Sports Shorts: Nelson to end hurdling career; F1 live Twitter show

A summary of sports events and persons who made news on Monday.

A decade after winning Olympic gold, American Dawn Harper Nelson is preparing to clear the final hurdles of her career.

"This is my last season," the 2008 Olympic 100 metres hurdles champion told Reuters via telephone on Monday in announcing her retirement plans.

"Since I was a child, there were always three things I wanted: To be an Olympic gold medallist, a wife and a mom," said the 33-year-old World silver medallist.

"Right now I am two for three and I'm feeling the urge to be someone's mom.

"So this is it for me."

In doing so, she hopes to end her career on an ambitious note before returning home to Illinois with plans to open a health food restaurant.

"I want to run a personal best - it's 12.37 now - and win the Diamond League final," said the two-time Olympic medallist.

That's a tall order in an event where US compatriots dominate and the World record is 12.20 seconds, set by American Keni Harrison in 2016.

But overcoming obstacles has always been a Harper Nelson trademark.

"People don't understand. I had surgery in February 2008, still made the (Olympic) team and won," said the Bob Kersee-trained athlete.

A big underdog in that race, having been hurdling professionally for only a year, she surged to gold when favoured team mate Lolo Jones heart-breakingly clipped the ninth hurdle and broke stride.

Four years later Harper Nelson was in another dramatic final, losing the 2012 Olympic gold to Australia's Sally Pearson by 0.02 of a second.

Formula One to launch live Twitter show

Formula One is to launch a live post-race show on Twitter starting from next week's Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona and with retired 2016 world champion Nico Rosberg involved, the motor racing series said.

Global followers of the official @F1 account will be able to watch interviews with drivers, team bosses and other key players at the Circuit de Catalunya, Formula One said in a statement on Monday.

The show, to be presented by British commentator Will Buxton, will also air after nine further races and feature panellists including Rosberg, who was Mercedes team mate to reigning champion Lewis Hamilton.

Liberty Media-owned Formula One, which is seeking to build the sport's digital profile, said the partnership with Twitter, Inc. would also extend beyond the social network's exclusive license for the live F1 show.

"For all Grands Prix going forward, post-race highlights will be distributed via Twitter video clips, providing fans with a vast array of on-track highlights, and advertisers an opportunity to reach a dedicated F1 fanbase at scale," it said.

Formula One's @F1 feed currently has 3.63 million followers on Twitter.

"It is good to see the new direction of F1 across digital, as a key channel to engage with fans and future fans of the sport," commented Rosberg.

"I was delighted to join this programme when F1 asked me to participate. I love F1 and I believe that we can grow the sport through digital engagement."

Frank Arthofer, Formula One's Director of Digital and New Business, said Twitter had approached the sport's commercial rights holders with an interest in co-producing original live content.

"Given how well their platform caters to driving conversation around global live events, the strategic fit was perfect," he said.

Walt Disney Co and Twitter announced earlier that they will create live sports, news and entertainment programming specifically for Twitter's social media platform.

Shuttlers Rohan-Kuhoo, Shivam-Poorvisha in second round at NZ Open

The young Indian mixed doubles pair of Rohan Kapoor-Kuhoo Garg and Shivam Sharma-S Ram Poorvisha entered the second round of the US $150,000 New Zealand Open Super 100 tournament, in Auckland, on Tuesday.

The Rohan-Kuhoo pair, which won the 2017 Hellas Open International Challenge and Iceland International challenge this year, defeated Israel's Misha Zilberman-Ksenia Polikarpova 11-21, 21-7, 21-10 in 42 minutes.

Sharma-Poorvisha, meanwhile, beat the Australian pair of Niccolo Tagle-Fransisca Angelica Rahardja 21-19, 21-11 in another match.

Rohan-Kuhoo are likely to take on top seeds Dechapol Puavaranukroh-Sapsiree Taerattanachai of Thailand, while Shivam-Poorvisha face either the Korean combo of Min Hyuk Kang-Ha Na Baek or eighth seeded Malaysians Chan Peng Soon-Liu Ying Goh.

Ajay Jayaram, Sourabh Verma, B Sai Praneeth and Sameer Verma begin their campaign in the tournament on Wednesday.