BUDAPEST — Sports is perhaps the last refuge of unscripted reality shows, so it would be rude and disrespectful to declare that Katie Ledecky had the women’s 800 freestyle won before the beep went off Friday night here at the 19th FINA world championships.
But, you know, come on.
If we’re being honest, a legit contender for the best show in sports is to see how good Katie Ledecky can be. Still. Ten years after she burst onto the scene, winning the 800 free as a 15-year-old at the London Games in 2012.
“I made it a goal to not be a one-hit-wonder, and here we are,” she said.
BUDAPEST — As Yogi Berra once famously said, it ain’t over til it’s over, and while the swimming part of these 19th FINA championships is just now half over, and for a great chunk of the world these championships perhaps have an are-they-really-happening vibe, up close there are threads that clearly deserve pulling:
— Caeleb Dressel, the top American guy, went home abruptly. USA Swimming wouldn’t say what’s wrong, citing medical privacy laws.
Let’s deconstruct.
BUDAPEST — Some cars go from zero to 60 really fast. Not a 1975 AMC Pacer. It requires a touch over 14 seconds.
Got the picture in your mind of that wide-as-it-as-long, weirdo-bubble-glass, frog-like thing belching, lumbering, wheezing toward 60? Take out your cellphone, go to the stopwatch function, click start and watch it go tick, tick, tick. And keep on ticking. One Mississippi, two …
Fourteen-plus is a lot of seconds. Usain Bolt is already in the midst of a second 100-meter dash.
In the women’s 1500 freestyle at these 2022 FINA world championships, 14-plus is how much time winner Katie Ledecky put between her and runner-up Katie Grimes, a 16-year-old from Las Vegas.
BUDAPEST — If you need to read about golfers yelling at each other or journalists yelling at golfers or something like that, please click elsewhere.
Katie Ledecky was back racing Saturday night, which means we can all feel good about, well, everything. Especially about the notion of endless possibilities. And what it means to genuinely be an inspiration seemingly everywhere in our fractious and chaotic world, and especially to women and girls — some of whom make posters for you and still others who make posters and then grow up to, you know, race you.
Senior leadership at the International Olympic Committee neither likes nor respects Sarah Hirshland, the chief executive of the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee.
She has little support among some number of key executives who head the 50 national governing bodies here in the United States.
She makes a big show of supporting U.S. Olympic athletes but late last week fired, and unceremoniously, Rick Adams, the one person at the USOPC who knew the most about getting athletes to perform their best at the Olympic Games, Winter and Summer.
A popular behind-the-scenes guessing game: how much longer will Hirshland remain chief executive?
How much longer should she?
I was in touch by text message late last week with Alex Gilady. And now he’s gone. He died Wednesday, in London, of cancer. As is the way in Jewish tradition, his funeral was scheduled as soon as could be, at noon Friday, back in Israel, in Ramat HaSharon, near Tel Aviv.
Alex lived life. When our time comes, how many of us can say this? Alex loved hanging out in London (especially at Wimbledon): he thoroughly enjoyed the late summer along Spain’s Costa Brava; he inevitably managed to find something about every place he was, wherever it was. To be with him was to understand that life is indisputably, unequivocally for living. Dressed impeccably? Inevitably. A good bottle of red? Sure. A story, a discussion, maybe even a point or three to contest? Why not?
With him closes a chapter of history. His passing marks an occasion of deep, profound sadness.
For me, the sadness is particularly personal.
BELGRADE, Serbia — There are four big track and field championships this year: world indoors, world outdoors, Commonwealth Games, Europeans. For a sizeable number of top athletes, these world indoors are, for lack of a better description, the baby of the four, the junior rider.
In any year, but particularly this one, it would be rare to see the kind of showdown that took place Saturday night in the marquee event of these world indoors, the men’s 60 meters. In Lane 5, the Tokyo Olympic champion in the 100 meters, Italy’s Lamont Marcell Jacobs. Was his run last summer a fluke? In Lane 3, American Christian Coleman, the 2019 100 world champion, the 2018 60-meter winner, the world record-holder at this distance at 6.34 seconds. He could not challenge Jacobs in Tokyo. He was sitting out, grounded by a whereabouts violation.
Rarer still is the race that lives up to the hype.
This one did.
The International Olympic Committee this week moved to isolate Russia, including Russian athletes, from international sport.
The reason for this move is clear. It’s Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, launched on February 24. So there is no mistake, no equivocating about language — it’s, from the words of the IOC’s news release itself, the “current war in Ukraine.” It’s the war. The war puts the Olympic movement, the release said, in a “dilemma.” The statement uses the word “dilemma” four times.
To be clear, what Russia has done in launching this war is horrific and reprehensible. The IOC also took the step of stripping the Russian president, Vladimir Putin — and two others, including the head of the Sochi 2014 Games, Dmitry Chernyshenko — of the highest Olympic prize, the Olympic Order. That’s entirely appropriate.
Is what the IOC did in moving Monday to ban Russian athletes an act of moral leadership? The right thing to do? In the west, overwhelmingly, the answer is easy. Yes.
BEIJING — Kaishu Hirano of Japan is 19. He competed here in snowboarding, in the halfpipe. He did not win. His brother, Ayumu, did. No matter. Kaishu flew.
One of the basic tricks in snowboarding is called a method air. In this case, a backside air. You grab the heel edge of the board with your hand and pull the board up, arching your back. If all goes well, until gravity does its thing, for just an instant you are emblematic of human possibility there in the air, silhouetted against a clear blue sky, elegant, graceful, flying, literally flying. The American Ross Powers did this on his winning run in the pipe in Salt Lake City in 2002. Now, Kaishu Hirano.
The difference is that Kaishu Hirano flew way higher. From the bottom of the pipe to where he was up there was more than 46 feet. Above the lip of the pipe: 24 feet, four inches.
When the first drafts of the record of these 2002 Beijing Winter Games are written, there likely will be many references to Kamila Valieva, the 15-year-old Russian figure skater, and other controversies. Those are of course very real. The Games can sometimes spotlight some of the most challenging issues confronting our fragile and broken world.
But what about the achievement — the striving, the joy — of Kaishu Hirano and roughly 3,000 athletes from around the world?
