Olympic Survey (Sept 17)

Jasna Sekaric (left) won the first Yugoslav medal in Sydney

Yugoslav Jasna Sekaric has won the Olympic silver medal in Sydney in ladies' 10 meter air pistol shooting with 486.5 points.

Tao Luna (China) won the gold medal with 488.2 points and Annemarie Forder (Australia) won the bronze with 484 points.

This is the first medal for Yugoslavia at the 27th Olympic Games.

Sekaric, the best woman athlete in Yugoslavia in the past decade, has already won four Olympic medals - gold and bronze in 1988 in Seoul and silver in 1992 in Barcelona, and ranked fourth in 1996 in Atlanta. "I am euphoric. First I was very excited to enter the finals at all, and then I focused on reaching the advantage of the Chinese contestant. Maybe I have overdone it a bit, maybe I should have considered what I had been doing, because the conditions for competing were impeded due to the very penetrating daylight. However, regardless of everything, I am overwhelmed!" Jasna Sekaric said after winning the silver medal in air pistol shooting at the Olympic Competition in Sydney.

This is the fourth Olympic medal in the last decade of the best Yugoslav athlete's career.

Previously, Jasna Sekaric won gold and bronze medals in Seoul 1988, in Barcelona 1992 she won silver medal, while four years ago in Atlanta she placed fourth.

Sekaric has, at European and world championships, world cups and Olympic Games, won 79 medals so far.

In the first round of the Olympic table tennis tournament in single, the Yugoslav representative, Slobodan Grujic, defeated Peter Akinlabi from Nigeria with a score 21:14, 21:12, 21:18.

Yugoslav coxless pair (Djordje Visacki and Nikola Stojic) convincingly won the first place in the second qualificative race and placed themselves into the semifinal.

Yugoslav coxless four team (Filip Filipic, Ivan Smiljanic, Boban Rankovic and Mladen Stegic) placed last, the fifth, in the first qualificative group, therefore they will fight for a place in the semifinals in repechage.

Yugoslav fencer, Tamara Sotra, lost in the second round of the Olympic women's individual epee, from the French representative, Laura Flessel-Colovic with 15:9 and ended her competing at the Olympic Games in Sydney.

Today in the first round, Yugoslav representative has defeated Norwegian, Silvia Lesoile with 15:8.

In the first round of B group at the Olympic basketball tournament in Sydney, reigning world champions Yugoslavia beat a depleted Russian team 66-60 (27-28).

With five of Russia's regular national team members not playing due to injury, the Yugoslavs pounded the ball inside all game as centre Zeljko Rebraca poured in 18 points and added five rebounds.

Russia managed to claw their way back after going down by 10 points with five minutes to play, but their shooters went cold and the team gave up several easy baskets down low.

It was the first game for both teams.

Yugoslav volleyball players started the Olympic Games in Sydney with a defeat. In the derby of the first round of B group, Russian national team players defeated them with 3:1 (19:25, 25:23, 25:23, 25:20).

Yugoslavia started the match well. However, by the end of the second set Russia managed to punish relaxed play of its opponent and to tie the score. After that two teams changed roles. Russians more and more easily won their points, while Yugoslav players seemed deconcentrated and nervous.

Frequent serve mistakes, bad block play and almost non-existing organization of attacks have marked Yugoslavs play at the end of the match.

Swimmers, Marica Strazmester (100m backstroke - women), Milorad Covic (100m backstroke - men) and Nikola Kalabic (200m freestyle - men) have dropped out of the further competition.