Highlights of the week of July 22-28

Ni Xia Lian scores her first win in Paris

On Saturday night, 61-year-old Ni Xia Lian won her match against Sibel Altinkaya of Turkey (4-2), giving Luxembourg an exciting moment and bringing her unusual personality to the attention of the French.

Her victory is unique. The start of the match was difficult, but as Ni Xia Lian pointed out, experience proved decisive: "Yes, I am twice as old as my opponent, but I also have twice as much experience". Her more than 40-year table tennis career has given her confidence, and even the excitement of the world's biggest competition gave her extra energy: "I was so happy that it made me a little nervous at the beginning. But I wanted to win and I took control of the situation," she said humorously.

Ahead of the 1/16 final on Monday, Ni Xia Lian is expecting an even tougher opponent: "Oh God, it's going to be tough," she said with a smile. As Luxembourg's star player at these Olympics, she also humorously promoted her country: "Come if you have money, we have a lot of banks here.

Unfortunately, the other Luxembourg players, Luka Mladenovic and Sarah De Nutte, lost their matches in the 1/32 finals. Mladenovic lost to Denmark's Jonathan Groth (4-0), while De Nutte lost to Portugal's Jeanie Shao (4-2), although she fought to the end. "It was our most intense match, but there has to be a winner and a loser," she said after the match.

Amputating a finger to qualify for the Olympics

A different but less colorful story happened to Australian ball hockey player Matt Dawson.

The 30-year-old Australian broke a finger on his right hand after being hit by a stick during a training session in Perth two weeks ago. The injury almost completely severed the top part of the finger, putting his Olympic dreams in jeopardy.

Doctors said it would take four to six months to recover, which would mean missing the Summer Games in France. Or Dawson could have had the finger amputated and made it to competition in time. He chose the second option. The surgeon removed about an inch from the end of his ring finger on his right hand, just below the top joint.

"With all the information I had to make the decision, in a pretty short period of time, I still decided to take it and I can still have a pretty good functioning life with just a little less finger to worry about," Dawson said on the Parlez Vous Hockey podcast. He is now in Paris for his third Olympics with Team Kookaburras.

Drugs found in the bodies of sharks

Scientists have found cocaine in the bodies of sharks off the coast of Brazil. Researchers have long speculated that marine life could be suffering from drugs dumped into the water by smugglers. This was confirmed when scientists from the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Brazil conducted a study and found traces of cocaine in 13 samples of sharks of the species Rhizoprionodon lalandii.

The sharks were purchased from small fishing vessels, as this species spends its entire life in coastal waters, where pollution is most likely to occur. Muscle and liver tissue samples were analyzed by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. All sharks tested positive for cocaine and its metabolite, benzoylecgonine, at concentrations 100 times higher than other aquatic organisms.

This is the first study to detect the presence of cocaine in free-living sharks. However, the effects of cocaine and its metabolites on aquatic life remain poorly understood. The study was published in the journal Science of the Total Environment.