — his new slimmer frame appears to be paying off. The two-time overall World Cup winner lost nearly 30 pounds during his season off to recover from left knee surgery. Miller skied to 13th place with the No. 32 bib in the opening run and was able to hang on in the second leg. "I wasnt tired at all," Miller said. "I think my fitness is higher now for a World Cup than its ever been. Im snappy and springy and I can go as long as the courses are. ... Theres obviously some lack of inertia, some weight, but I dont think thats going to be an issue." If Miller already has his form back in giant slalom, he could really excel in the speed events of downhill and super-G, where hes had nearly all of his wins in recent years. "GS was the one event where we hadnt been able to put the most volume in because it was causing some more knee irritation," Rearick said. "So if hes been able to do what hes done this week, its beyond my expectations." Millers fitness should also get a boost from the speed teams newly hired conditioning coach, Tony Beretzki, an Austrian who once worked with Hermann Maier and Stephan Eberharter and spent the last four years with the Spartak Moscow soccer team. With Miller out last season, downhillers Marco Sullivan, Steven Nyman and Travis Ganong each had solid starts, but their conditioning dropped off around January. "He has brought a great, great program and is doing an awesome job," Rearick said. The womens speed team, meanwhile, is coming off a record-breaking season that included podium finishes not just for Vonn and Mancuso, but also for Stacey Cook, Alice McKennis, Leanne Smith and Laurenne Ross. The bar of expectations has been raised for Cook & Co. this season. "You definitely want to back up those results," womens head coach Alex Hoedlmoser said. "You want to be contenders with all of those girls on a regular basis." The speed teams dont race until events in Lake Louise, Alberta, and Beaver Creek, Colo., on Thanksgiving weekend. Next up are slaloms in Levi, Finland, Nov. 16-17. ___ Follow Andrew Dampf at http://twitter.com/asdampf Floyd Allen Jersey . Dumont, a fifth round draft pick of the Canadiens in 2009, has four assists and 20 penalty minutes in 12 games with the Bulldogs this season. The 23-year-old split last season between Hamilton and Montreal, recording 16 goals and 15 assists in 55 regular season games with the Bulldogs. Chris Johnson Jersey . 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Lonnie Johnson Jr. Jersey . -- The Los Angeles Clippers chose not to speak publicly about owner Donald Sterling before they faced the Golden State Warriors for Game 4 of their first-round series Sunday.DOHA, Qatar - Men crammed together, dozens to a room, on bunk beds so close they can reach over and shake hands.Qatar, on paper at least, has rules that forbid such uncomfortable conditions for its massive workforce of migrant labourers. Yet this is how the government-owned transport company, which the Gulf nation will use to ferry visitors around the 2022 World Cup, has housed some of its workers.As Qatar employs legions of migrants to build stadiums and other works for the football showcase, widespread labour abuses documented by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other critics have blackened its name and $160 billion preparations.Hundreds of worker deaths, many apparently from cardiac arrests, have also fueled concerns that labourers are being overworked in desert conditions and shoddily treated. Reporting this April on a fact-finding mission, the U.Ns special adviser on migrants rights, Francois Crepeau, cited anecdotal evidence that too many of these mostly young men return home in a coffin.Problems, The Associated Press found, arent limited to the construction sector.Accommodation for drivers of buses and of Qatars distinctive turquoise taxis is a walled-off compound in the bleak industrial zone of Doha, the capital. Dust-covered cadavers of burned-out buses and broken taxis abandoned on surrounding wasteland make the luxury malls and gleaming towers of central Doha seem far away.The compound walls and flag over the main gate bear the name Mowasalat. The transporter plans to have 7,000 taxis on the roads by the World Cup.In one dormitory block, in what drivers said was meant to be a recreation room for table tennis and other pastimes, the AP saw two dozen bunk beds in three tight lines.The arrangements were apparently meant to be only temporary, but drivers said they had lived like this for months. Without lockers, they hung clothes and towels from bed frames. In a corner, one man gave another a shave. Drivers said around 30 of them were housed there and that other blocks in the compound which the AP didnt visit had similarly crowded rooms.Yet a 2005 ministerial decree said workers should not be housed more than four to a room or be made to sleep in bunks.In its company brochure, Mowasalat speaks of excellent housing facilities for employees. But even a standard dormitory room the AP saw slept six, also on bunks. Drivers said the close living is physically and morally wearing, with rest difficult and quarrels easy.Mowasalat did not reply to emailed questions. But it did appear to thin out numbers in the supposed recreation rooms after the AP showed a photo of the cramped conditions to Mowasalat executives. Drivers subsequently reached by phone said some of them were moved to other rooms. One said he was transferred from a room with 43 drivers, where he spent two months, to another with 16, still on bunks.Thanks for highlighting our plight to some Mowasalat management, another driver wrote by email to the AP.dddddddddddd Since you raised the mat(t)er they have slightly decongested the common room. Still it is no decent way for workers to live but its a step forward.Qatars World Cup organizers are trying to limit the reputational damage of labour abuses by treating their own workers better than the norm.Officials for the Supreme Committee putting together the World Cup gave the AP a tour of housing for stadium builders from Southeast Asia. They sleep three to a room, some with en-suite bathrooms, and on their own beds, not bunks, with curtains for additional privacy. They even have a pool. In the free canteen, workers heaped their plates with rice, flatbreads and curries.In his consulting room with the sign WE ARE HERE FOR YOU on one wall, the camps jovial doctor said the workers health problems are generally no more serious than allergic coughs and sniffles from working in dust and sand, skin itches from sweating, and the aches, pains, sprains and scrapes of manual labour.World Cup workers are also covered by special regulations which lay out their right to be treated in a manner that ensures at all times their wellbeing, health, safety and security and detail how contractors must ethically recruit, promptly pay, and decently house them.The Supreme Committees power to award tournament-related contracts also gives it leverage to force improvements.I have had to make the phone call several times to contractors to say Sorry mate, weve been to your camp. We dont think youre treating your people the way we want anyone on our sites to be treated, so youre out of the running, I cant work with you, said Tamim el-Abed, project manager of Lusail Stadium earmarked for the 2022 opening game and final.They scrabble around trying to pull together a superficial Band-Aid response. We see through that, he said. Sometimes they do a genuine turn-around and they improve their facilities.Its about culture change, he said.However, to critics, singling out World Cup workers for better treatment smacks of double standards. They want deeper, across-the-board reforms for all.Even at the stadium builders facility, not all are treated equally. A Kenyan security guard there complained to the AP that six sleep in his small room, on bunks. Supreme Committee officials said the man isnt directly employed by them but by a subcontractor.Putting in place a two-tier labour system, which is what they are talking about, is not much of a legacy, said Nicholas McGeehan, a Middle East researcher for Human Rights Watch.I dont think its something that we should accept, McGeehan said. Its OK to protect World Cup workers but its not OK to protect, what, transport workers? Taxi drivers? Cleaners? Do they not d