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Getting ready for F1 in a unique way

Mexican rookie Sergio Perez has been getting in shape for his first Formula One race by climbing a frozen waterfall with his Sauber team mates.

The Swiss-based team said on Thursday that the unusual activity formed part of a four-day pre-season fitness camp at a sports facility above the Walensee lake.

Perez, who celebrated his 21st birthday on Wednesday, took part in a range of activities with Japanese team mate Kamui Kobayashi and new Mexican test and reserve driver Esteban Gutierrez.“We did a lot of work and I'm quite happy with the shape I am in,” said Perez.

“I enjoyed every exercise with my favourites being climbing in a frozen waterfall, followed by cross country skiing. It was also very important and a really nice experience to spend time with my new team mates and build up relationships with them.”

The team said the drivers were put through various performance tests at the Swiss Olympic Medical Center to determine their levels of endurance, strength and coordination and to improve reaction times.

The activities included bowling and pistol shooting.

Olympics could be hit by illegal betting: Rogge

Illegal betting is as big a threat to the integrity of sports as doping and could one day hit the Olympics, International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge said.

Rogge, opening a symposium to discuss illegal betting in sport, announced that the IOC was calling a summit on March 1 with governments and sporting bodies to hammer out a joint approach to the problem.

"Illegal and irregular betting is a major threat for sport, probably at the same level as doping," he said.

"We will call upon the support of governments the same way we did in 1998 to create the World Anti Doping Agency."

"The sports world cannot solve the problem alone. We have to work with governments, with the lotteries, with bona fide betting companies and everyone concerned about having clean sport."

At the symposium, organised by the International Sports Journalists' Association (AIPS), Rogge said the IOC had been monitoring the problem for some time and had noted nothing to suggest it had affected the Olympics so far.

Djokovic senior fails to organise a coup

A boycott led by Novak Djokovic's father failed to unseat Serbia Tennis Federation (TSS) president Slobodan Zivojinovic who held on to his post with a landslide victory in a ballot.

Zivojinovic, a Wimbledon semi-finalist in 1985, took over as TSS chief in 2003 and won his third four-year term after 502 of the 690 delegates voted for him to stay in charge despite some delegates led by Srdjan Djokovic boycotting the vote.

"Serbia won the Davis Cup and became world tennis champions despite Zivojinovic and his aides being in charge all these years, not thanks to them," Djokovic senior told the session before abandoning it with his supporters.

"You people have nothing to do with Serbia's recent tennis success, you don't care how hard our children had to work to get to the top and how much the parents had to sacrifice.

"Tennis was off the sports map in Serbia before our children appeared from nowhere but these people sitting here now are happy to claim all the credit," he said.

Djokovic senior then said the body had done nothing to improve dilapidated facilities or invest in the development of young talent in Serbia, having targeted Zivojinovic as the main culprit in an "idle and disinterested approach."

He was soon joined by several senior tennis officials, who labelled the present leadership incompetent and incapable of attracting much-needed sponsors and investment.

Blunt Poulter slams ‘silly’ golf rules

Straight-talking world number 12 Ian Poulter wants the rules of golf addressed following two high-profile disqualifications already in 2011.

"It's about time they readdress some of those rules to see if it actually makes this game stay the great game it is, because it does look silly," Briton Poulter told reporters on Wednesday, the eve of the inaugural Volvo Golf Champions tournament in Bahrain.

Last week triple major winner Padraig Harrington was disqualified before the second round of the Abu Dhabi Championship after a TV viewer noticed he had accidentally moved his ball on the green.

Poulter used social network Twitter to vent his frustrations after Harrington's disqualification.

"Rules of Golf Book, Rule 22-4, Paragraph 3, Line 7, the rules of golf are complete bollocks and are stuck back in 1932," the Ryder Cup player wrote.