By The Associated Press

Day 12 of the Athens Olympics

Wednesday, Aug. 25

STARS

Rulon Gardner of the United States won his bronze medal wrestling match, then tearfully untied his shoes and left them in the ring - the traditional sign of retirement.

Israeli windsurfer Gal Fridman won sailing's Mistral class, his nation's first gold medal ever.

U.S. middleweight Andre Dirrell narrowly beat Cuba's Yordani Despaigne to advance to the Olympic boxing semifinals.

Cuba won the gold medal for the third time in the four Olympics that included baseball, with Frederich Cepeda hitting a two-run homer in a 6-2 win over Australia.

Fani Halkia of Greece won gold in the 400-meter hurdles with a time of 52.82 seconds.

Olga Kuzenkova of Russia won gold in the hammer throw with an Olympic record of 246 feet, 1 inch.

Greek protest groups urged the government to call off a planned visit by Secretary of State Colin Powell, saying he will try to exploit the Olympics for President Bush's re-election campaign. Powell plans to arrive Saturday.

The U.S. women's volleyball team came to Athens expecting to play for gold. Instead, the Americans were eliminated from the quarterfinals by unbeaten Brazil after a shaky showing in the preliminary round.

Zimbabwe put aside an official hate campaign against the nation's tiny white community and hailed its triple medal winner swimmer Kirsty Coventry as "a national treasure." She is white and trains at Auburn University.

Prosecutors have seized the hospital records of two Greek sprinting stars who withdrew from the Olympics after missing a doping test. Kostas Kenteris and Katerina Thanou were involved in a suspicious motorcycle accident.In another development, a man who said he witnessed the accident was arrested after police discovered he had an outstanding warrant for an unrelated fraud conviction.