Lukaku keeps Inter’s title push on track

MILAN: Romelu Lukaku scored after 33 seconds and set up another in Inter Milan’s 3-0 win over Genoa on Sunday to keep their title push on track ahead of city rivals AC Milan, who beat Roma 2-1.

Inter remain four points ahead of second-placed Milan, who got back to winning ways in Rome after consecutive league losses including last weekend’s derby defeat. Champions Juventus are a further six points adrift after being held 1-1 at Hellas Verona on Saturday, but have played a game fewer.

Atalanta, equal on points with Juventus, take fourth spot two points ahead of Roma who drop to fifth following the loss to Milan. Lukaku scored with the first chance at the San Siro, then laid on Matteo Darmian for Inter’s second in the 69th minute. Alexis Sanchez came off the bench to add a third with 13 minutes to go.

“We’re first in the standings and it’s a good feeling,” said Lukaku as Inter try to deny Juventus a 10th consecutive league title after finishing runners-up last season. Antonio Conte’s side followed on from last weekend’s 3-0 derby win over Milan, notching up a fifth win in a row as they push for a first league title since 2010.

“We’re happy because our hard work is paying off,” said Conte. “We know that there are 14 games left. Let’s keep our antennas up until the end if we want to do something good.”

Lukaku led the way, completing a give-and-go with Lautaro Martinez after good work from Nicolo Barella to fire in from an angle for his 18th Serie A goal of the season, one shy of leading scorer Cristiano Ronaldo.

The 27-year-old has scored six goals in the last five games. “I’m in a good moment of my career but the important thing is that Inter win,” added the former Manchester United player.

“These matches are opportunities for us to give signals to others, but the championship is long.”

- Milan edge Roma -

Milan won an intense battle with rivals Roma at the Stadio Olimpico in the Italian capital, as Stefano Pioli’s side push for a first league title since 2011. A Franck Kessie penalty gave Milan the lead five minutes before the interval after Federico Fazio fouled Davide Calabria.

Jordan Veretout pulled Roma level five minutes after the break with an arrowed shot, but the away side were soon back in front.

Ante Rebic drilled home the winner eight minutes later after collecting a pass from Alexis Saelemaekers following a poor clearance from Roma goalkeeper Pau Lopez. Off-form Milan star Zlatan Ibrahimovic had been substituted shortly before Croatia international Rebic scored the decisive goal.

“I told the lads that two games (losses) cannot take away the confidence build up over a year,” said Pioli. “It’s an important win at a decisive moment in the season which takes us out of two very strange weeks.”

Ibrahimovic watched the end of game with an ice pack on his left thigh before a week in which he will juggle football and show business as one of the star presenters of the San Remo music festival.

Atalanta kept their Champions League push alive with a 2-0 win over Sampdoria with goals in either half from Ruslan Malinovskyi and Robin Gosens.

Napoli’s record goalscorer Dries Mertens returned from injury to help the southerners boost their own top four hopes with a 2-0 win over local rivals Benevento that puts them a point behind Roma in sixth.

Mertens started for the first time in over two months and the 33-year-old got his boot to a Faouzi Ghoulam cross after half an hour for his 131st Napoli goal. Matteo Politano turned in the second in the 66th minute and Gennaro Gattuso’s side held on for the points despite Kalidou Koulibaly’s sending off 10 minutes from time. In the relegation battle, Cagliari snapped their 16-match winless run in coach Leonardo Semplici’s first match in charge with a 2-0 success over rock-bottom Crotone.

Ledecky eyes 1500m free Olympic first at ‘different’ Tokyo Games

Ag AFP

LOS ANGELES: Five-time Olympic gold medallist Katie Ledecky is powering through the uncertainties of the Covid-19 pandemic, her sights still firmly set on making history at the rescheduled Tokyo Games.

The US freestyle great, whose 15 world titles are the most of any woman swimmer, adapted and adjusted along with the rest of the world in 2020, but she isn’t giving any ground when it comes to her goals in the pool.

“I feel very good about those goals and feel like they still are in place for this year,” Ledecky said in a video conference as she prepared to tavel to a swim meet this week in San Antonio, Texas, her first such trip in a year.

It’s another step on the road to Tokyo, where Ledecky is eying an ambitious programme that she hopes will see her claim the first women’s 1,500m gold medal ever awarded at the Games.

“I’m really excited that the 1,500m free is in the Olympics for the first time for women and that there’s parity in the schedule between the men’s and women’s schedules,” she said. “It’s been a long time coming.

“I know the history of US women’s freestyle swimmers and I know there’s a lot of women’s freestylers that haven’t had those opportunities that I’ve had and didn’t have the opportunity to swim the 1,500 or even other events in the Olympics,” said Ledecky, who will also be targeting the 200m, 400m and 800m freestyle and the 4x200m free relay.

“So I’m going to take up the opportunity and hopefully get Team USA started on the right note for that event moving forward.” The odds are certainly in the world record-holder’s favor, and Ledecky said she feels well-prepared despite the upheaval of the early coronavirus lockdown in California last March and the continuing changes to health protocols.

For three months she made do swimming in a backyard pool and lifting weights in her apartment as facilities at Stanford University were shut down. “Since the middle of last June is when Stanford opened back up. We have a lot of different protocols, one per lane or one per household so I live by myself so I’ve been one per lane for the past year,” she said.

She and her training partners are tested three times a week, and Ledecky thinks she’s well prepared for whatever health and safety protocols she’ll have to follow both at the US trials now scheduled for June and at the Olympics now scheduled to start on July 23.

“It’ll be a different Olympics,” said Ledecky a veteran of the 2012 London Games and the 2016 Rio Olympics. “It’ll look and feel different.

“I’m trying to learn as much as I can bout the protocols that will be in place so that nothing will catch me by surprise and I can have the best performances that I can have.” Ledecky is hoping she and other US team members will have been vaccinated against Covid by then, but she won’t jump the queue to be vaccinated.

“I feel pretty strongly that we all have to get it when it’s our turn,” she said. “I really hope that’s soon for all of us.” And vaccine status notwithstanding, “we’re going to have to do the exact same things, the mask-wearing, the distancing, the testing.”

Ledecky is also trying hard not to get caught up in any speculation that the Games might not come off. Coronavirus cases surged in Japan in January, when polls showed some 80 percent of people in the country thought the event should be cancelled or postponed again.

“I’m preparing as though the Games are on and I’m trying not to think about all the speculation,” Ledecky said. “It’s difficult to block everything out, but I’m very focused. “I don’t want to get to Tokyo and have any regrets about my training or preparation.”